Title: The Three Day Marriage
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2352 words
Disclaimer: The Avengers, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: This story is actually more Gen than pairing centric. Can you tell that Natasha's my favourite character yet?
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"I'm married."
After sitting a few feet away from a temperamental baby and next to an armrest hogger on a red eye flight, Natasha has to exert all her energy to keep her face and voice bland as she says "Who's the lucky girl?"
"Wrong question," Steve says, as he bent down slightly to take possession of the luggage bag she had been rolling along behind her and heading straight to the parking lot.
"All right," Natasha says, falling into step next to him and giving him a quick once over. He had the black framed spectacles on, probably to avoid being recognized but his physique was noticeable even with the normal looking T-shirt and khaki pants he had thrown on. At least ninety percent of the passerbys were throwing him admiring looks. He ignored all of them. "Who's the lucky guy?"
He pauses and groans. "Stark"
"Let me guess... Drunk. Vegas. Married?" she says, trying to keep a straight face and failing.
He snorts, heading to a white Volkswagen Polo sedan, which she finds far too clean cut and far too slow to be one of Tony's.
"You know, since you're married and all, you should have free reign to all of his possessions, cars included," she observes as she gets into the passenger seat.
He doesn't say anything for several miles so she spends her time fiddling with the radio and filing her nails. Hand to hand combat really isn't healthy for her nails, or to her manicure, to be precise.
"I'd like you to help me fix this," he says finally, when the Avengers Tower is in sight.
"All right," she drawls. "Actually, I'm sure Tony would be able to do something, or are you just afraid that the press may find out?"
"I'm not talking to Tony at the moment. In fact, I'm not even living with Tony at the moment. All he does when we bump into each other is point and laugh."
"And exactly how long ago was this shotgun wedding of yours?"
"Three days."
He drops her off at the entrance to the Tower and gets out of the car to retrieve her luggage bag. She takes the opportunity to glance admiringly at his posterior.
"I assure you that it'll be a quick clean job," she says.
"I want a quick clean job but don't kill him," Steve says and then considers it. "Well, temporary incapacitation is fine."
"Great, say hi to Sam for me," she says. He smiles as she leans up to kiss him on the cheek.
She decides to stop at the communal floor first, not really expecting anyone to be there at four in the morning, but she finds Bruce in the kitchen, reading an inch thick file and working his way through a mountainous stack of pancakes.
"Coffee or tea?" he asks when he catches sight of her.
"Coffee," she replies, and the machine behind him immediately starts whirring.
He gets up to fetch a plate and cutlery for her. "Here, help me eat some of these. I'm guessing you didn't eat much on the flight over. I didn't know you were coming back today, or I could have went to pick you up, or at least arrange for transportation."
"It's all right," she murmured, picking up her cup of coffee and lifting it to her nose. It smelled fantastic. "Steve picked me up. I don't want to know how he knew I was coming back today either."
If she hadn't been watching him closely, she would have missed the quick smile that appeared on his face. As it was, he merely stuffed an extra large piece of pancake into his mouth and looked at her. A little too innocently.
"Apparently, our Captain is no longer single. Just imagine the trail of broken hearts behind him once people find out about this," she says, taking a seat directly opposite Bruce.
"Tony thinks it's hilarious," Bruce offers, coming to the conclusion that she knows. "As does Clint. Tony would solve it faster if Steve would not offer him so much ammunition for bad jokes and pick up lines."
"And what do you think?" Natasha asks. Bruce has been smiling from the moment she sat down and it's starting to look extremely suspicious.
"Natasha," he says patiently, "You can't throw six extremely unorthodox individuals together in one place and expect things to be smooth sailing all the time. What do you think this is, Happy Families?"
They eat their breakfast together in a thoughtful but comfortable silence.
Back on her apartment (or floor, if you will), she's taking stock of the groceries in her kitchen, feeling very sure that Clint (her chocolates and ice cream are missing) and Thor (there's a sticky note that says 'thank you' in a smooth flowing script where a box of Pop Tarts used to be) had stopped by while she was away. She's just a little disgruntled that they had not watered her plants while they were at it. Steve is the one who usually does it and since he's been away for several days, her plants are starting to droop.
"Oh, you're back," Clint shouts from her living room. She peeks out and sees him moving towards her couch, a plate of sandwiches in hand. The television is turned on a few seconds later.
"Is there anything you would like to tell me, Clint?" she shouts back, and considers whether she should just start stocking 'healthy' food like what Bruce and Steve do. Nobody bothers stealing those.
"You need a larger variety of ice cream," he replies, as she walks over to join him on the couch.
"Try again," she says, giving him a hard look.
He concentrates on the television, adamantly avoiding her gaze. "So... how did you get back here? Fury didn't say anything about you coming back today."
"Try harder," she says this time.
"Oh my god," he says, putting his feet on her coffee table and slouching further down the cushions. "Steve put a hit on Tony and you've accepted the job."
"You don't sound too affected by that possibility," she says accusingly, poking his bicep for emphasis.
"I'm sure Pepper will still be willing to house and feed us when Tony's gone," he replies dismissively. "Steve's just being a jerk about it. What he needs to do is come back here, indulge in some hot make up sex with Tony and everything will go back to normal."
"You're loving this, aren't you?" she sighs.
"It's better than reality TV," he nods sagely.
She throws him out of her apartment. Literally.
Thor has gone back to Asgard and probably won't be much help if he had been around anyway, so she decides that a female point of view is what she needs. It's a little too early to pay a visit to Pepper so she makes a call first.
"This better be just a social call," Melinda says in lieu of a greeting.
