Natasha had never been sexually frustrated before. If she wanted sex, she usually went out and found a guy for a night of fun. But some random guy wasn't going to satisfy her, not when she was thirsting after Steve fucking Rogers.
Ever since that dream and their movie night, she was constantly thinking about sex with him. Basically everything he did turned her on. He opened the door for her and she wanted to climb him like a tree. He pounded the sand bags in the gym and she wanted him to pound her into the mat. He told Rumlow to shut it during a flight and she wanted to kick everyone else out off the quinjet and rip his clothes off. Whatever he did, she wanted to fuck him. She had no idea what was going on with her. Had she been hit with a sex pollen? Was that a thing after all?
She was relieved when Fury called her into his office with a new mission, she really needed a distraction. Really she was so desperate for work that she would do the annual inventory, as long as it kept her away from Steve.
As it turned out Fury didn't want her to do the inventory, he wanted her to "entertain" a target. Entertain meaning to flirt with him and maybe even seduce him if it was necessary. She never had to sleep with a mark for SHIELD before and she normally wouldn't mind doing it if the situation really called for it, but in her current situation she was annoyed by it. She wanted to bang Steve Rogers and not some random thug.
She was supposed to get close to a member of the Yakuza who were becoming too powerful on American soil. Osaki Katzumi was the head of the American Yakuza and liked brunette escorts which was Natasha's way in. She would go with Katzumi to his place, put on a little show for him and download the data from his computer. STRIKE would be lurking in the shadows in case she needed back up.
Wait, STRIKE? The whole team?
"Does that include Captain Rogers, sir?" She asked hesitantly.
"Of course, it includes Rogers, Natasha." Fury would probably roll his eyes at her if he was the type for it. "All members of the Yakzua are highly trained in martial arts, they're basically ninjas. I want Captain America there to clock them down with his shield if it comes to a fight."
Steve had never seen her before in this kind of action. He'd never watched her do this kind of undercover. She had no problems with flirting and fooling around with a target. She usually only had to drug the mark when they reached the bedroom, get him out of his clothes, drop a fake-used condom made by SHIELD into the trashcan, leave a cheesy lipstick message on the mirror and left with the intel without undressing herself.
What if she had to have sex with Katzumi and Steve had to listen to it over the comms? Would he look at her differently? He came from a different time, would he think she was whoring herself out? Would he think less of her ? She wished Clint was still her partner, he knew what was part of the job and would invite her to beer and cheeseburger after the mission.
She somehow feared that Steve wouldn't be able to look her into the eyes after this mission. Would she still be able to look Steve into the eyes if he'd change his opinion about her? God when did she start to care about what others thought about her?
Fury sent him, Natasha and STRIKE to Los Angels to take out a branch of the Yakuza. He and STRIKE were supposed to monitor the situation while Natasha would try to infiltrate the organization.
His partner spent most the day in the bathroom of the safe house while they went through the blueprints of Katzumi's club. Steve wondered what she was doing so long in there but he figured it was part of the mission.
He could hear the clicking of high heels and Rumlow suddenly whistled. Steve looked up and all he could do was stare. Natasha had brown long hair and was wearing a black shoulder-free dress with a slit on her thigh. Her lips were red and the black eye make up made her eyes look even more green. She was a vision, he just hated the wig. He preferred her real hair color.
"You wanna go for drinks after this?" Rumlow asked Natasha when she joined them at the table.
"I would rather die of thirst." She said and stood next to Steve.
Should he compliment her? He should compliment her.
"You look great." He whispered and hoped the others didn't hear him.
"Thanks." She gave him a small smile.
Would she wear such a dress if she went on a date with him? Wait, was she going on a date with their target?! Was that the reason why she looked uncomfortable?
"How long 'til you worked your magic and Katzumi is too fucked out to notice you're stealing his data?" Rumlow asked her while he checked the ammo clip of his gun.
Did she... were they expecting her to have sex with the guy? Didn't that cross some lines? Was Natasha okay with this?
Natasha just shrugged. "Give me two hours after I entered the club. If I'm not out by then, you can storm the place."
