A/N: Oh look, a reminder that I'm a multishipper! Brucenat ain't my only jam ;)
Prompt: "Steve invites Nat to join his latest lead on Bucky's whereabouts. The days may be spent productive, but the nights are reserved for quiet murmurs of fears and sometimes condensed rage over their lost lovers. In other words, Amaya, I'm asking you to fulfill the Romanogers AND Brucenat trash in me."
Enjoy!
Steve is never, in a million years, going to be a master of disguise. It's only fair that Natasha tags along to make sure that he doesn't out himself to some little old lady on the street in Seoul - who in turn could tell a cousin of a friend of someone from the scraps of Hydra. Then he'd probably get himself killed and none of them would hear about it until weeks later.
At least, that's what she tells him when he asks her.
Steve gives her the most blank look she's ever seen from him and says, "That's the most bullshit-esque excuse I've ever heard."
"I don't think that's a word."
"Not the point, Nat." Steve slumps. "Can we… not do the verbal sparring thing today? It's fun most of the time, but not now."
Natasha studies him. For someone who's supposed to be at the peak of his physical health, he doesn't look the part. The skin on his face looks like it's been stretched too far, or maybe worn too thin. She could ask about his eating habits, or his sleeping patterns, or his social life outside of the Avengers. She could go back to pestering him about Sharon.
"Okay," is all she says. Then: "Did you want to talk about something?"
Steve smiles tiredly. "No, just… thanks for agreeing to come along."
He turns away from her, and something twists in Natasha's gut because his shoulders are slumped. She should ask Sam to talk to him. Sam's always been good at getting through to Steve. Still, it's not right of her to just… stand by and do nothing.
"You're welcome," she says, but he's already left the room.
She sometimes feels like things should've been easier after Bruce left.
It's not like they were dating. Hell, she'd only acted on her feelings for a few days before he crashed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even so, she'll be sitting in her kitchen, alone, in the mornings, and sometimes find herself wondering why there wasn't another mug next to hers. Those are the worst moments - the ones she can never see coming, never prepare for.
Then Wanda, or Rhodey, or Vision will stumble into the room, and she'll forget. For a while.
In Seoul, there isn't any time for that. She's combing the streets with a photograph of Barnes, asking passers-by whether or not they've seen the former Howling Commando, while Steve goes over the latest updates from Sam. They'd argued over who would get to ask around about Bucky.
"As if half of South Korea doesn't know who you are," she scoffed.
"They saw you riding around on a motorcycle!"
"Yes, and now they'll see me wandering around with long brown hair and wearing civilian clothing. I think that might make a difference, don't you?"
She won the argument.
Natasha returns to the hotel with a shaking head, but then the area she covered today was the one that they'd guessed Barnes is less likely to be. Tomorrow, she'll hopefully find something more promising.
She ends up being the one to order food; Steve looks like he's about to pass out, and his speech is somewhat slurred when he talks to her. She forces him to stay awake long enough to get something in his stomach, but then she lets him collapse onto his bed and sleep. She wonders why he seems to find it easy here, and why's he's always so exhausted back at base.
Natasha winds up sitting on her bed with her laptop until two A.M., an unsettled feeling keeping her from sleeping. She checks her email (there's something important from Maria, but she'll get to that later) and starts jotting down everything important about their trip thus far. Like a mission report. She thinks that Sam might appreciate it later. Once she finishes with that, she stares blankly at the screen for a few minutes until she gives up and turns to YouTube.
"Natasha…?"
She looks over at the other bed, where Steve is blinking at her.
"Go back to sleep," she tells him. "You barely got four hours."
"Sorry," he says, and she sort of wants to kick him for it. "I, um… nightmare."
Huh. He'd been pretty quiet for someone having a nightmare. Natasha thinks about the ramifications of that - about how no one would ever know if he's being tormented in his sleep, and sighs. She closes her laptop and puts it on her bedside table.
"Okay then," she says, lying back.
"I notice you haven't slept."
She could give him flack about how he can't actually know that, but she's keeping to her agreement to be forthcoming with him. "Nah. Had other things to do."
"Mmm." The look he gave her meant that he didn't quite believe her. "So you were watching cat videos because it was urgent, were you?"
"Fuck off, Rogers."
"Something's eating you," he persists.
Natasha can't quite stop a bitter chuckle. "Well, when Captain America leads by example, the rest of us are allowed to bottle up our emotions, aren't we?"
