Thanks to their security measure of running the letters through New Asgard, the resulting back and forth between herself and Pepper is slow and sporadic. Still, Natasha really appreciates being able to talk about mundane, everyday things with her. Pepper has written that she actually enjoys doing simple household tasks, something that's both endearing and hard to picture. That had given Nat an idea. It took a while to persuade Pepper, and it took Pepper a while to persuade Tony, but eventually the Starks agreed to cut down on the cleaning staff at the Facility. What ultimately persuades them is Natasha's insistence that she needs the distraction, that the busywork will help her feel useful to the group as more than the person desperately trying to hold them all together.
Since they don't make the change until the beginning of March, Nat realizes a week later that she has essentially replaced the time she used to spend being intimate with Steve with housekeeping. She can almost hear Clint's voice in her mind, telling her that she's basically a married woman now, replacing sex with chores.
That makes Natasha double down. It can't be about substitution if it's what she spends half her day on, can it?
She starts in the kitchen. The room is completely internal, no outdoor windows, so she can't look out and see if Steve's been running like he did the last time he was forced into abstinence.
Once upon a time, in a life that feels very far away by now, SHIELD had kept vital information in the piping of certain drop sites and safehouses, so she knows how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble various configurations and types of kitchen plumbing. Natasha can't worry about whether she looks like she misses Steve if she's covered in gunk and crawling around on the floor and under cabinets. When she's not actively working, she sulks around home improvement stores to get tools and replacement parts, and only the bravest of the asshats tries to hit on her.
Steve is never running when she's out to see it, but it's not till the fourth trip back from the store that she realizes why. He'd been on a mission, she reminds herself with a mental slap to the forehead. If Steve Rogers had started running to tame his libido, he would have done it in Hong Kong. In December. She's not usually this dense, but she'd come so close to getting the life she wanted (with a few minor, cosmetic differences, she jokes to herself) that she's gone stupid, when it comes to him.
It takes a while to finish the kitchen, and she aches in places she didn't know could hurt by the time it's done. Other, less physical places still hurt, though. The plumbing isn't enough. The changes are internal, invisible, but the kitchen itself hasn't changed. Sentiment still skulks in every corner, in little video flashes of memory which autoplay without permission. Natasha replaces the towels, then the canisters that line the back of the counters, and finally she lets herself spend some money to expand the number of dishes by a third, scattering in enough of a different pattern that no meal will ever fully resemble those they'd shared Before.
Steve says something about it, and in a rare moment of weakness, she shrugs.
"Had some extra time on my hands."
The sheepish way he looks down drills into her heart as if looking for the oil of regret. She tells herself it, too, is barren.
It's not.
88888888
One of the things that Natasha had found really bleak about her life as a Widow had been the way so many of her safest spaces slowly deteriorated around her. That became a symbol of the moral decay and misery she was a footsoldier for, by the time she met Clint. Windows bothered her the most; their mechanisms were never cleaned, their internal sills always riddled with dead bugs and dust and blown-in debris, their upper reaches snarled with cobwebs and insect nests. Now that the kitchen is sufficiently stripped of all residual sentimentality, Nat finds a ladder and goes on a crusade to inspect and clean every single window in the building.
Yes, SHIELD had failed her. Yes, so had the Avengers, first in teams and then individually. But she doesn't have to leave this place. This is her home, and she takes pride in its transparency, even as the windows that look into her heart are necessarily boarded up and crusted with the residue of disappointment.
Now that she has a chance to see out, Nat sees that Steve does train outdoors. He seems to be practicing parkour moves, dangerous ones that unenhanced humans would never dream of attempting. It's cold out but the periodic snows don't stick, so she sees him out there in sweatpants and a hoodie flying into view from the roof ledge he's launching himself from. He's falling just a little too far, he doesn't have enough adrenaline in his system, something, because he can't seem to get the landing right. Nat knows Steve really well. He would never be doing this if he thought she could see him, because he's spraining his ankle or worse, every time. Steve sits there and masters the pain each time, evaluating what to change next time. His routine is to rest on the cold asphalt as his healing factor works on the injury before standing up to test it, gingerly walking into the building, and then within the hour, jumping again.