Rumlow nodded and Steve just stared at her with an open mouth. Was she really going to sleep with Katzumi? Why had no one told him about that part of the mission? Did they think it would scandalize him? He wasn't a virgin like people thought he was, and he'd seen a lot of things during the war. He didn't have a problem with that kind of work if it really had to be done, but he didn't want Natasha to do anything she didn't want.
And he also didn't want her to have sex with someone else. Someone that wasn't him. He wanted her to himself. He was a selfish bastard when it came to her.
Natasha didn't look at him when she left the safe house to get to the club. STRIKE followed her in a fake food truck and parked in the next street over to the club. He couldn't stop thinking about the things Natasha might needed to do to get access to their framework. It was her body and her decision and she could do whatever the hell she wanted, he knew that. But he still felt a little sick, did she only do it because Fury ordered her to? Rumlow and his team didn't seem to be bothered by it and so he tried to play it cool. He promised himself though to ask Natasha after this mission if she wanted him to talk to Fury about these kind of missions. And if she showed any kind of discomfort, he was going to kill Fury.
They could hear over the comm how pleased Katzumi was with Natasha and how he whispered to her how special and beautiful she was. How he couldn't wait to be alone with her. How he was going to rock her world. Natasha laughed at his horrible jokes and innuendos.
"No wonder the dude has to pay girls to be with him." Rumlow snickered. "He has zero game."
The rest of STRIKE hummed their agreement and Steve hoped that Natasha would be soon back. He was worried because of the type of mission she couldn't have any weapons on her besides her steel heeled stilettos. If she got made, she didn't have much to fight off Katzumi's people. He knew she could hold her own but over 30 ninja assassins seemed a lot, even for her.
Katzumi asked Natasha if he could show her his private rooms upstairs and she huskily agreed. He knew she faked it but the sound of her voice sent a shiver down his spine. He'd never heard her sound so seductive before. Katzumi told her all about his sports cars and the places he could take her. Didn't she want to go to Barbados with him for a weekend? They could have so much fun there, even though she wouldn't see much from the island, haha. Steve really wanted to storm that place and punch the guy with his shield through a wall.
He could hear kissing noises and clothes ruffling. Oh god, did he really have to listen to this? He knew it was all pretend but he was still jealous. He never thought he wanted to switch places with a criminal, yet here he was. Why did that guy get to kiss her?
"Target's asleep." Natasha suddenly replied over her comm. "I'll search the place for his laptop."
"Copy that." Steve managed to answer, incredibly relieved that she didn't need to sleep with the target and he didn't need to listen to it. They could hear the sound of drawers opening and closing.
"Ha, found it. I'll start to transmit the data."
The screen in the truck showed that SHIELD was now connected to Katzumi's laptop. Data transmitting was at 11 percent. He could hear how Natasha kept roaming through the room. Suddenly there was a gun shot, a scream that sounded like Natasha and breaking noises.
"I've been made." Natasha yelled and it sounded like she was fighting.
"Okay, you heard the lady." Rumlow ordered his team to swarm the place.
Steve jumped out the van and ran down the street to the club. Natasha needed him, nothing else mattered. He reached the club before the food truck and was already punching his way through to Natasha when he heard how STRIKE started to arrest people.
He ran up the stairs to the third floor where according to the blue prints Katzumi's apartment was. The door was wide open and Natasha fought off two men. Another three were already unconscious on the floor. Katzumi was snoring on the bed. Natasha did a roundhouse kick and her attacker crashed into the bar. The other man spotted Steve and ran towards him and he just grabbed him and threw him behind him against a wall. He had no time for complex fighting, he needed to see if Natasha was okay.
"I had everything under control here, Rogers" She punched the guy in the face when he tried to get off the bar.
"I know." He really knew that, he just needed to protect her. He would come for any of his team members but Natasha was special.
Natasha grabbed a bottle of vodka from the bar and took a sip straight from the bottle. She raised the bottle at him and arched an eyebrow.
"No, thanks."
