Title: Little Do They Know
Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. They are all property of Marvel.
I do not have a beta. All mistakes are my own.
Natasha was raised in the Red Room.
It was a cruel, dark and morbid place, and the girls were all either training or watching terrifying videos on large projectors; all meant to strike fear into their hearts to stop them from escape attempts. They'd also all been handcuffed to the bed at night so that they couldn't run away, all on relatively empty stomachs and with nobody that they could trust in the room around them.
Natasha had heard stories. She'd heard that girls, once they had grown up, could never quite shake the handcuffing habit from their minds once they left, and so still handcuffed themselves to the bed at night to help them sleep. She'd just never expected to be quite so attached to the whole 'handcuffing' thing either.
But she was.
On her first night home, Natasha had been terrified when she couldn't sleep. Later, she'd broken into a police station, stolen two sets of handcuffs and used one to attach herself to the bed.
Once she was back in bed, with this wicked sense of familiarity tying her down, sleep came shockingly easy.
It was much less scary than it should have been.
Natasha can't bring herself to tell anyone. She's much too ashamed of it, of this horrific curse that her morbid past has left in its wake. When Clint asks her if she'd like to come sleep with him one night, she snaps at him, almost violently.
"What sort of question is that?" She snarls. "As if I'd want to sleep with you. We're not in a relationship, nor will we ever be. So piss off."
Clint swallows the bile in his throat. "Okay," he murmurs, because he knows better than to ask. "Yeah. Okay, I'm… I'm sorry, Tasha."
Natasha watches him go and feels like crying. But she hasn't broken cover in over thirty years; and she's not about to break down now.
Not like this.
Natasha always knew she'd never been a ballet star.
It was the Red Room's brainwashing and the ordeals which she'd been put through during her time there. Still, she found a calming influence in the grace and poise of the dance, and was more than amazed when Tony sectioned off a whole portion of her room as a dance floor with large, floor to ceiling mirrors.
She'd almost given him a hug.
Almost.
Honestly, it was Tony who found out.
"Say, uh, Nat?" He muttered, while they were eating a disgusting and burnt attempt at meatloaf courtesy of a moody Clint. "Can I come check out your room for a sec after dinner? JARVIS told me that one of the mirrors is coming loose or something, so I just needed to…"
He trails off when Nat shoots a grin his way. Without even thinking, she says; "of course."
Which, evidently, lead to the biggest problem.
He stepped through the door after her, and trained his eyes on her bed which hadn't been made that morning. He snorted with laughter at her untidiness and tried not to make too much of a scene, but there was a goddam bra hanging off the end of her bed and he was pretty sure he wouldn't be Tony Stark if he didn't say anything about it.
"Nice lingerie, Natashalie." He grins. "Where'd you get that one? Victoria's Secret?"
"Ha, ha." She says dryly. "Hilarious. Are you gonna fix that mirror or what?"
"Yeah, I…" He trails off, eyes fixed on something shiny and metallic hooked on the head of her bed. "Are those handcuffs? Nat, I didn't know you and Barton were… I thought he was grumpy because you didn't let him in here!" He looks positively gleeful.
"That's because I didn't." Natasha snaps. "Look, I… It's not what it looks like, okay? I'm not…" Her voice gets increasingly more frantic as she tries to continue on.
"Whoa, hold up." He holds up a hand. "Just take a breath and explain."
"Red Room." Natasha murmurs. "Old habits… I, uh…" She trails off, then, because Tony does something amazingly uncharacteristic and hugs her.
"This is okay, right? Not weird at all?" He mutters into her shoulder. "You don't have to explain yourself to me any further. Your secret is safe with me, okay, Nat?"
"Weird, yeah." Natasha mutters, hesitantly wrapping her arms around him. "I, um… Thanks, I guess?"
And if Clint sees the whole scene from the doorway, he certainly doesn't say anything about it.