The First Time
"What's the matter? Afraid of a little lightning?"
"I'm not overly fond of what follows."
The first time it happened, she probably didn't even realize she was doing it. It was during the Loki incident, when they were in the quinjet heading back to the helicarrier, and they were assaulted by the violent storm which turned out to be a disgruntled alien god.
As the quinjet trembled around them and tried to regain stability, Steve had braced himself and tried to figure out just why the heck, suddenly, his heart was pounding so violently. Since when had a little thunder ever been a problem? He didn't have a lot of time to ponder it; events were unfolding rapidly. A shaggy-haired blonde man (giant) had entered the quinjet and had repelled Stark-sending him and Steve crashing ass-over-teakettle to the floor of the jet-and then whisked away their captive, and Steve was still going slow, struggling to keep up with this rapid turn of events, trying to figure out just what the hell was wrong with a little lightning...
"Another Asgardian?" Natasha bellowed over the raging winds. And it was her words that somehow penetrated through Steve's roiling thoughts. He struggled to his feet and realized, Natasha was asking him. Looking to him for information and strategy and direction about what to do next. This focused him, distracted him from the crazy weather still carrying on around them, and most importantly, distracted him from his own strange reactions. But while he was still trying to lay some strategy, some plan of attack, Stark actually attacked, leaving Steve behind feeling like not only a damned fool, but a damned fool afraid of lightning.
But he was back in focus now, and he didn't hesitate to strap into one of the emergency parachutes. Even as he tightened the straps around him, Natasha called at a warning from the flight deck.
"I'd sit this one out, Cap. These guys come from legend. They're basically gods."
Good intentions, sure, and she certainly had a point. But she had essentially thrown down a gauntlet, pointed out a challenge Steve couldn't ignore-he had to get Loki back, had to ensure hothead Stark's safety, had to finish the Mission. Natasha's challenge reminded him of this and steadied him and distracted him from the brilliant flashes of lightning, and it was this distraction and mission that kept him sane as he plummeted through the stormy sky to the Earth below.
The Second Time
The next time it happened, Natasha did it deliberately, even though she didn't know why.
They had all been settled into the Stark Tower for a couple of months that point, and while their schedules all rarely coincided, when they did, they all got along remarkably well, all things considered. Especially considering that many times, it wasn't just them around the Tower. Pepper was in and out quite often, and Colonel Rhodes was something of a regular fixture too. And once Thor managed to forge a path to Earth, he was there quite often. And when there was smoke, there was fire-or more accurately, when Thor arrived, Jane would turn up not long after, with Darcy in tow. On the nights when everyone was in town, it felt a little bit like a commune-according to Pepper, who had gone to Berkeley and knew about such things. Natasha insisted that no, it was more like army barracks, but Clint vehemently disagreed and claimed that the group home for kids would have fit right in here. Bruce muttered something about a nuthouse, Darcy said something about a grown-up version of a frat keg party, and Tony lit up and said, Dorm hall. And seeing how he was the landlord-slum lord, Darcy liked to call him teasingly-no one could really object.
Steve and Thor had just nodded along as though they knew what the hell everyone was talking about.
So, it was on one of those rare nights when most of them, except for Rhodey, had actually converged on the place. Much to Tony's overt annoyance, Bruce had declared a "family dinner night", but once Pepper had weighed in on Bruce's side, Tony had capitulated, smiling in such a way that Steve secretly suspected he didn't mind, at all.
Darcy had dragged Clint out to the store, and the two of them returned, hauling several cases of handcrafted beer. As they entered, Darcy was laughing, but Clint's eyes, in particular, were brighter than they had been in a long time. Steve glanced at Natasha, and wasn't surprised to see her watching the two of them, a soft smile tugging at her lips. Not much got past Natasha, he was coming to learn.
"Good timing," Bruce said from the kitchen. "Take out should arrive any minute."
Pepper glanced up from her tablet. "Weather might hold them up. There's a storm brewing outside; once it starts to rain, this city locks up. It's worse than L.A.."
In some unspoken agreement, Clint began popping the caps off the beers and Darcy began distributing, chattering as she did. "It was getting really dark outside," she told them. "Feels a lot like the storms in the Midwest, when I was younger. It'll be cool to see what a storm's like in the city." Like Steve and Jane, Darcy had only settled into the city a short while ago.