She shrugged and took another sip. He looked her over to check for injuries and saw blood running down her leg.
"Natasha, you're hurt!" He was by her side in four wide steps.
"Yeah, a bullet grazed my thigh." She took another sip from her vodka bottle.
He reacted on impulse and grabbed her by the waist and lifted her onto the bar. He only realized what he was doing when he looked at her shocked face.
"What do you think you're doing, Cap?" She actually sounded more surprised than angry.
"Checking your wound." He replied and ripped the fabric of the dress to uncover the wound. Natasha gasped and he now noticed that he moved to stand between her legs and was very close to her in general. Her eyes were very green, had they always been this green?
He grabbed a towel from the bar and the vodka from her hands and cleaned her wound with it. She hissed and he mumbled a sorry at her.
"I don't think you'll need stitches, Nat."
If she noticed that he used a nickname she didn't show it. Who was he kidding of course she noticed it but he wasn't lying knocked out on the floor, so he assumed she was okay with it.
"You don't have to do these missions if you don't want to." He whispered to her.
"It's no big deal."
"I can talk to Fury."
"It's part of the job and I never had to sleep with a mark before for SHIELD."
But she did have to sleep with targets before, for the KGB and Red Room. He'd read her file, he knew what she'd had to do. And he would have hated it if she had to do it again against her will.
He realized that his hand was still resting on her thigh, the tips of his fingers on her inner thigh, when she sightly moved her leg. He looked at his hand on her skin. If he was honest, he would like to touch more of her. He looked up and Natasha's gaze fell to his lips.
Now or never, Rogers! He closed his eyes and leaned towards her. He brushed his lips against hers and she didn't pull back. He was about to press his lips completely against hers when someone spoke up.
"Here you are!" Rumlow shouted from the door frame. Steve jumped back from Natasha who looked startled. Rumlow grinned smugly. "Am I interrupting something?"
"No!" Natasha snapped and jumped off the bar. She winched and he wanted to support her but she patted his hand away and walked over to the bed where the laptop was. She unplugged the USB-drive and threw it at Rumlow. "Here, transmission is complete."
She limped out the room and SHIELD agents came in to arrest Katzumi and his men. Sitwell would later tell them that they had enough intel from their servers to freeze all their accounts and the American Yakuza was bankrupt for now and it would take them some time to rebuild.
Steve got out of the club and Natasha was sitting on the pave walk with a paramedic kneeling in front of her and taking care of her wound. He wanted to talk to her about what just happened. They'd almost kissed, well lips had been slightly touching, so did that count as a kiss? He would wait until DC and when they were alone he would ask her out on a date. After what just happened he was sure he wasn't the only one who felt this spark between them. None of what had happened between them in Katzumi's apartment wouldn't have happened if Natasha hadn't wanted it.
What was she thinking to let Steve get so close to her? If Rumlow hadn't walked in on them she knew she would have kissed him and that would have been bad. Kissing led to sex, and she was really trying not to sleep with him and get his hopes up.
What could she offer Steve? Nothing. She had been weak in that moment, startled by the fact that Katzumi's guy had gotten a jump on her and she hadn't moved fast enough to dodge the bullet. That was it, the circumstances had made her let her walls down and Steve walked right in. She hated how much she'd enjoyed it when he took care of her wound, how good his warm hand had felt on her thigh, how her heart raced when he brushed his lips against hers.
And she could tell that Steve didn't plan on ignoring the whole thing like she wanted to. She sat as far away from him as possible during their flight back to DC but every time she looked at Steve he was already looking at her with a little smile on his face. She tried her best to ignore the flutter in her chest. She couldn't give into her infatuation with Steve. It would be cruel of her to give him hope when she would only eventually break his heart.
As soon as they landed at the Triskelion and were done with their debriefing she fled the scene. Steve tried to talk to her after the meeting but Sitwell needed his signatures for something and she used that chance to leave. She knew she was a coward but she didn't want to see his face when she told him that little moment between them meant nothing because Steve clearly thought something had changed between them.
