A/N: I forgot to mention this in my update for LAD this week, but! I have an extra little bonus two-parter prequel-ish type thing this week! Sort of. This came about because a couple reviewers asked for more Steve/Natasha stuff in that story, but since it's not the most popular ship and some of the other readers have said they dislike them and/or ignore their stuff, I kind of keep their relationship somewhat on the sidelines, which I don't mind since they aren't the main couple anyway. BUT, I do love them together despite the fact that they're never gonna happen in the MCU, so I thought I'd write a thing about how I imagine they got together in my own little made up fic universe lol. This is part one and it's set around the end of Breath of Life, specifically before Steve had found Bucky. I'll post the next part in a few days :) Let me know what you guys think, and do keep an eye out for the second part of this, because the, er, good stuff is in that part. Lol :D And a big thank you to midnightwings96 for her as-always fabulous help, and for helping me name the two parts of this story AND the title lol. The titles here are all her. The one for part two is the best though :) See you all in a few days!

He May Be Old, But He's Not Dead

By now, Steve was pretty sure that he was used to people he worked with showing up injured in his apartment while he was gone. But while this time had been much less violent than when it had been Fury lurking bloodied in a corner, it was also a lot more bittersweet because he had been hoping for someone else entirely than who he got.

He had been looking for Bucky for a month now, and the trail had gone cold after just the first week. He had come here to New York on a lead, fueled by the hopes that their shared hometown of Brooklyn had led Bucky back here, but the search had led nowhere. It had been week after discouraging week where he could think of little else other than finding his friend, and when he came home to his new apartment to see the light on through the window outside, it had filled him with a hope that maybe, just maybe, Bucky had found him first.

And so, leaving his motorcycle unsecured in his haste to get off of it and tear his way to his own front door, Steve ran up the two flights of stairs and all but burst inside his apartment, only to look inside the kitchen and feel his face immediately fall in utter disappointment.

"Well. You could look a little happier to see me," Natasha said wryly, helping herself to the meager contents of his fridge and giving him a slightly amused look.

"Natasha," he said, trying to wipe the disappointment from his face as he closed the door behind him. "Sorry. I thought you might have been..."

"I figured," she replied quietly, eyes understanding. "Sorry about that. But I didn't have time to call first."

"Something happen?" he asked, watching her take a bite of an apple before she started to pull down the zipper of her gray hoodie.

"You could say that," she said, sliding the hoodie off one shoulder and turning to show him a haphazardly bandaged wound on the back of her right shoulder. Steve's brows furrowed and his mouth dropped open a little as he quickly stepped forward to get a better look at the wound.

"What happened? Is this a stab wound?" he asked, not wanting to touch it but also unable to take his eyes off of it. It was decent sized, but he couldn't see how bad it was under the gauze she must have blindly fixed over it.

"Well," she sighed, pulling up the hoodie back over her shoulder with her other hand and turning towards him, "you know what I said about blowing all my covers. We both know what comes after."

He nodded. "Who was it?"

"Someone with French intelligence," she replied, and Steve's confusion grew.

"French? What did SHIELD ever do to them?"

She smiled a bit sadly. "Nothing."

And then he understood, and he didn't need any further explanations. Whatever she was before, it didn't matter to him now. Really, it never had, but the mess in D.C. had made it even less relevant to him now. "Well, let's have a look at that wound and clean it up."

"Bathroom?" she asked after taking another bite of the apple, remarkably unfazed by whatever pain she had to have been feeling.

"Well..." he thought for a moment. "The lighting in the bathroom here is terrible. The best lighting is actually in my room."

He should have expected the little grin that tugged at her lips. "Well, if you want to invite a girl to your room, Rogers, just say so - you don't have to make up something about the lighting."

He rolled his eyes, knowing she was only teasing, of course. "Very funny. Follow me."

His bedroom was as bare as the rest of the place, most of which just contained boxes that he hadn't bothered to unpack. He was prepared to follow Bucky's trail wherever it led him, and since he was finding nothing here, he figured he would be moving on somewhere else soon. This time he would place the majority of his things in storage and just keep the necessities with him as he traipsed the country, but he would be lying if he pretended to not be disappointed by how badly the search was going.

The even more stark disappointment of finding Natasha in his kitchen instead of Bucky had begun to wane as he left her perched on the edge of the small bed to go grab his first aid supplies. Now he just felt stupid for even have letting himself hope for that, since it had become clear that Bucky didn't want to be found and thus showing up here was just about the most unlikely scenario possible.

Hope was a tricky thing. As prone to it as he was, this century was slowly destroying his ability to believe in it.

