Extended Summary:
Failing to stop Thanos was one thing, but what Natasha finds at the Barton homestead tears her apart. In the weeks that follow, she does her best to hold it together during the day, spending her evenings in the gym working out the emotions she'd repressed in front of the others.
She's taught herself that this is a safe place to feel, to mourn, to let everything out. So when Steve shows up on the most emotional day yet, Nat's reckless, especially when she discovers that he's holding back some pain of his own. With the days and weeks of searching for her best friend stretching out in front of her, Natasha seizes an opportunity to put herself in Steve's path on a regular basis.
It starts as a challenge. It shifts into a way to cope. After a few years, it's the only thing holding them together.
NOTE: This is a story about both Natasha and Steve as a couple, and about Natasha and Clint's friendship. It should be about six chapters, maybe around 25k words. The poem references the way that she loves both men and sees them both as unattainable, Clint physically as she searches for him during those awful five years in Endgame, and Steve emotionally, even after they start a friends with benefits relationship. It's a pretty emotionally heavy story, but it will have a happy ending.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
(selection from) Love, By Pablo Neruda
Chapter One: Challenge
Natasha will never forget the ripped-up ground in the field outside the Barton home, nor will she ever erase the sight of the piles of earth and precious dust in the middle of the living room.
As soon as she'd realized what had happened, the breadth of what had happened, Natasha had taken a quinjet and flown straight to Clint's house.
No one was there.
She doesn't quite understand what she sees at first. There is a large swathe of upturned soil, seemingly at random. One section of it is wet, and the muddy track of a wheelbarrow leads straight to the porch, transitioning to muddy boot prints heading inside. She steps over the half-unspooled hose as she follows it.
What breaks Natasha are the muddy knee prints beside the mix of mud and dirt. That's when she understands.
Clint is alive.
His family is not.
Clint must have done what he could to preserve what was left. She can picture him, desperate and frantic, dragging out the hose to wet down the dust of the people most precious to him before it drifted where he couldn't follow.
What is harder to decipher is where he'd gone afterwards.
Every weapon stash she knows about is empty. None of them are sealed back up, which is a bad sign, Natasha knows. After the fourth one, she crouches down beside the plundered trunk on the ledge in the barn and tries to remind herself how to breathe. Coursing through her system are the memories of watching countless colleagues turn to dust. People she'd fought beside, people she respects have fractured into ash, hopelessly lifted away by the uncaring wind. Her lungs are clogged with grief; her emotional immune system is overwhelmed.
The quality of light coming through the clouded glass window beside her tells Natasha that sunset is soon. Wherever Clint has gone, he won't be hampered by sleep, not in the kind of mood he'll be in. His sense of responsibility will be like a lance to his heart on this day. Even if she'd caught him before he left, Nat knows she wouldn't have been able to get through to him. He hadn't fought beside them, and they'd lost. In Clint Barton's mind, that would be unforgivable.
She doubles over, black spots dancing in her vision as she fights to pull in enough oxygen past the pain that obstructs her breathing. Instead, she catches sight of a bootprint whose size tells her whose it has to be. Natasha reaches out to hover her hand above it.
"Where are you, Clint?" she whispers.
Her phone rings. Natasha's lips twist into a sad smile when she sees who it is. The fortifying breath she takes before hitting the button to answer feels like it is pulled through shards of glass, but at least she's able to take it in at all.
"He's not here, Steve," she says. "It's bad." Her voice cracks on the last word.
"Do you need me to come get you?"
Natasha loses her balance, falling backwards. Her instinct is to tell him no, of course not. Instead, she stays silent, thinking of how to answer.
Steve's voice is decisive. "I'm on my way."
The words hit like a caress, and somehow that is what tumbles her self-control to rubble, prickling tears against her eyelids. The reaction is so fucking selfish that she's able to use the shame to bite it back.
"Do you know where-" she starts, but he's already hung up.
Is it so bad to feel lost, right now? a voice inside her asks. To want that man in particular to ease it away?
'Yes' has to be the answer.
If the Black Widow Program had been able to cut out the part of her that could love, they would have. Instead, they'd done the second best thing, try to turn her into the kind of person who is unlovable. It's the disconnect between those two things, the fact that her heart has latched on despite the impossibility of reciprocation from Steve, that is her greatest weakness. Her burden.
It's cold comfort that the traitorous organ has chosen him, of all men- unassailable, unattainable Captain America, the one man she'll never have to worry will look at her like there's a chance.