Just then, they all heard a faint rumble, which only underscored their conversation.
As they waited for their food, they all drifted into the large seating area to drink their beers and make lazy conversation. Pepper remained absorbed in her tablet-she multitasked her devotion to Tony and SI-and Darcy and Clint somehow became absorbed in a heated game of Thumb War, but the rest of them simply relaxed.
Natasha was sitting next to Steve, with Thor-Jane curled up on his lap-on her other side. So she was the one who felt Steve stiffen up when a mighty crash of thunder actually seemed to make the very floor tremble.
"Storms up here can be very cool to watch," Tony said off-handedly. "The views alone are amazing."
Abruptly Steve got up and walked back over to the kitchen, carrying his bottle with him. He was halfway there when bright white lightning flooded the room, accompanied by another crash. But despite the thunder, they all heard the bottle shatter on the kitchen floor.
Eight sets of eyes turned to Steve and took in his pale face and his clenched jaw. But before anyone could say anything, Natasha had made up her mind.
"A-a-h!" she exclaimed abruptly, bending double and clutching her belly.
"Nat?" Clint had abandoned all his attention to Darcy-Natasha sent the younger woman a mental apology-in favor of his partner. He came over and knelt down beside her. "Are you okay?"
"Stomach...hurts," she gasped. "Badly." She was aware of Steve watching her now, too, alarm growing in his eyes. At least he seemed more alert and present now.
Bruce moved towards her, and amazingly, Tony did too; the latter knelt down beside Clint. "Was it something you ate?" Tony asked her.
"Why don't I take you down to the lab, see if I can't do an exam?" Bruce suggested. "That way we can get to the bottom of things, see how we can help you."
Shit. As talented an actor as she was, not even Natasha could genuinely fake the results of a medical exam. She clutched tighter at her stomach as she thought. "Oh! Stupid of me, I know exactly what this is. Lady problems."
It was comical how quickly Tony drew back.
"I think I need to just go...lay down." With exaggerated care, Natasha rose to her feet-again, silently laughing at the distance Tony kept. But she saw Clint looking at her with some suspicion-he knew better than just about anyone in the world that Nat had never cried off with 'lady problems.' She gave him a tiny shake of her head, but when she turned around, Steve was at her elbow.
"Want some help back to your rooms?" he asked.
How 'bout that, Natasha mused. Captain America's less afraid of lady bits than he is of lightning. She gave him what she hoped was a weakly appreciative smile and allowed him to gently steer her away from the table. The thunder continued rumbling, but Steve was now focused on Natasha, and didn't even notice.
The Third Time
Natasha was pissed off that Clint who figured it out before she did.
It was a late afternoon, and she and Clint and Steve were in the gym at the Tower. Steve was weight-lifting, and Natasha and Clint were doing some half-hearted sparring, more like kittens at play than dedicated, hard-core athletes. Natasha had just executed a damned-near-perfect body slam-Clint would be whining about that one for a while-when the thunder rumbled loudly.
"Looks like Thor's coming to pay a visit," Clint gasped as he sat up.
"Nope," Natasha answered, her voice absent-minded as she looked over at Steve, on the other side of the gym. He had paused and carefully set down his weights. "It's summer. Lots of storms up here during the summer."
"Tasha?"Clint prompted her. "You alive over there?"
She turned back to her partner. "Yeah...it's just," she lowered her voice, "Steve gets weird during thunderstorms."
"Not surprising." Clint accepted her hand up and rose to his feet. "Thunder probably sounds like bombs, or gunfire. You know, shit from the war."
Natasha froze. "Son of a bitch. Goddamn it Clint, I hate it when you're more sensitive than me." She started to head over to Steve, Clint hurrying to keep pace.
"Sensitive-fuck you, Nat. Don't you dare let Stark hear you say that."
"Can it, Clint." Natasha gave him a dirty look. "And keep quiet about this."
Clint made a zipping motion with his hands to his lips as he and Natasha neared Steve. "Hey, Cap," Natasha said gently, just as another clap of thunder resounded. She ignored the way his shoulders tensed up. "Stark said he was gonna be making some mods to Clint's quiver. What do you say we go down to his workshop and pay him a visit?"