But he brushed those thoughts aside and put on a pointless smile as he walked back into his room, finding Natasha where he had left her, minus her hoodie. She had on a familiar black tank top underneath it, and she still wasn't showing a single sign of her injury bothering her. He sat down behind her, spreading out his supplies and then looking up in slight surprise as she slid the right strap of her top down and then pulled her arm free of it.

It was only practical, of course. The strap would have gotten in his way. But when his eyes lingered a little too long on the curve of her bare shoulder, she glanced back at him, and he quickly looked down, focusing back on the task at hand.

He wasn't gonna go down that road. He had done a very good job of steering clear of it at every turn, and it was going to stay that way.

He was peeling off her old gauze when he asked, "So why did you come here?"

"Well, Clint was a farther drive," she replied, and Steve chuckled.

"Ah. I see how it is."

"I didn't mean it like that," she replied teasingly. "I just... don't like involving you if I don't have to."

"... Should I be flattered or offended?" he asked, now able to get a better look at the wound. It wasn't terribly deep, and it didn't look infected, so that was good.

"Neither," she answered, hissing a little as he began to gently clean the wound. "I just try to leave as little collateral damage as I can these days."

"So it's about protecting me," he surmised.

"In a manner of speaking."

His lips quirked slightly. She was interesting, Natasha. His perception of her was ever-evolving and had been since the day that he met her, but one thing that he could say without a trace of humor or doubt was that he really did trust her. And he trusted so very few people that he had met within this decade.

"I noticed that this place has a second bedroom."

"Interested in sharing the rent?" he quipped, wincing slightly for her when she hissed as he cleaned the worst part of the wound.

"We both know who that room is for," Nat replied. "I take it your search isn't going very well."

"He's good at disappearing," Steve sighed. "But at least that means they won't find him."

She didn't need to ask who "they" were. HYDRA, the FBI, CIA, they all wanted to find the escaped "asset", and all for different reasons. But, as much as Steve despised waking up every day having no idea where Bucky was, if he was okay, or hungry, or lost, it was better than the thought of him rotting in some federal prison over crimes that he had not committed of his own free will. But being the lesser of two evils didn't make it any easier.

"It might be a long time until he lets you find him," Natasha warned quietly. "If he really recognized you like you said he did -"

"He did," Steve insisted. "I know he pulled me out of the water. I know it was him. And I saw his face before I fell. He knew me."

"Okay," Nat replied, not arguing the point. "But that might make him avoid you most of all."

Steve frowned, going on with his work and not wanting to believe her. But he knew that she was probably right.

"You don't have much food here," she said next, seemingly off topic.

"... Sorry," he said. "Haven't had much time to shop."

"Or time to sleep, judging by the state of your eyes."

Patting her wound dry, he raised an eyebrows and replied, "You sound concerned."

She glanced behind her shoulder to him and rolled her eyes slightly. "Somebody has to be, because you sure the hell aren't."

"I've got bigger things to worry about," he muttered, reaching for a large bandage.

They were silent for a moment, and then Natasha asked thoughtfully, "So who patches you up when you need it?"

He tried not to sigh, but it was like she was trying to say everything she could to point out the sad state of... well, everything. Eating and sleeping aside, the question of who would do this for him if he needed it was an extra pang of both old and new pain in his heart. Two people came to mind, and neither of them could remember him much, and one had nearly beat him to death less than a month ago.

"Done," he said, and as he tossed the trash into a small can that he had brought in for that very purpose, Natasha turned around a bit but didn't fix her strap quite yet.

"Steve."

He looked up at her, eyes going again to her bare shoulder, now that he was seeing the front view, but only for a fraction of a second before he looked up at her eyes. "Yeah?"

"You're still a terrible liar."

He almost laughed, but not quite. "I'm deflecting, not lying."

"Then you're terrible at that, too."

He smiled in response to the tiny one she was giving him. "Kinda feels like I'm terrible at a lot of things these days."

He didn't like admitting that, especially when to the average person, he had nothing but successes to boast of. He helped win the war, helped fight off the invasion of New York, and had taken down HYDRA against the odds very recently. And yet, it all seemed to be somehow pointless in the end, because the good side never stayed on top for long. In HYDRA's case, good had really never been in control at all. He hoped that would change now, but would it? He'd keep fighting, but would it really make a difference in the end?

"Has anyone told you how dramatic you can be?"

His eyes snapped to hers in surprise before turning warmer and yet also sad, for reasons he wouldn't explain to her. "Yeah. Someone's told me that before."

"Well... next time you're feeling down on yourself," she said, finally starting to slowly bring the strap back over her arm, "just Google my name. It'll make you feel better about your choices in no time."