"Get off your ass," she tells herself. To get her mind right, Nat rolls off of the ledge instead of using the ladder. She lands perfectly, instinct kicking in. It helps.
When she goes to close up the barn, though, her hands are shaking.
Out of respect, Natasha leaves the dirt piles inside the house, but she cleans up the mud from the porch and the sidewalk. The water is off and the hose is coiled back up, the barn doors are closed and latched, and the automatic light plugged into the living room outlet has been turned on by the time she hears a light knock at the front door.
Natasha's been kneeling and thinking next to the place she can tell Clint spent time doing the same. She straightens, gauging that she'd been there about an hour by the way her joints twinge. Steve's in the middle of a second gentle knock when she opens the door.
"Any kids asleep?" he asks quietly.
Despite herself, despite everything, Nat can't stop the smile that this drags forth. "It's barely past eight PM, Steve, how old do you think these kids even are?"
His answering smile is sheepish. She almost wishes she didn't have to crush it, but misery loves company, and she is definitely miserable.
"Steve, they're gone. All of them. Clint's the only one who made it."
"What?" His hand comes up to grip her shoulder, a steadying comfort. Nat loves that about him. He's shaken, so of course she is, and she'll need his support. It's instinctive.
"You see the field?" she asks. Steve nods. "My guess is they dusted there, and he tried to-" she sighs, hearing the wavering quality in her voice that discipline deems unacceptable, even now. "Well." Natasha steps back so Steve can see into the living room.
The weight of what he's seeing lands heavy on Steve's shoulders. He lifts his chin. "He left, then?" She nods. "Any idea of where?"
"I've never had a family to lose, so your guess is probably better than mine," she says. The skin of her lips are so brittle that the smile she wants to offer to soften her words would make them crack and bleed. "I was thinking Wakanda. I wish he'd come to the Facility, even if he wants to go rogue after learning everything we know, but-"
"You think he blames us for not calling him in?" Steve's voice is deep and full of regret, but he still manages to sound like he's refuting the idea.
Natasha wishes she had his conviction. Then again, she almost always wishes that. She breathes in. She breathes out. As she opens her mouth to answer, he speaks again.
"Come on, I'll fly us back. We can talk on the way."
Steve watches her lock the front door and pull it shut before he rests a steadying arm across her shoulders to guide her back to the quinjet. Nat lets herself rest her head against him for a split second before they start walking.
"Wait, how did you get here if you're going to fly me back in the quinjet I took?" she asks, when he angles towards it.
"Interesting story about that. There wasn't another one available, so I asked FRIDAY what to do. That's when I found out that Tony had a contingency plan. My guess is he didn't get a chance to tell us about it; Pepper said he went out of communications range pretty quick," Steve tells her. Nat doesn't know what he means until they start up the ramp and she sees a metallic blue Iron Man suit cracked open as if someone's just stepped out of it. The glow in the chest is round, like Tony's earlier suits, but this one's center is ringed with concentric circles.
"He made you a suit?" she asks, shocked but not surprised. There had been a point there where Tony's only joy had been creating as many multi-purpose armored suits as he could. Nat had heard he'd destroyed them all, but she'd always had her doubts.
"It's not the only one, either. Special storage in the Facility." Steve steps past where she is standing still on the ramp. He pulls out some canvas straps and secures the armor with them before walking up to slide into the pilot's chair. "Sit next to me?" he asks, his smile kind and encouraging.
"Keeping an eye on me?" she asks, pushing some of her usual sass into the phrasing, even though she doesn't feel like that person, not today.
It has the desired effect; Steve seems to very subtly relax, as if he'd been keyed up with worry and would have stayed that way until she'd given exactly this sort of signal. Natasha wonders if he even knows she can tell.
"Yes," he answers simply. She settles into the seat beside him, and the look he shoots her is fortifying. "We'll find Clint."
His pronoun use isn't an accident, she knows. It's not the 'we' she wants, but it's still the best she's ever had, and she's never not been grateful. Especially not today of all days, when so many of their extended family has been swept away.
"I just hope he's still Clint by then," she whispers.
8888888888
The first few weeks after the blip are soul-destroying. Natasha spends her days as emotionless as possible, efficient and businesslike, storing it all up to work out the excess in the gym. Everyone's pretty busy, so she doesn't end up with any visitors until the end of the third week, after they consolidate the list of the lost. There had been a big fight about whether to include Tony and Peter, with Natasha on the side that they should wait, and Steve on the side of inclusion.
By the time they were finished, nearly everyone but the two of them were angry and emotional, but the consensus was on her side.