At first, it was though Steve hadn't heard-when he turned to her, his face was pale and his eyes bore the thousand-yard-stare. Clint placed a hand on Natasha's arm as he tugged gently and took a tiny step back.
But then Steve's vision came back into focus, and he gave a quick nod. "Sure."
The three of them headed down to Tony's workshop, and while their ornery comrade barely acknowledged their presence and definitely didn't turn down the volume of his Scorpions bootleg album, he certainly didn't object to the company, either. So Clint perched himself on top of a saw horse, throwing various screws and bolts on to the floor to keep DUM-E occupied, and Steve settled down on a workbench near Tony. From his gym bag, he hauled out a sketchpad and was soon furiously drawing away, glancing up from time to time at Tony as he worked, and Clint as he played. Natasha had known Steve would feel safe and comfortable-Tony's workshop was soundproofed, so all the thunder in the world wouldn't discompose Steve.
They didn't notice when she left, but that was the point.
The Fourth Time
The fourth time it happened, they were alone in the Tower. Only the two of them.
Neither of them needed much sleep, but both of them saw the need to maintain regular sleeping patterns. So they had bade each other good-night at half-past ten and gone to embrace their usual night's routine of tossing and turning and thinking too much. In other words, just another night.
Except that this was the night that a late-summer storm rolled in, north of the city.
The thunder hadn't become loud yet; it only softly rumbled in the distance-like bombs falling on another town nearby, Natasha mused, and wondered if she should check on Steve. But no, he might not appreciate it. After all, there was no one around to witness his struggle; perhaps he preferred it that way. And it wasn't like the storm was loud or nearby.
The thunder rumbled softly again, but this time, the rumble went on for a while and actually grew stronger the longer it went. Well, maybe the storm was coming closer...With a sigh, she tossed back her covers and grabbed the dressing gown that she had placed at the foot of the bed. Normally she slept in casual boxers and t-shirts, but when the Tower was practically empty like this, and there was little chance of her running into anyone, she indulged in some elegant sleepwear.
Now, though, she simply slipped the robe on and padded to the elevator. "Steve's floor," she whispered, and JARVIS didn't answer, simply obeyed. With each passing day, she loved Stark's AI more and more.
On Steve's floor, she headed straight for his room and carefully, softly opened the door. She slipped inside, and waited for the lightning to illuminate the room before she spoke. "Steve?"
A quick rustle of bedding and Steve's voice, sharp and alert, spoke. "Yeah. Natasha?"
"Hey." Natasha stepped a few paces closer to the bed.
"Everything alright?" He sat up and swung his feet out of bed. Lightning lit up the room, and Natasha saw that he was clad in his pajama bottoms and nothing else.
She snorted. "You're asking me? Cute. I'm fine. I came in here to check on you."
"On me." Steve sounded confused for moment, but then another roll of thunder caught his attention. "Oh. The thunder."
"Nothing to be ashamed of, Cap." Natasha sat down next to him on the bed. "Bet the thunder sounds a lot like bombs to you. The thing is to keep calm during the storms, keep breathing, focus on things around you. Talk to someone, maybe? A professional?"
"Talk? I do. Someone at SHIELD. I'm working through it." Steve rubbed his face. "But it's not much help right at this moment, is it? The storm's here, the professional isn't."
"I'm here."
After a moment, he lay back down on the bed, and Natasha scooched to lay down beside him, careful to maintain a respectful, non-touching distance.. For the longest time, neither of them said anything, just listened as the storm approached. But as the thunder grew louder, Natasha could sense his body tense up. She remained still and silent, merely present, waiting for him to show how she could help.
And then, he told her. Not in words of any sort. He simply reached over and touched her hip, his fingers hesitant, his intentions clearly chaste. And Natasha, thoroughly well-schooled in the ways of humanity, knew his actions as what they were-a mute plea for physical closeness. So she responded in the only way that she could: carefully, she wrapped her cool, pale arms around his torso in the softest embrace she could manage.
Lightning flashed again, and Steve tensed, curling into her body involuntarily as he did. Wordlessly, Natasha stroked his hair and gently pressed his head forward, coaxing it into the surprisingly-sweet-smelling crook of her neck. There he nestled, his eyes squeezed tight against the lightning, passively allowing Natasha to gentle him with soothing touches and soft words whispered into his ear. Each time the lightning flashed-vividly white, even against his closed eyelids-his hands involuntarily flexed, clutching at the satin of her nightgown.