He shook his head. "I wouldn't do that."

"But I'm sure you've read the files," she said. Her expression became a bit shocked when he shook his head again.

"Nope."

She stared at him. "Why not?"

"Because," he said quietly, "none of that matters to me. I know you've done terrible things in the past. I also know that whatever you were then, it's not who you are now. And that's what matters to me."

She continued to stare at him before shaking her head and saying, "That sounds nice, Steve, but nobody ever really means that. Even you can't really mean that."

"I do," he said sincerely. "Besides, you'd know if I was lying, since I'm so terrible at it."

She smiled a little, but he could tell that something was bothering her, something big enough to be a literal weight on her shoulders. She stared out at nothing for a moment before saying in a tone that was almost wistful, "It was easier to forget it all when only a few people knew. Just pretend that it was all... some different life that was never actually real." She glanced back to Steve and smiled with a shrug. "Now I relive it every time I see a newspaper or overhear people on the street. Not so easy pretending to be a hero anymore."

"Nat," he said quietly, looking at her in a way that was so earnest he could see how off-guard it caught her. He leaned in slightly and said, "The reason why you're reliving it, the reason why the whole world knows what you did, is because you were brave enough to leak those files. You knew that everyone would know, you knew what they would think of you. And you did it anyway. You sacrificed for the greater good. That makes you a hero. And a damn good one, as far as I'm concerned."

She didn't smile in her wry little way, nor did she shrug him off or dismiss him. Instead, she looked at him in a way that he wasn't sure she had before, and she said in a quiet, non-deceptive tone, "When you say that, I can almost let myself believe it."

"Good," he said with a small smile. "Then I'll keep saying it until it sinks in."

She smiled back, and he watched her gaze drop from his eyes briefly before she said, "You know, Steve, someday you're gonna make a lucky girl somewhere very happy."

He scoffed. He couldn't help it. It was his automatic knee-jerk response to such remarks. "Now you're really talking crazy."

"Oh come on," she teased. "One day you'll meet the right one and prove me right." Then she paused and added, "You're one of the few men I know who actually deserves to be happy."

But that was just it, Steve wanted to say. The ones who deserve happiness always seemed to be the ones that never got it. But he kept that thought to himself, and instead he said, "Well.., the problem with that is, even if I found a girl, bringing her into all of this," he gestured vaguely to the general air surrounding him, "would put her in danger."

"So find a durable one," she shrugged. "Women aren't helpless, you know, especially not these days. Just find one who can defend herself and knows her way around a gun."

He nodded. "And who isn't put off by a sixty year age difference."

She shrugged, mirroring his slight grin. "I'm pretty sure that your physique would make up for any weirdness the girl might feel."

He chuckled and then asked, "Why does it always come back to this? I was in the middle of convincing you that you're a hero and yet you managed to turn it into this."

She smiled and then replied, "I don't know. I guess it's like I said. I'd like to see you happy."

"Who says I'm not happy?" She gave him a very pointed look, and he immediately abandoned trying to argue that particular point. "All right, all right. But still. I don't think a date will fix my problems."

She raised an eyebrow. "Depends on how good the date is. Although, I don't know about your chances of having a really good one if you haven't been practicing..."

"Oh, not this again," he laughed, leaning back slightly.

"I'm serious!" she replied. "Look, you obviously need some kind of distraction every once in awhile. Dates are a good, fun place to start."

"That means I would be 'practicing' on the job," he pointed out, and her eyes dropped to his lips for the briefest moment before she grinned.

"Well, I can help you there."

He gave her a look, one that questioned whether she was actually serious or if she was just messing with him.

"Just take it as a friendly gesture," she shrugged. "Didn't you ever practice how to kiss with a friend, growing up?"

"You know," he sighed, "oddly enough, me and Bucky never decided to practice kissing on each other."

She chuckled. "Well, since you were nice enough to open your home to me - "

"You broke in," he pointed out.

" - And patched up my shoulder, consider this my repayment."

She leaned forward slightly, and Steve merely gave her a look and said, "Natasha..."

"What?" she asked. "Do you not want to kiss me again?"

"No - yes, I mean, yeah," he fumbled over his words, closing his eyes briefly and cringing over the fact that even today, after all this time, he still acted like this, even when a woman was just platonically offering help in sharpening up his kissing skills. He tried to recover by shrugging, "Who wouldn't want to kiss you?"

She smirked slightly and then nodded, "So do it. And when you get a date, she can thank me later."

He sighed. "Nat..."

"Oh, come on."

"I really don't think -"

"Steve."

"What?"