That evening, Steve shows up. He's not in rec clothes, which puts Nat on her guard, but it's more than that, actually. The longer he leans against the wall and watches her, the more frustrated she gets, verging on angry.
Her initial instinct is to tamp it all down, but the memory of what Clint had done on realizing his family had been turned to actual dust in the dirt stops her from repressing how she feels. Disapproval is wafting from Steve Rogers in waves, and it's pissing her off. She's kept herself professional. She's held back. She hasn't even fucking cried in anyone else's presence. This is her time, and he's trespassing.
Her anger makes her careless, and she lands wrong after a spin.
Nat breathes through the initial spike of pain, but when she goes to get up, she sees Steve's hand hovering in her peripheral vision, waiting to help.
"Back off, Rogers. This is when I work out the emotions you don't see during the day. Pick another time to be nosy," she says, coating her words in her heartache instead of her frustration. He won't be able to tell the difference anyway, and it's nice to get that out, for once. It may prove to be a mistake, though, given that she's trained herself for three weeks straight to let repressed emotions pour out at only this place, and only this time.
"I wondered how long it would take you," he says mildly, but he drops the hand.
"Sounds like you need to work through some emotions of your own," Nat says, choosing to roll to get up, even though that presses on the knee that hurts. It'll tell her whether it's bad enough to stop.
It isn't, and she's feet away from him when she fully straightens, which is a win/win.
"You offering?"
A jolt of adrenaline courses through her at the tone of his voice. It's gritty, vulnerable. Nat regards him warily. "Sure," she says, projecting a confidence she doesn't feel.
In order to make it through the reports and constant barrage of bad news lately, she's been pretty ruthless with her self control. The catch is, after a full day like today, she's out of the kind of energy that keeps her sharp, and it's not like Natasha can pick and choose which emotions float up, lately. The fight over adding Peter and Tony had at least helped her get through seeing Laura, Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel's names added. They'd held off so long in hopes that Clint might have been wrong, but after three weeks, it seems clear that this was a pipe dream. She'd known since the day before, and her session in the gym last night had been the roughest yet.
"Nat?"
Steve's eyebrows are raised, and she favors him with a bitter smile.
"Sorry, miles away. Just over a thousand miles, to be exact," she admits.
"I saw their names today," Steve points with his thumb toward the door. "If you want, I can-"
"No." As she shakes her head, Natasha draws on a reserve she hardly ever taps, one that's ever-increasing but never fulfilled: her desire for him. It's dangerous, but she's reckless today, and Steve probably doesn't have the imagination to guess what's really going on in her head anyway. "Last night was rough, because I knew I would see their names listed today. I'd rather you bruise me than do it myself," she says, curving her lips up into the kind of smile that usually makes men's heart race. "At least then, I can watch you figure out how to make up for it."
Instead of puffing out his chest, squaring his shoulders, or shuffling his legs apart like most men would after watching her shrug into that particular persona, Steve Rogers just looks stern. "You said this was your time, Natasha. You don't have to be anyone but yourself."
The assumption that her chameleon-like shifts of mood aren't fully part of her is pretty offensive, all things considered.
"How many years have we worked together, you can't tell that I'm always me?" Natasha drops back, settles down into a crouch, ready. She keeps the tone playful, sultry, flirty, just to piss him off, not that it will. "Which one is the real you, Steve? That lecture voice you use when you're trying to keep everyone on the straight and narrow? The authority you use on the comms? Joking around at dinner? Or are all of those you?"
He works the tension out of his shoulders for a few seconds, looking contemplative, then launches at her in a surprise attack that makes her heart leap in multiple ways. Natasha dodges him, her chest grazing his hand in passing.
"You forget how much time I spent with Bucky. He could turn it on and off like a switch."
Steve twists his body in midair and catches her ankle with his foot, but Nat is ready for this, has seen him do it before, and she kicks out with her other foot, pushing off the floor with her arm to spin. He's too heavy to complete the move as she would with someone lighter, but it does knock him off-balance. Before he can snag her in his large-handed grip, she rolls away, flexing her knees and leaping to her feet, crouching down right away as she pants lightly from the exertion.
He rolls over and grins at her, a genuine, blinding one. It occurs to Natasha that Steve might not realize that his 'flirt mode' is actually Captain America mode, that while most people's flirt mode dips into the dirt for its sexual energy, his is pure as unwashed snow. He also doesn't seem to activate it for that purpose as much as just drift in and out as necessary.