She drove straight to her apartment and was glad that no one knew where she lived which meant that Steve couldn't show up at her place which he undoubtedly would do if he had her address. And with everything that had happened today, Natasha would have let him in and slept with him. And then what? She would freak out and Steve would think they would be a couple, and their friendship would be ruined.
Steve wasn't at SHIELD the next day because he was meeting the President, so she didn't need to hide from him at work. She was tasked with testing new SHIELD weapons and then wiped the floor with other SHIELD agents. Agent Ward seemed to feel especially cocky today and challenged her in the ring but she took him down in no time. He was no doubt experienced in combat but he was no match for her. She was about to hit the showers when she heard two Level 3 agents gossip. She usually didn't pay attention to it but her ears peaked up when she heard her name. She made sure that they couldn't see her behind the corner and listened.
"Have you heard about Romanoff and Captain America?" It sounded like Agent Salky.
"No, I haven't, Molly." That was definitely Agent Inez. Natasha trained her herself in sniping.
"Brock told me about it this morning when we got coffee together. He caught them kissing during an op! Rogers even had his hand between her thighs and they kissed. Brock is sure that they were about to fuck if he hadn't walked in on them." She sounded scandalized. They didn't kiss for fuck's sake, their lips only brushed for a second! And why was Rumlow talking about that to Salky?
"Oh please, he only made that up to get into your pants! Everyone knows how much you love gossip, Molly."
Natasha wanted to clap Inez on the shoulder for saying that. She couldn't have people know about what had happened in L.A. She was going to kill Rumlow!
"Oh, I'm telling you, Gloria, he was telling the truth. Just think about it, have you ever seen Cap or Romanoff without the other one? They basically clued to each other. They always sit together in the cafeteria, spar together and I heard they always sit together during debriefings. They are a thing. Maybe not a couple, but they are definitely fucking!"
Fuck, did she get so sloppy that random agents started to notice that they were close?
"So what, it's none of our business."
"Yeah. but aren't you disappointed that he went for her? Like he could literally have every single agent here, maybe even the taken ones and he wants her? He's like the epitome of everything good and pure and she's, well, she's not."
That hurt for some reason. She knew that she wasn't good enough for Steve but hearing someone else say it was still hurtful.
"We don't really know Agent Romanoff. Or Captain Rogers for that matter. She made me a better sniper and I saved a lot of lives with what she taught me."
Ha, she must have made an impression an Agent Inez.
"I'm not saying she's not a good agent!" Salky defended herself. "Hell, I wish I knew how she does this thigh thing but you'd think Captain America would go for an nice All-American girl and not a Russian spy."
Inez laughed. "You mean an All-American girl like you? No offense but I don't think Rogers even knows your name."
"A girl can dream!" Salky sounded offended. "I mean have you seen him punch those punching bags? God bless America!" She giggled. "Do you think the serum enhanced everything?"
Oh god, were they in High School? She didn't like where their conversation was headed and was about to enter to defend Steve's dignity when she heard another voice.
"I don't think Captain Rogers would appreciate the way you're talking about him." May said. "That's no way to talk about your superior agents. If I hear these talks again, you can spend the next months on desk duty. Got it?"
Salky and Inez murmured an yes, ma'am and left. She almost felt bad for Inez, she didn't do anything wrong.
"You can come out now, Romanoff."
Fuck, how did May know she was there?
"May." She nodded at her.
"Don't take it personally. They don't know you." May gave her sympathetic half smile. How much did she hear?
"It doesn't matter."
"Maybe it doesn't, but if it does, it's no one's business but yours and his." She shouldered her gym bag and walked to the door.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
May turned around. "Okay." She looked like she didn't believe her and then left.
She really needed to change her interactions with Steve if apparently the whole Agency started to gossip and thought they were sleeping together. If even May knew about the rumors, she had a problem. She needed to protect Steve's reputation. She didn't care about what people said about her, but they couldn't start dumb rumors about him.
Her phone beeped with an text. She and Steve were needed for a mission in Alaska. Just the two of them...
Fucking fantastic. So much for avoiding Steve... Fuck.