When the silence is too drawn-out for her liking, she looks over at Steve. He's rolled to face away from her and is clearly pretending to have fallen asleep again (the line of his shoulders is far too tense for that to be the case). Unwilling to let this one go, Natasha gets up and plunks herself down on the edge of his bed, purposefully bouncing a bit.
"What?" he groans.
"You've helped me out a lot in the last few months," Natasha begins. "But this friendship thing? It goes both ways, Steve. I want to help you. Even though you seem to think you don't need it."
He still won't face her, and he doesn't say anything for another few moments. Natasha can be patient, however. Maybe not as patient as Sam, but she can at least try.
"Peggy's not doing so well," he eventually admits, his voice barely above a whisper. "Sharon's keeping me updated."
"Oh."
"Yeah. It's…"
A lot of things, Natasha figures.
"You cope, you know?" Steve finally shifts, switching sides so that he can look at her. "You learn to move past it and deal with it. You learn to… celebrate what you've had, for however briefly you had it."
Natasha smirks; there's no mirth to it. "You wish it was easier, but it never is."
"It just got harder, this time," Steve says. "It's like having to grieve for her twice."
Natasha could reach out and take his hand, but this moment feels too… she's not sure what it is, but she doesn't think now is a good time. She sits and listens while he quietly talks about what he sometimes wishes he could've had with Peggy, and how he's trying to be happy with what he has now: a team. Friends. People he'd even go so far as to call family.
Eventually, he falls asleep. Natasha, however, waits until the sky begins to turn gray, and only then does she finally close her eyes.
She does try to sleep the next night (after another unsuccessful day of looking for Barnes), and only partially succeeds. The next thing she knows, however, she's fisting her hands in the sheets and forcing air through her lungs. Steve's hovering somewhere on her left, worried eyes fixed on her.
"I'm okay," she breathes out, but she has to move. She gets up and brushes past him, moving to the window and bracing herself on the ledge. She feels a trickle of sweat move down her back, and hangs her head.
"They used to use… this chair on us, sometimes," she explains in a low voice, licking her lips. "It was part of the conditioning. I saw it again, but it wasn't me in the chair this time, it was…"
The entire time she was yelling at him, screaming at him to Hulk-out, but it was like he couldn't hear her. The damn man was so concerned, so good, that he withstood the pain in spite of his cries just so that he wouldn't hurt anyone. She still wants to yell at him can't you see you're hurting me -
"He's probably fine," Steve assures her. "On a beach somewhere, drinking smoothies."
"And if he is? If he's safe, somewhere, which is all that I want - you think he wouldn't at least take the time to let us know? Tony keeps e-mailing me, Steve. Tony, who previously wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. Something about solidarity for the people-who-love-Bruce-Banner fanclub - "
"Love?"
Steve's voice is quiet. Natasha breaks off of her rant, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, regaining her control because this word-vomit isn't going to help either one of them. When she turns around to look at Steve, he's expressionless.
Her smile feels like it's about to break. "If there's one thing I've learned, Steve, it's to not underestimate emotion."
"That wasn't what I meant." Steve sits down. "It's just…I think you could probably find him, if you really wanted to. But I also think that you understand why he doesn't want you to, and that's… that's important, too."
Natasha stares at him. "Thanks." She smirks. "Since when did you become so wise?"
"Well, I am ninety-six. As you keep telling me."
Natasha flopped back onto her bed, waving him away. "Better get some beauty sleep then, old man."
They find an old hideout - a basement, underneath a large office building. There are blankets, a garbage that looks like it's been used for fires, and some old wrappers. It's been cleared out pretty recently, but the fact remains that Barnes is gone. They won't get another lead on him for a while yet.
Steve is all tight lines and thin smiles as they fly back to New York; he doesn't say a word to anyone when they get back and separate, heading for their respective rooms. Natasha spends an hour on her bed, clenching and unclenching her fists, until she decides she's had enough and goes to find him.
He doesn't answer his door until she threatens to kick it down.
"What?" he snaps, but he immediately looks contrite. "Sorry, just…"
"Nah, I get it." Natasha shrugs. "I'm having some trouble sleeping. Mind if I come in?"
He stares at her, like he's not sure if this is real or not. She stares right back. She's not going to back down this time.
"Okay," he finally answers, stepping aside to let her in.