The truth is, she's glad he brought up Barnes. She knows Clint Barton almost as well as she knows herself, and she can't find him. Steve's been through that, bad enough that their team had been wrecked by it, even. Maybe she can run some things by him, when they're finished.
Steve's slow to get up, but she's not fooled. Natasha smirks, crosses her arms, and leans into the very thing he's complaining about. It's mental sparring too, now.
"I don't think I agreed to anything horizontal," she says. Her tone even turns her on a little.
"Settle down, Romanoff, I'm getting up. Wanted to see if you were really out of it," he says, but his cheeks are ever so slightly stained with color, now.
"If I wanted to tangle with you like that, Steve, you'd know," she lies. As soon as he's on his feet, she dances away, ending behind him, doing a flip that moves her behind him again when he shifts to keep her in sight.
When she does a high kick to knock him sideways, though, Nat forgets that Steve's flexibility has always been off the charts. He dodges to the side with just his torso in a way that shouldn't be physically possible, catching her kicking leg in his hand and leaping, rolling them across the floor. Natasha does manage to bring her other leg up to trap his arm between both of her shins, but he's simply too strong for her to do more than that. As they roll, her body slides down, and Steve's other hand reaches up and cradles her head, keeping her from striking it on a shelving unit. They come to rest with one of his arms tight in the vise of her thighs, his other laid across the front of her body, fingers buried in her blonde hair like a lover's. He's on his back, she's on her side, and her own hand's at his neck, almost cupping his cheek. The intimacy of this juxtaposition leads her to snatch her hand back as soon as their momentum stills.
It'll take some careful detangling to move apart, and Natasha catches the wry apology on Steve's face when he tips his head back to look at her across the mat they're lying on.
"I think this kind of thing is what Tony has cameras in here for," she jokes. Lifting her top leg, Nat tries to scoot her ass back, selfishly hoping Steve will keep the hand in her hair for just a bit longer. It's warm and gentle, and she could survive a long time on the rush it's giving her. The weight of his arm on her other leg is inexorable, though. She's stuck.
"Are you okay, Natasha?" Steve asks her, the clarity of his blue-eyed gaze demanding honesty.
"Yeah, thanks for protecting my head," she says, tossing him a smile. "Kind of trapped here, though?" Nat flicks her gaze to where he's holding her down.
"Answer the question."
The authority and caring in his voice triggers an immediate and strong reaction in her, flooding her with affection as well as no small amount of lust. They're so close; his fucking wrist is laid against her neck, meaning that Steve can undoubtedly feel her pulse quicken. He'll see it as reluctance to answer, Nat realizes, inwardly cursing. This is going to be delicate, so she goes for the unvarnished truth.
"No, no I'm not. I'm not sure you can expect anything different," she tells him, reaching up to pull his hand away from her head. He lets her, but drags his fingers along her scalp as he pulls back. He probably does it to be comforting. It isn't. It's devastating.
She could get away. If he were an enemy, it wouldn't even be difficult. But her mind, body, and heart are fighting each other right now, and the intimate position they're in isn't helping her decide what kind of defense to pose. Despite trying to ignore it, the way Steve's bicep is pressed between her legs is reminding her of all the reasons why she doesn't spar with him much. Being physically close to someone she wants this much is always hard, but this? This is torture.
"I've been worried. You've seemed distant," he explains, and she can hear his concern, even though his expression hasn't changed from the demand for a straight answer. "What do you need, for you to be okay?"
"So you decided to overcompensate?" Natasha teases, realizing she can fight with sexuality, the polar opposite to 'Team Leader Steve.' She flexes her thigh muscles, but Steve's too close and maybe her recklessness is contagious, because he flexes his bicep, and Natasha gasps. "Steve. Let me up."
"You want to spar, we'll spar. What do you need?"
He's blushing, but he's also not moving off of her. He can't possibly mean what she knows he means about sparring, not Steve Rogers, the Choir Boy embodiment of sexually repressed, respectable manhood! As if to prove her wrong, he lifts an eyebrow at the same time he lifts his trapped hand, which had been braced behind her. Steve meets her eyes and rests it against her back, causing the angle of his arm between her legs to change. She's acutely aware that he can feel her heat, that any movement she makes to adjust to what that feels like will signal that it's affecting her.
"Trying on a new persona of your own, there?" she asks, dropping her voice down, smiling as she does it, biting her lip when she's done. Steve's out of his fucking depth, Natasha knows. She wants him. She'd jump at the chance, if he were willing, but she knows he's not.
This is an act for him. It's reality for her.
He'll lose.