No sooner was the word out of his mouth that her lips descended upon it, muffling a noise of surprise as she kissed him for the second time in less than a month. Her hands were on either side of his face and his were hovering stupidly in midair, unsure of what to do with them. The kiss felt a lot like the one she had given him on the mall escalator, close-mouthed and sudden and not at all unpleasant, just unexpected and more than enough to make his brain momentarily crash and then reboot.

He expected it to end the same way that other one had, just as quickly as it began and then that would be it. Instead, he felt her lips soften against his, and then it was no mere stationary kiss. Her lips moved against his, much more softly and slowly, almost teasingly, and his hands ended up on her sides, just above her waist. When she pulled away, he opened his eyes and realized that he hadn't even kissed her back.

She smirked, her face still close to his as she said, "I'd ask if you're always this shy or only like this with me, but I already know the answer."

And she was right. It suddenly hit him that he had never once truly, properly kissed a woman himself. It had always been him being kissed, even on the handful of dates he had forced himself to go on over the last two years.

Now he could see a silent dare in her eyes, something sparkling in the green depths that made his jaw clench and bravery break through the surface of lifelong anxiety.

He may never have quite learned how to talk to a woman, even now, and he wouldn't deny that. But dammit, he could kiss one, and he was going to prove it.

So he did.

One hand dropping lower to her waist while the other shot up to the side of her face, he leaned in this time and kissed her himself for the first time. Her lips immediately welcomed his, and she purposefully allowed him to control it, surely wanting to see what he would do and how good at it he was. He wasn't overly concerned about skill - he just wanted to prove a point. And when her soft, better-than-he-remembered lips parted, inviting him to deepen the kiss, he slid his tongue in her mouth in a moment of bravery. Her fingers slid to the back of his neck, pulling him in deeper, and he angled her head so that he could really taste her. And she seemed to like that, because then she was kissing back in a way that made his head spin.

There were many things that he didn't know, but in that moment, one thing he was pretty sure of was that platonic practice kissing wasn't supposed to feel like this.

She broke the kiss first, coming up for air and opening her eyes to look at him with a pleased curl of her lips. "There you go. I knew you had it in you, Cap."

And that was the moment he realized how much he liked the rasp in her voice. In fact, it suddenly sounded like the sexiest thing he'd heard all year.

He kissed her again, and this time it was her turn to be surprised. For the moment, he didn't care if it was still "practice", or if it was platonic or something else, because from the moment Natasha had stepped into his apartment, she had been shining a giant spotlight on things that he had been trying his best to keep hidden in the dark. Things like his increasingly dim view of the world and the people in it, his shrinking faith in anything, and perhaps above all, his loneliness.

If kissing her for just a few more moments made all of that go away for just a short amount of time, surely she wouldn't begrudge him that, right?

Far from it, once she got over her initial surprise that he was really kissing her now, he felt her nails scrape over the hair at the nape of his neck as her body moved closer to his. When her hands covered his, he broke away for a breath of air and then felt his heart quicken as he watched her take his hands and move them from her waist to her hips. Her eyes then caught his and she said, "Don't be shy with your hands when you kiss."

He gulped down his answer, nodding instead before she placed a hand on the back of his head and guided him down, saying, "Kiss my neck."

He decided then to never, ever tell her that hers was the first that he had ever kissed.

He started out slowly, softly, quickly realizing it was too soft and kissing more firmly as he trailed down the column of her neck. She hummed a little when he reached a certain spot, so he stayed there for a moment, and as he played with different kinds of pressure and got a real noise from her when his tongue flicked against it, he fought the desires growing within him and let one of his hands move slowly up her back, staying over her clothes. This was so wildly different from how he thought he would spending his night, he could still barely process that any of it was real.

"Good?" he asked quietly after his lips reached her jaw, and he pulled away slightly and watched her nod to him. Her eyes moved from his own down to his lips, then back again, and he wondered what she was thinking, if maybe she was about to snap back to her senses and leave.

He didn't wait long enough to find out. Instead, he kissed her again, and was pretty sure that he felt her chuckle a little bit in response.

She was nothing if not a generous teacher. There was a distinct precision to how she kissed, how she would kiss back and then tease a little before letting him have control for a moment, but he didn't really register any of this because he hadn't expected to enjoy it as much as he was. He took her advice about his hands and moved one up and down her back, careful to avoid her wound, and the other was still wrapped around her hip. He had the feeling that maybe he was supposed to do more, but a lifetime of being on his best and most respectful behavior left his hands remaining in only the safest of places.

He didn't want to stop the next time she came up for air, so he moved back to her neck, going back to the same spot that she had seemed to like the most before. She let him kiss there for a little bit before her hands gently drew him away, and when his eyes met hers, she told him in that low, sort of raspy way that he was liking more and more, "I don't know about other girls, but I'll show you what I like."

