Title: Like Sleeping In On Sunday
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1,400
Characters: Steve/Natasha
Prompt: "rainy day. Lazy morning. steve's day off however nat needs to report to s.h.i.e.l.d to do some stupid paper works, steve persuades her to just stay in bed and fool around :)" + an interview with Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson (check my AO3 version of this for the link)
Summary: She closes her eyes, listens to his breathing and the sound of raindrops hitting the window and wonders if she can blow off work today.
For: ice326
Like Sleeping In On Sunday
"Don't… Don't leave."
Steve turns over, wrapping his arm around her from behind so that she can't get up like she really doesn't want to but kind of has to. Well, no, she can still get out of his grasp and they both know this, but she really, really doesn't want to get out of bed at all. So she just curls up a little bit more and lets him pull her close so that her back is pressing against his chest and his breath warm against her neck. She closes her eyes, listens to his breathing and the sound of raindrops hitting the window and wonders if she can blow off work today.
After a few more minutes, the alarm on her phone goes off again and she lets out a sigh. "I should start getting ready," she says.
"No, you shouldn't," Steve mumbles against her shoulder. "Just stay."
"You know I want to, but then Nick and Tony will be on my ass about ruining their schedule," she reminds, though she still doesn't make any more of an effort to pull herself from his arm to actually start getting ready.
Ever since Tony and Nick decided they were going to start a type of S.H.I.E.L.D. branch within Stark Industries, they've been pestering her for help on everything.
Well, they've been pulling help from wherever they can, but she and Maria were (and still are) Nick's closest personnel, so he calls on them the most. Clint was a member longer than either of them, but he generally didn't follow protocol to begin with and so she can't imagine him wanting to help reconstruct it, even if Nick did ask him. Sharon helps often enough, too, though the CIA keeps her understandably busy, and since Tony pays for their tickets, Jane and Darcy fly in when they're needed (so almost every other weekend). And of course everyone wants to help. None of them are sure how they're going to reconstruct operations as extensive as S.H.I.E.L.D. without government aid or, after HYDRA, if they even should.
But S.H.I.E.L.D. at its core was in the interest of the public good, and a number of personnel on every level and in every division carried on in genuine belief that they were making a difference. So as impossible as it seems, they kind of need to make this work.
Still, she wishes they wouldn't need her right now.
She rolls out of Steve's grasp and onto her back, so that his hand is on her stomach, and he gives her a sleepy smile. He's typically a morning person, and even now, he's probably more awake than she is. But Sundays seem to be the exception to this because whenever they don't have plans, they can spend almost all morning in bed.
"I'm going to complain that they're ruining my weekend mornings with their meetings," Steve tells her.
She rolls her eyes, smiling. "You can just go back to sleep. I actually have to get up and be a semi-functional human being."
"Well, you're part of my mornings and they're taking you away, so yeah, I consider it ruined." He tucks his fingers underneath the hem of her shirt, which was already riding up, and she bites her lower lip. She knows what he's trying to do. "Just skip. It's one day."
"I shouldn't," she says.
He smiles knowingly. Shouldn't doesn't necessarily mean won't. "Please just stay, for me?"
And honestly, that's all it takes for her to cave, even just a little bit.
"Fine," she says, turning on her side to face him. His hand curves over her hip, thumb smoothing over the waistband of her panties. "I can laze around for a few more minutes."
"What about all morning?" She shakes her head, but he quirks an eyebrow and asks, "Even if I bribe you with candy?"
It should be silly and a little bit embarrassing how genuinely excited that makes her, but she hardly ever feels any sort of embarrassment when she's with Steve, especially when he smiles at her as adoringly as he is right now. The fact that they've used sweets before (and sometimes during) sex a number of times before makes her feel less like a nine-year-old kid for having such a sweet tooth in the first place. He doesn't use candy to bribe her every time and doesn't need to, but he loves to spoil her and does it every chance he gets to.
He grabs the Ziploc of gummy bears they were eating last night while watching episodes of The Big Bang Theory, pulls it open and feeds her a red one – her favorites. And she probably (absolutely) shouldn't be having candy first thing in the morning, but whatever.
She doesn't care about that right now.
Steve sets the bag between them, props himself up on his elbow and smiles down at her as he pops a few gummy bears in his mouth.
She's definitely going to be late but she can't bring herself to be too concerned. "You're such a bad influence," she teases, and then laughs because, well, that's rather ironic coming from her. He looks amused, but then she sits herself up and he looks like he's about to pout (which, considering he's a grown man, should not still work on her as often as it does). He sets a hand on her knee as if to keep her in place and she just smiles down at him and says, "Relax," and he actually does. "I just don't want to choke while eating gummy bears."
"Pretty and smart," he says, sitting himself up, too. "When did I get so lucky?"
She hums, tapping her chin and pretending to contemplate this. "Probably around the time you told me you've wanted me since New York." He grins. "You said you fell a little bit in love with me when you gave me a boost so I could hijack an alien vessel, and you haven't stopped since."
He chuckles. "Yeah, I think that rings a bell."
"Well," she says, patting his leg. "If you have a thing for crazy women with bloodlust, you picked a real winner, Rogers."
She's (mostly) teasing, but she can tell he means it when he says, "That's not why I'm in love with you."
"I know."
He drops the Ziploc of gummy bears into her hand and hooks an arm around her hips, pulls her onto his lap and presses a kiss to her cheek. She smiles and pushes more gummy bears passed her lips. The news started playing on the flat screen maybe fifteen minutes ago, because it's set to turn on automatically around the time they're supposed to be getting out of bed so they can get washed up and dressed and still watch, though obviously they're not paying any real attention to it right now. It probably should only be set for weekdays since one of them (usually him) turns it off right away when it's Saturday or Sunday morning, but they don't really want to be bothered with changing the presets again.
She really, really doesn't want to move.
He has a hand in her hair, his fingertips massaging at her scalp and kind of lulling her to sleep, and she doesn't mind it one bit. She closes her eyes and leans her forehead against his neck, curls against him and traces her fingers idly over his chest through the thin material of his shirt.
He's humming the reprise of The Sound of Music and she falls back to sleep like this, her hand resting right over his heart.
In literature or something, that'd be symbolic. She still thinks it is, just a little bit, even though she doesn't need it to tell her that she's in love with Steve Rogers a lot more than she thought she could be.
"It's your fault," she laughs when they wake up an hour and a half later.
It's already passed 11:00 and she's got about a dozen messages on her phone from Maria and Tony and even one from Nick. Steve just grins and shrugs, then follows her into the bathroom and tickles her in her side when they're brushing their teeth next to each other and she shoves his shoulder just for the hell of it. Pepper texts her as they're finishing and says that everyone's meeting in the penthouse in twenty so they can have brunch together, since this morning's meeting didn't end up happening and Tony pushed it to tomorrow.
Oops?
"It's still your fault," she tells Steve as they're walking into the elevator, their fingers threaded between them. He smiles and brings her hand up, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, and she tilts her head a little. "You're terribly corny and old-fashioned, you know that, right?"
"Yes, ma'am," he says with a laugh. "You picked a real winner."
"I know."