Steve lowers the same arm swiftly, drawing it back and rolling his body over in one move, bringing them right beside each other, face to face. Despite herself, Natasha's impressed. He's pretty good at faking this.
"The only new part is learning how to fight with everything," Steve says. The way he moves his head as he says this speaks to his sincerity, but it's still shocking to her. While the rest of them have been beating themselves up in private, wondering what more they could have done, is it possible that Steve's been asking himself the same thing, and coming to this conclusion? Surely that would mean more than carnality, though. He's talking about darkness.
"Let people like me fight dirty, Steve," she says, gently, reaching out to push back a lock of too-long hair that's fallen down to cover the corner of his eye. "There's no way that's the reason we lost."
"You can't know that," is his response, his jaw tight, edges of his lips turned down.
"If it'll make you feel better, I can teach you, but I don't think that's the issue here," she says, watching his lips twitch up for a short time before he frowns again.
"It's a mindset." Steve's voice is bleak. "Where would we all be if I hadn't been so rigid? If I could give, just a little?"
"How far back are you going with this?" Nat asks, the heat of her desire for him fading in the light of her own concern. This whole time she'd thought he was fighting to force her to feel better, but this? This is a flayed open Steve.
Her question is perceptive enough to finally get him to start to pull away, but they've simply switched places, interrogator to interrogated. Natasha feels him flex his arm to free her, and she throws her free leg out over his hips, and straddles him, pushing him flat on the mat. With a lightning quick defensive movement, he uses her momentum and his arm position to push her up so she rests on his stomach, not his hips.
"How far back?" she demands.
He can shove her off of him whenever he wants, but after his own physical vs. emotional vs. sexual challenge, they both know that will give her the victory.
Steve sighs, dropping his head on the mat. "Pretty far."
"You wanna talk without giving me a reason to take a longer shower?"
His whole body reacts to this, body tensing, hips rocking ever so slightly, breath catching, before Steve's hands lift her up and off of him, rolling to his feet and backing away.
"I bow to your superior fighting skills," he laughs. "All of them."
The shaky quality of his voice reads to her like embarrassment, but every other sign tells her she's really gotten to him. Natasha feels like she's just broken into his deepest vault, seen a glimpse of a video with state secrets on it, and the security system has just erased everything and thrown her out. The problem is, she knows him pretty well, and what she's just glimpsed? It's fundamental, and it's haunting him. She wants to help, but persuading him to let her is going to be tricky.
"You're important to me, Steve. You want me to drop it, I'll drop it, but I won't drop all of it. Pick something," she says. She's lightheaded, drunk on adrenaline, because he's going to ask her what she means, and she knows just what to say. Probably he'll walk out, but if he doesn't?
"Pick something," he parrots back, obviously confused.
"I'm happy to wipe my memory banks of one of the things that just happened here, Steve Rogers. It's your choice which thing it is. Is it the idea that I could teach you how to fight dirty? Or the answer to my question about how far back you think you've screwed up?"
Steve had been rubbing his temples with one hand, but that arm drops slack as he stares at her. "What brought this on?"
Natasha shakes her head. "No. No deflection. Pick one."
"I was spitballing. All of us have been wondering what we could have done differently," Steve says, drawing on that moral authority again, his voice confident. "That's all it was."
"So you want me to forget you said it?"
"Yes!"
"Done. So, how do you want to do this? Two times a week?" Natasha pops a hip, crosses her arms under her breasts to shove them up a little, and raises one eyebrow.
"You aren't serious." The desperation in his voice is fuel to her vindictive fire, right now. She'll get it out of him, and she'll soothe it, and they'll be fine. But until then? This project will balance out the other one, the one where she has to look all across the planet for her self-destructive best friend.
In her mind, Natasha begs Steve to forgive her this transgression against their friendship. She knows he'd rather she drop both, and there's really nothing that's stopping her from listening to that instinct, nothing except a strong sense that he'd be better off if they held that conversation he doesn't want to have.
"Feel free to tell me that thing you're avoiding, instead."
Steve lets out a breath. "Honestly, I don't even know what I meant with that. Can't we just-"
"No."
He actually rocks back a little, but the way Steve traces his eyes across her, all the way from her eyes down to her shoes and back up is appraising, like he's never truly seen her before. Then, shockingly, he throws up both hands.
"Fine. Two times a week is fine. You want to try to- I don't even- Fine."
His cheeks are bright red. This is the worst best idea she's ever had.
"Good. See you in two days," Natasha says, feeling a little bit like she'd made a deal with the devil.