Natasha was panting as she lay on the floor, winded but unscathed. Steve, too, was out of breath, but less so than her, as per usual; she may have received a version of the Super Soldier Serum, but it was at best a watered down version of the one in Steve's body. They looked at each other for a moment, him waiting for her to recover. She took a deep breath, got to her feet, and walked back into the middle of the ring.
"Again."
He charged at her, she grabbed his arm and stepped to the side. He fell. She stepped on his arm, he grabbed her leg and pulled her down. She kicked him in the chest, scrambling backwards. He was on top of her before she could stand, and she covered her face with her arms to block his blows. In the gap between punches she rolled out from beneath him, got to her feet, and kicked his gut. He groaned and fell.
Natasha stepped back, breathing hard once again. Steve got to his hands and knees, panting. "Was that last kick actually necessary?"
"Totally," she deadpanned.
"In the gut, Nat?" He pulled himself into a sitting position
"Come on," she said, a smirk playing at the corner if her mouth. "It wasn't that hard."
He looked unconvinced. "You're gonna have to make that one up to me."
"Oh yeah? How?" She offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. Both of them standing barefoot, he was almost a foot taller than her.
He smiled, features settling into that warm expression. "Get coffee with me later?
"Um..." she hesitated. "I actually kind of have plans today," she told him ruefully.
"Oh." His face crumpled into disappointment, and she felt bad for rejecting him. She didn't often have qualms about disappointing people, but Steve was an exception, perhaps even more so than the rest of the Avengers. "How about Friday, then? We could get coffee, lunch, dinner, see a movie if you want, y'know, just... anything."
Realization smacked her like a right hook to the jaw. "Steve, I'm seeing someone."
"Oh." He blinked. "Oh. Okay, yeah, I thought, from DC, that you – um, no, it's okay, I – " He ran his hands over his face and took a deep breath. When he lifted his hands his cheeks were red, and it wasn't from the exercise.
"Steve, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know that you felt –"
"Can we just forget that this ever happened?" He said, giving an embarrassed smile.
"Oh, yeah, good idea." She took a step back to establish a friendly but impersonal distance between them. She gave him a little smile. "You're one of my closest friends, Steve. And one of the only people in the world that I trust."
"Thanks, Nat, that's… good to know."
"Yup," she mumbled, stepping off the mat to get her things. She was taking a long drink from her water bottle when he asked, "Can I ask, do I know —" He cut himself off mid-sentence, looked down and shook his head. When he met her eyes, he looked sad and forlorn. "Make sure he treats you well."
He reminds me to eat and I remind him to sleep and we keep each other grounded to reality, she thought, and couldn't help the genuine smile. "He does." She headed for the door, towel draped over her neck and water bottle swinging at her side. "Do you still want to train tomorrow?"
He nodded hard, and his smile looked more like a grimace. "Yeah, definitely. See you later."
"Yeah, see you," she said before heading out of the gym. When she looked back over her shoulder, Steve was still standing on the boxing mat, staring at his feet like a lost puppy.
When Natasha got back to their room, Tony was asleep on his stomach, his limbs sprawled out over the king-sized bed and emitting quiet snores. He was a deep sleeper, when he didn't have a nightmare, or when he actually slept at all. Natasha was glad for this; she took a quick shower and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. With any luck he would just be waking up when she brought it into the room on a tray.
As it turned out he was still asleep, his mouth hung half-open. She almost couldn't bear to wake him, but she had pancakes that she had made – a once in a blue moon thing. So she set the tray down on the bedside table and got on the bed beside him
She leaned over him with her torso pressed against his back, and he groaned, fighting to stay asleep. She pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck, and another to the soft skin at his throat. He hummed, a pleased, rumbling sound almost like a purr. She chuckled, kissing his jaw, and he turned around to kiss her on the lips lazily, a hand on cupping her cheek to hold her to him. When they parted he mumbled, with his eyes still closed, "Why don't I get woken up like this every morning?"
She brushed her nose against his, making him open his eyes to look at her. "That would ruin the surprise."
"Hmm," he murmured and kissed her again. "But it wouldn't make it any less nice."