It's hard not to think that he would land much more easily if he had his shield back. Despite her deeper friendship with Pepper, there's no way she feels comfortable even mentioning the shield, much less inquiring about whether there's ever a chance Steve could have it back. It's not her place, and the fact that it's not her place is a reminder of all of the ways the Avengers were broken at the exact time they needed to be whole.
So, instead of being able to do anything about it, Natasha watches Steve throw himself around and deal with the consequences over and over, while she methodically wipes clean the window housings, scraping away the dirt from the upper reaches that the housekeeping staff never quite managed to reach. Perhaps his actions are similar to hers, stripping the film of longing away, just as she does. If so, he retains just enough of a veneer of normalcy to paste it onto his face when they see each other later in the day, just as she does.
The problem with a veneer is that the more abuse it takes, the more its false front is revealed. After she finishes with the scattered first floor windows including the ones in the lobby, it's time to move up a floor and take care of the multitude of conference room and office windows. That gives her a better view of what Steve is doing, which is, in fact, pushing himself too far. She starts to wonder if he's testing his healing factor rather than perfecting a landing, given how often it's gone wrong.
It's not normal Steve behavior.
Watching him, worrying about him… this is the opposite of what her plan had been when she'd started her chore schedule, so she responds by extending the hours, skipping dinner, heading up to work before breakfast. Should she switch to the other side of the building where she can't see Steve metaphorically and literally hurl himself at the hard, unforgiving ground? Sure. But he started it, and telling him she can see him feels like an intrusion. Somehow, silently observing him does not.
The handwritten list of food supplies they leave for their buyer changes to reflect their new normal; individual dinner portions, more sandwich supplies, fewer actual meals. It's hard not to feel lonely when she adds her items on the last day of March and realizes that their handwriting spends more time together than they do.
Looking at the calendar, Natasha can't help but laugh. Purposefully or not, they've given each other up for Lent! The suffering is the point, right?
On Good Friday, she catches a glimpse of Steve as he heads out the front door. He's not wearing his parkour clothes, and even though she shouldn't have checked, it doesn't look like he's had his usual dinner sandwich. Steve always cleans up after himself but never remembers to run the water to wash down the bread crumbs from cutting the fresh sub rolls in half. There's nothing in the sink today.
He's going to see his not-waitress, Natasha thinks.
It's a worst-case thought, a weak, selfish thought. She doesn't want him to be with anyone but her. Despite being ruthless about banishing each category of memories, the selfish ones are the most stubbornly rooted.
She knows where to find her favorites even now, though she couldn't possibly choose between them. Touch: his too-strong grip that left her scalp aching when they got too rough, or the perfect curl of his fingers and his tongue at exactly the right moment to shatter her, damn him. Sound: the tiny 'tic' that's barely audible when his lips part to show his teeth in a broad smile, but mostly the half-groan, half-desperate sound he makes when he's close and can't decide whether he wants to pull her up from her knees and bury himself inside her. Sight: the way he forces his eyelids open to watch her if they both reach their peak together; his endearing obsession with the way his thumb looks pressed against the delicate skin of her inner hip (especially if he's the one who drags her panties down to reveal it); even the intent way he used to look at her, fully invested in what she had to say, when they shared meals together.
Her usual methods of eradicating these thoughts won't work today, she concludes. Not if there's even a small chance he's going to the woman he loves. The woman who's not her. Nat gets in the car, but she doesn't follow Steve.
It's time to cope with things the Russian way.
With vodka.