Then she kissed him just under his jaw, at the top of his neck, and as she slowly moved down, he couldn't help but close his eyes and let his head fall back slightly. She was less gentle than he had been and he wasn't complaining, not just because she was giving him another first experience of his life, but also because everything she did, every touch of her mouth and pull of her lips and hot touch of her tongue made him feel things. Things he had been entirely unprepared to deal with, though passing the time like this definitely beat being alone and reading through Bucky's file for the hundredth time.

She had managed to find his own spot on his neck that drew the heaviest pants from him, and he wasn't aware of how his hand had curled into a fist, gripping the bottom of the back of her tank top in a ball in his hand. Just when she had suckled almost hard enough to hard to hurt for a moment, she slowly drew away, and he almost asked her not to stop. Instead, he just stared at her, unable to speak and breathing in short pants as she looked him over. He knew he was probably a mess and, if the burning in his cheeks and ears were any indication, more than a little flushed.

All she did was grin slightly and then kiss him one more time, a lot more softly and innocently. After, she said, "I think that's enough practice for one night. Don't want to get you too excited."

He laughed and it was a breathy, exasperated sound. If she really thought she hadn't crossed that line at the start of this, then maybe she was the one who needed a lesson in how these things worked. But she didn't, he knew that, and she was already moving away from him, starting to stand up from the bed.

And he was just beside himself.

After having slipped her hoodie back on and zipped it up, she turned and looked at him, still sitting there on the bed and not moving, looking dazed and slightly confused, vaguely watching her. "I'll see you around, Steve."

... She was leaving already?

He almost shot off the bed to follow her towards his open bedroom door, but then he thought better of standing up at all at the current moment. Instead, he stayed sitting where his arms could partially cover his lap - as if it mattered, since he had no doubt that she knew full well what she had done to him - and said, "Wait."

She turned, looking at him expectantly. He shrugged slightly and said, "Why not stay here tonight?"

"Remember what I said about collateral damage?" she replied.

"I think I can handle it," he said with a small smile. "And you're safer here than you would be wherever you'd be going. I'll take the couch."

She sighed. "Steve..."

"I insist," he said. "Not taking no for an answer."

She smiled faintly, and he knew that she would give in. "Fine." Then she gave him a look and turned to head out the door, calling over her shoulder, "Let me know when you're able to stand up again."

He thought that he should have embarrassed. Instead, he just grinned and chuckled to himself.

In a few moments, he got up and went about grabbing a blanket and pillow for himself to put on the couch, then found her in the living room and told her that she could go on to bed if she wanted. She nodded, though not before glancing at his neck and seemingly appearing quite pleased with herself over something. He looked at her questioningly, but she merely turned and began heading for his room.

"I mean it though," she said, looking behind her as she neared the hallway. "I expect your future girlfriend to know who to thank down the road for your kissing skills."

He blamed his still-dazed brain and lingering fuzzy feelings for what he said next. "And what if I decide to ask you out instead?"

He found a bit of satisfaction and how she stopped mid-stride, turning and looking genuinely surprised for all of a few seconds before her usual cool, aloof expression returned. She leaned slightly against the hallway entrance and replied, "I'd probably say no."

"Too shy or too scared?" he asked with a grin, throwing one of her own questions back at her.

"Neither," she grinned back. Then her expression sobered slightly before she added, "But I think I've done enough damage in my life. Trying not to cause anymore if I can help it."

And there she was, protecting him again. He kind of wished that she wouldn't.

But before he could protest or argue or accept what she said, she said "Goodnight, Steve," and turned and walked away.

He sighed and sat down on the couch he would be sleeping on that night and wished that he would have kept his mouth shut. But now there were thoughts in his head that had never been there before that night, and he had the feeling they wouldn't be leaving him anytime soon.

She was gone before he woke up the next morning. That didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was when he noticed what she had been smirking about when he had looked at his neck the night before - a fairly large, impressive mark on the left side of his neck, where she had been paying the most attention to. He couldn't help but grin, wondering if she had done it on purpose and then quickly reminding himself that everything she ever did was always on purpose.

He had a feeling that she would come back around. Maybe not that day or the next, but one of these days, she would come back.

And he was right.

Then, the next morning, when he got a call from Tony Stark telling him about some girl from Virginia who had called Pepper to get a message to Steve about Bucky, who the girl claimed was living in her house, Steve almost tripped and fell down the stairs in his haste to get out and rush to grab Sam and head straight there.

Hope was indeed a tricky thing. It also had a way of renewing his faith in it every time he got close to letting go.