Strange. Each time the thunder rumbled, she would whisper in his ear again, and somehow, her voice drowned out everything else.
The Fifth Time
The fifth time it happened, he barely noticed it was storming.
They'd been fighting for what seems like hours. On the ground, it was just the two of them-it was a fighting style they had somehow fallen into, the two of them paired off together; for some reason, Natasha's ability to improvise and think on her feet meshed well with his fighting stye. He reserved his worrying and arguing for Tony when it came to dumbass fighting moves, but he trusted Natasha's judgment when it came to sound yet spur-of-the-moment actions.
Except somehow, some way, some thing went wrong. And then he realized Natasha was on the ground, out cold. A thin line of blood trickled down from her forehead-it looked so similar to the injury she had gotten when she was fighting the Chitauri, but the pallor on her slack face indicated that there was much more at risk.
That was when he saw the puddle of blood beginning to seep out on the asphalt underneath her.
"Agent down!" he bellowed into his commlink. "Romanov's been hit!"
Only silence answered his commlink, which didn't surprise him-they needed every last agent and resource they had, and no one was in a place to pause and chat. As alien gunfire and bombs blasted overhead, he had little choice but to move in closer to Natasha, using his shield with one hand to protect them both and trying to find and staunch her wound with the other hand. "Nat?"
Of course she didn't respond-she was losing too much blood, too fast, to be conscious. But where was the blood?
It was only then that he became of the rain pounding down, washing away her blood as quickly as it flowed, and the thunder drowning out any response he would have been getting from the others.
With an almighty roar, the Hulk crashed down from God only knew where. And then Iron
Man was there, too. "Got you some back-up, Cap. I'll take Romanoff from here."
After they had left, leaving him and the Hulk to finish the fight, Steve just didn't even think about the storm anymore. Most of his mind was focused on the red-headed woman fighting for her life, even as the rain washed away her lifeblood under Steve's feet.
The One Time She Couldn't Help
The storm continued on for the next few days-turned out it was a seasonal thing, Pepper told him sympathetically as she saw him frowning out the hospital window. In actuality, he had been frowning since he had come from the recently-won battle, and he hadn't really stopped. So who was to say he was frowning at the weather? He could have been frowning at the noncommittal doctors who discussed Natasha's health in vaguely worrying voices. He could have been frowning at Bruce, who was trying to get him to leave and get some sleep. He could have been frowning at Fury, who actually tried to debrief him right then, right there, less than an hour after Natasha had come out of surgery.
But no, while he was frowning at all those things, he was definitely frowning at the weather, too.
Most of the time, he kept his distance from Nat's bed-he was aware of his own heft and bulk, and he didn't want to get in the way of the medical professionals or their expensive, delicate machines that seemed to be doing a very good job of keeping her alive and stable. So he just sat in a chair in the corner-always giving it up with Pepper or Jane or Maria or Darcy showed up, of course-and waited, and kept watch.
He couldn't do much of anything to help the doctors, of course. But he believed-he had to believe-that being there as Natasha's body healed was something that would help. In her own quiet, subtle way, she had kept watch over him and coaxed him back from the brink of darkness, so he could do the same for her.
The storms continued on, and Steve still sat and listened to the thunder and thought about explosions and bombs and how not a damned one of them could be as frightening as watching a teammate, a friend, a partner fall into the abyss. He had seen it happen with Bucky, and he would not see it happen with Natasha Romanoff. So he sat, and he waited, and he watched, and he listened to the thunder and he didn't give a damn about it. And he thought about what he would say to her when she finally awoke.
When she finally came to-still pallid and injured and pain, but alive-her eyes somehow managed to seek Steve out immediately. "Hey, Cap."
He moved to her, hesitated, for a moment, then placed a hand on her arm, trying to avoid the tubes and monitors. "Hi, Nat."
She tried to smile. "I know you'd be here with me."
"Why's that?"
"It's still storming out."
His smile was both pained and relieved, but his answer was honest. "It wasn't the storm that had me scared."
Notes: FYI-This was my first one-shot, first fluff EVAR. Thank you for sticking with it!