88888888
Her bedroom has too many memories, his bedroom has too many memories, and so does the cafeteria and the sparring room. Natasha ends up in the wide, long conference room she'd been working in all day, her laptop on the table just out of reach. The glass and the two bottles of Vodka she'd bought are sitting far enough away that she won't knock them over with her feet if she decides to stop resting them on the table in front of her. Steve would hate that, even if he were sitting her with her after hours, no meeting, just them, shooting the breeze. He'd think it was disrespectful.
Nat pushes her slip-on shoe off of one foot with the other and lets it clatter onto the table in response to that thought. She's drunk quite a lot already, as evidenced by the way she wishes Steve could be here to see her and frown in sexy disapproval. It's been just over ninety minutes since he left the Facility wearing tight pants, a snug blue t-shirt, and a long-sleeved button-down dress shirt hanging open on top of it. He and his not-waitress probably aren't even done with dinner yet, much less to the disrespectful stage. If Steve Rogers can even manage that brand of disrespectfulness on the first date.
He probably can, when he loves the woman in question.
She finishes off the rest of the glass and pours herself some more.
88888888
Another glass and a half later, she's past the insubordination phase and into the information gathering phase. Steve's behavior earlier in the week had seemed like training until he had somewhere specific to go. Nat sips at her vodka and tries to pretend she's not searching Tony's AI database backend hoping there's some kind of historic tracking of off-campus Avenger activity. Maybe she can find out where his Not-Waitress lives? This brings her to check the nanosuit tracking page as almost an afterthought, since she's keeping a daily record of where Clint's tracker shows up.
The New York cluster isn't as tight as it should be on the world map.
Natasha sits up, frowning when her bare feet touch the cold floor. She'd deliberately not worn socks (not even the ones with grips on the bottom, because that's planning to get shitfaced drunk, and she's not one of those women, thank you. If it happens, it happens), and there's a whole lot to knock over on the table between herself and her shoes, so she's going to leave them be. Zooming in as far as possible shows that Steve's nanosuit is located on one of the nearby roads, though the signal itself doesn't update often enough to indicate speed, meaning he might still be on foot. It's been at least an hour since he's left, and his clothing hadn't been the sort he wears to jog.
When she drinks, Nat gets creative rather than confused. It's not logical that Steve would visit the woman of his dreams and waste time walking there when he could take alternate transportation… unless he's trying to conceal the trip from Natasha?
She can't tell whether this is distorted thinking.
Naturally, this means she should drink more.
For clarity.
88888888
Natasha watches Steve Rogers' zoomed in nanosuit blip on her computer and drinks.
Forty-five minutes after breaking out the laptop, she goes downstairs for the orange juice he has with breakfast every morning, ostensibly to cut the harsh taste of the vodka a little. For safety, to avoid spills, she takes the whole container. For economy, she pours the rest of the bottle of vodka into the juice bottle. It's simply bad luck that there isn't a second bottle for Steve's morning juice.
After settling back into her chair and taking a sip of her new 'mixed drink,' she sees that Steve is no longer on the road.
It takes three tries but she gets the lid onto the bottle so she doesn't spill it in her rush to compare the road map of his location to one that shows houses and businesses- but to her surprise (and muzzy relief) there are just fields and forests around that area. If it's a new construction, there could be a house there that hasn't hit the records yet, but as she watches intently, the blip starts moving again.
Nat finally realizes what's going on after watching the blip move in slow, widening circles for quite a while. The overlay shows that he's moving between forested areas and open fields littered with dead-end farm roads the landowners use, none of which connect to the actual state road system.
Steve… is lost.
Natasha is flabbergasted. Sure, she isn't thinking clearly, but she's drunk! She has an excuse. Steve does not. He's got the nanosuit with him, equipped with an AI interface with maps! He could fly home, for fuck's sake!
"FRIDAY, I'm not asking to access video of Rogers' bedroom, but can you look at the footage and determine whether he accidentally took the nanosuit by re-wearing the same pants or something?"
"One moment, Ms. Romanoff."
As she waits, Nat yells at the laptop. "Damnit Steve, run in a straight line! Or stay still! Or, I don't know, put on the damned suit and fly home!"