"There are days when I wish that my house mates are not a bunch of men who act like college kids," Natasha says.
"Come over a few days for a sleepover. You might change your mind," Melinda replies. She hears an indignant 'hey' on other end, followed by familiar laughter.
"Is that Phil and Maria?" she asks accusingly. "Why do you get all the mature adults?"
Melinda laughs so hard she can't continue talking, so a very contrite Phil takes over the phone.
"Try not to kill Tony, will you?" he says, injecting some concern into his voice. It's obvious that everyone except for her knows what happened three days ago. She's starting to feel a little insulted to be left out.
"You're just worried about the volume of paperwork you're going to have to get through if that happens," she shoots back.
"Well, yeah," he says, not sounding apologetic at all. "And Fury will put you back on probation."
"No, he won't," she replies.
"You're right," he sighs. "Anyway, tell Steve that not a single one of us is homophobic and that he doesn't need to worry."
"I don't think he's against gay marriage at all. He's just horrified at being married to Tony," Natasha says.
Maria grabs the phone then. "Nat, you do realize that 'Tony' spelled backwards is 'Y NOT', don't you?"
After a quick check with Jarvis, Natasha heads up to Pepper's floor, a souvenir from her trip in hand. Who says you can't squeeze in some shopping while on a mission?
Pepper is getting ready for work but greets her easily and points at a jug of orange juice sitting on the counter.
"No, thank you," Natasha says. "Actually, I think I should be talking to Tony but I figured that I should talk to the normal one in the relationship first."
"I guessed that Steve would contact you," Pepper says, with a fond look.
"How did it happen?" Natasha says, genuinely curious. "Steve refused to give me the backstory. The backstory's always important."
Pepper ignored her pout. "Tony didn't tell us either. All he said was that they were married and spent the rest of the time milking the situation for laughs."
"Aren't you angry? Jealous? Annoyed? Something?" Natsaha says.
"I've become far too used to Tony's antics after all these years," Pepper says, pouring out two glasses of orange juice and shaking her head. "Besides, it's Steve. You don't get angry at Steve. And I may have spent five whole minutes laughing when I heard the news."
"I would have too if Steve hadn't given me the evil eye each time I even came close to smiling," Natasha admits. "It was brutal."
Pepper nods encouragingly and smirks. "By the way, Tony actually got the marriage annulled already. It has to be the shortest marriage in history. He just 'forgot' to tell everyone else."
"I have no idea where Steve goes when he's not in the house, but he has been the perfect house mate. Hell, he even does my laundry for me. He separates the colors from the whites," Sam twirls his fork around, looking thoughtful and perfectly at ease at the cafe they're having lunch at. "Can I not give him back?"
"No rants about Tony?" Natasha asks.
"Nope, but then again, I don't bring him up in the first place," Sam replies. "He even does the house work, you know. He cooks, washes the dishes, cleans up the house..."
"Why don't you just move into the Tower instead? I remember Tony asking you to."
"I'll think about it."
"You've been thinking about it for a while."
"Well, yeah. But I'm sure that you also have your own personal property which you can go to when things get crazy. So, about Steve..."
Natasha is feeling quite annoyed by dinner time. Steve had switched off his mobile phone and was incommunicado all day, and Tony refused all visitors while he was holed up in his lab.
"Natalie, darling, please come back and work as my personal assistant again? Do you know how difficult it is to get good employees these days? Look, I'll triple your pay. You already live here, use my cars all the time and eat all my food. What's so great about working for Fury anyway? He's no fun at all. Very cranky," Tony says, the minute he sees her at the dining table.
Bruce immediately starts shovelling food into his mouth so that he doesn't need to do any talking but Clint plops down in the seat right next to her so that he has a front row seat to the night's entertainment.
She gets as only as far as "Tony, dear..." when Steve, dressed in a suit and tie, with sunglasses on and his hair perfectly gelled, walks in and drops a large bouquet of red and yellow carnations on the table in front of Tony, narrowly missing the salad bowl. He then pulls a chair as close as it can get to Tony and sits on it, putting him practically on Tony's lap. The sunglasses clatter on the table.
"Tony, king of my heart and love of my life, I truly do love you and really wish we could give our marriage a shot, but I want more than you're prepared to give. You love me, but you're not in love with me," Steve grabbed Tony's hand, looking distraught. "I think a divorce is our best option at this point in time, or perhaps an annulment. There's someone else out there who is much more suitable for you, believe me."
Tony, whose eyes had widened comically at first, smirked and grabbed Steve's hand so that he couldn't let go. "But Steve baby, the moon of my heart, the sun to my stars, are you saying that it's not me, it's you? That you think I'm loving but I don't love you? You're being so cliché, pumpkin. But a divorce is so tacky. How 'bout a trial separation first?"
"But of course, my dear, it's not you, it's me," Steve says, looking ready to shoot fire out of his eyes. "No, no, come to think of it, I believe an annulment is our best bet. We can make it a quick clean job."
The rest of them can practically hear the bones in Tony's hand creaking but Tony, heroically, doesn't even wince.
Steve moves even closer to Tony. Another inch and they'd be kissing, Natasha thinks, and wonders whether she should 'accidentally' jostle either of them.
"I'm so sorry that you think so, gorgeous," Tony says finally. "The papers will be on your desk in the morning."
"I'm so glad you understand, sugar," Steve says, extricating himself gracefully. "It would have hurt me if I had to use even more forceful methods to convince you."
Tony's eyes slide to Natasha and Clint, the former giving Steve a displeased look that he had taken away all the fun she could have had and the latter apparently not breathing due to being incapacitated by silent laughter.
"I think it would have hurt me more, sweetheart. Much, much more."