She laughed, and he loved the way she could open up and relax with him. He loved everything about her, and it was honestly a little scary to have a girlfriend he was so attracted to, even after months. It was also a little scary that his girlfriend could probably kill him in sixteen different ways without leaving the bed, but that was another issue entirely, and one that he was more attracted to than scared of. Natasha sat up and slapped his side lightly. "Up. I made pancakes."
"Really?" He perked up and sat up immediately, far more excited than a man his age should be over pancakes.
"Don't get your hopes up, this is a once in a very long while thing," Natasha said. "Don't think that I'm going to be all domestic now," she said grumpily to reassert her distaste for domesticity.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he assured her, leaning over her to get at the pancakes. She set the tray down between them, careful not to spill the coffee. "So what's the occasion?" he asked through a mouthful of pancakes.
"It's our six month anniversary," she said casually. Tony stopped mid-chew, and stared at her openmouthed. "Tony, close your mouth, that's disgusting," she admonished, wrinkling her nose in a way that Tony considered way too adorable for one of the most deadly assassins on the planet.
He swallowed quickly and exclaimed, "Six months? No way!"
"Yeah," she said. "Jarvis told me," she added. She wasn't sentimental, never had been. She'd been trained to believe that sentiment was nothing but a weakness. Just like love. But her relationship with Tony has done nothing but made her stronger, it gave her more than she could have gained alone. She wasn't about to start reminding him of their relationship every other week, and she was sure that she would forget their anniversaries before the year was over. But when Jarvis brought it up casually the other day, she'd wanted to do something special for Tony. It felt like a milestone, not only for them as a couple, but for both of them as individuals; it was certainly the longest healthy relationship she's had that didn't involve lying or power plays or beating each other up.
Tony grinned like an idiot and shook his head, looking at Natasha fondly. He was even more hopeless at dates than her; he sometimes forgot his own birthday. He was glad that she wasn't a woman who expected him to remember their anniversaries. That had been one of his major problems with his relationship with Pepper; she wanted to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, and he could never remember them. Natasha knew how he was, and being too practical herself to want to indulge in something so sentimental, she was content with nothing more than breakfast in bed. "This is why I love you," he said.
She froze. Her breath hitched. Her gaze fell from his face and to her lap, eyelashes fluttering as she blinked rapidly, her breath drawing in rapidly through parted lips. Tony felt as though a knife was run through him, a cold metal blade in his heart, the heart that he never showed anyone and was supposed to be nonexistent. He felt the tiny vibrations of Natasha's minute tremblings. Tentatively, he put a hand on her back. "Tasha?"
She slowly lifted her gaze to meet his. "This is what it feels like, then?" Her eyes were filled with disbelief and hope. "To be loved?"
A foreign protectiveness rose up within Tony's chest. Some deep-rooted instinct inside him made him throw his arms around her and cocoon her snugly against him, as though to shield her from all her fears and her past and her insecurities. He physically needed to have her in his arms, to let her know that she was loved, that she always will be loved. She was still shaking as her arms came up to hold him in a tremulous embrace. "Yeah," he whispered. "I love you so much."
She pulled back to look at him with gratitude. She'd been told that so many times; the first time a man confessed his love to her, he had used and manipulated her, and the subsequent times were little different, only the manipulating was tilted to her side more and more often. "Love" was a term thrown around for favours and information; before now, she had never had cause to believe in the word. "I love you too," she said hesitantly, sounding almost surprised, like she was only just coming to this conclusion. Before this she hadn't allowed herself to admit the strength of her feelings. In saying the words, all her armor was removed, she held her heart in her hand and offered it to Tony. But it didn't matter, for once it didn't make her weak, because he, too, was giving her his heart, just as scarred and broken as hers, but still beating, now in unison to hers.
Notes:
This was one of the first chapters I wrote for Broken, back when I thought it would be a short story (har har). It's one of the ones that I'm really proud of, cause I feel like this is such a key moment for Natasha.
Also, I started writing this fic right after I saw Cap 2 so Steve originally had a bigger role, but then I realized that I really don't see him and Natasha as a romantic couple. I want all the Romanogers platonic friendship/bromance, though ;)