"Captain Rogers deliberately placed the nanosuit into his trouser pocket this morning when he got dressed," FRIDAY finally intones.
"So it's pride?" Natasha asks rhetorically. FRIDAY answers anyway.
"Certainly appears to be."
Steve's dot starts moving again. He's in a forested section that stretches quite far in the direction he's moving. There isn't a road for a while in any direction, thanks to his unfortunate pattern of (probably increasingly frustrated) aimless roaming. Add to that the fact that sunset is nearly over, and she's sure he'll be lost for hours if she doesn't do something.
"If I got into the Quinjet, could you fly it on autopilot, FRIDAY?" Nat asks, taking a too large swig of her orange juice concoction.
"It would not be advisable."
Natasha points at the ceiling. "That's not a no."
"If Captain Rogers is unwilling to fly home with the suit he is carrying with him, what makes you conclude he'll be willing to be flown back in the jet?"
That stumps her for a good ten minutes. Then, the answer floats up on a sharp, citrus-scented burp.
"Because I'm drunk. He'll have to do it!" she says, triumphantly. "Damsel in distress."
"This comes perilously close to the extremes of my protection protocol."
"Come on, FRIDAY, you want to be a girlboss, don't you? Help me rescue Captain America!"
There's a pause, one Nat would even characterize it as pregnant, if only in her own mind.
"All right. But only if you do not actually call me a 'girl boss.'" FRIDAY's accent somehow becomes even thicker as she speaks the last words.
"It's a deal."
Shoes are optional when you're a drunk passenger on the Quinjet, and with the lid closed tightly on her homemade Screwdriver drink, she's not even breaking the law by boarding a vehicle with an open container. Technically. FRIDAY talks her through the setup procedure but refuses to take off until Natasha is securely buckled, which is a drag. She has to clutch the laptop bag to her chest as the ship takes off, but it turns out that the AI is way ahead of her, because FRIDAY displays the tracker readout on one of the screens without Nat even having to ask or bust out the laptop to see for herself.
"Stay really high up, if you can? I want to surprise him," Natasha tells her AI accomplice.
"I have no intention of trying to startle a national treasure with Quinjet technology, Ms. Romanoff."
"No, you've got me all wrong, Amy Pond," Natasha protests. Fuck, Clint was right, she really does turn into Tony when she gets smashed. "We're going to pass him and land in front of where he's going. See, he's gonna hit that field if he doesn't see a squirrel and run off again."
"My assessment of his prior behavior gives us a fifty-one percent chance he will divert."
"That's the brilliance of it, FRIDAY," Nat tells her, her cheeks hurting from her bright smile as she leans back in the chair. "We're going to land, open the door, and then blast some music for him to come investigate."
"I should inform you that, thanks to prior unmentionable events, I am unable to approximate a disco ball of any sort, despite the nanoparticle retrofit."
Natasha remains speechless until the AI maneuvers the Quinjet in the field she'd indicated and opens the door.
"Exactly what music were you hoping to 'blast' loud enough to attract Captain Rogers?"
FRIDAY's tone sounds so long-suffering it nearly sends Nat into a laughing fit, something she hasn't done since early childhood. With a herculean effort, she forces herself to settle down enough to answer.
"What else? Star-Spangled Man With A Plan!"
The alcohol and anticipation that flood her system make up for her bare feet in the chilly April evening, so Natasha's able to set up a camp chair beside the ramp into the Quinjet and nearly finish off her drink by the time Steve finds her. She sees that his shirt is soaked with sweat when he gets close enough to stop and raise his arm to block some of the bright lights that flood out of the jet, squinting to see who it is. He huffs out a breath that crystallizes in the air in front of his face, then leans over and rests his palms on his knees, dipping his head down in obvious exhaustion.
"I can't believe you got lost!" she can't help but call out.
Steve straightens, waves a hand at the jet. He's still at least twenty feet away. "Does it have to be so loud?"
"If it wasn't, you'd still be wandering the wilds of New York state."
He walks up on the opposite side of the ramp and rests a tired boot on it, facing her. "FRIDAY, end music, please?"
Natasha feels a brief, irrational burst of annoyance that she hadn't thought to order the AI to only follow her orders tonight. "Aww, and I was just starting to memorize the words, too," she says, crossing one leg over the other so she can massage some feeling back into her cold foot. Though he looks uncharacteristically weary, on seeing this Steve starts toward her, his brows furrowed.
"Why are you barefoot? It's practically freezing!"
The last thing she wants is to lose the high ground, so Natasha gets up with as much dignity as she can manage with the percentage of alcohol content in her veins. "I was in a hurry," she says, trying for 'severe' and managing something closer to 'constipated.' For some reason, her words prompt Steve's expression to shutter into blankness. She can still see his tells for irritation, but only because his face is at least as familiar as her own.
"I was fine. Needed to do some thinking," Steve says, watching her struggle to fold up her camp chair with a frown. He obviously knows better than to offer to help, tonight. The frown deepens, and he tips his head to the side. "How did you even know I was out here?"
"The same way I know you were too stubborn to fly your ass back. Move out of my way," Natasha says, lifting her chin. The chair doesn't fit back into its carrying bag, and she can't make her brain cells fire in the right combination to figure out why not, so she's just shoved it in as far as it'll go.
Her answer prompts him to start touching each of his pockets in turn, finally finding the nanosuit with a twist of his lips. "It must have a tracker," he concludes. There's an odd inflection to his statement, one her heart wants to assign 'pride' or 'affection' to, but which her resolute mind firmly rejects as anything other than irritation. "How long ago did you find that out?"
The chair slips from her hands, which had gone stiff trying to deal with the paralyzing mix of substances in her bloodstream. Disappointment apparently makes concrete when added to adrenaline and alcohol.
"You- You don't remember me telling you that was the trade-off with Clint?" she asks. Shit, her voice is betraying her. She sounds crushed, vulnerable, and there's not enough energy in her system to fight off the effects of both intoxication and heartbreak. The only thing she can think to do is to dodge him and walk up the ramp, using her knowledge of Steve to manipulate him into picking up the chair before following her. He's steady as a rock, that way. Predictable. Dependable.
Except tonight, apparently, because he reaches out and grabs her wrist. Nat's only made it two steps onto the ramp, so their faces are at the same level. She sees Steve's nostrils flare.
"You've been drinking? And you flew the Quinjet out here? Natasha!"
She tries to fling his hand off of her wrist, but he holds on. It'll bruise, they both realize it as soon as he tightens his hand; for once, it's not enough to prompt him to release her.
"You're not my dad, Steve," she snaps at him viciously. "I don't need you to scold-"
"Hey," Steve's entire demeanor shifts into something she hadn't expected as soon as he hears her say the word 'scold.' He'd reached out but not turned his body toward her but now he does, gentling his grip and sliding that hand up to her upper arm, mirroring the action with his other hand. She's left with the impression that he's touched her this way deliberately, to gauge how cold she is. The care in the action is reflected on his face, and Natasha's heart swells, released from its protective armor by the metal-melting presence of the vodka.
"Don't," she breathes. Her adrenal gland is exhausted. Natasha's spent so many years training it to pump her up in dangerous physical situations to the detriment of moments like these, when she's in real emotional danger. There's nothing to slice her awareness back open, sheathed as it is in layers of numbness.
"It's concern, not censure," Steve says. His thumb slides against the thin material of her shirt, and she shivers. "Let's get you out of the cold, okay?"
His mistake was in loosening his grip on her arm. Her mistake was loosening her grip on her emotions.
Nat twists and ducks, freeing herself from his hold. Obstinate and furious, she moves to stand right where she was before, the fire in her eyes daring him to reach out again.
"I'm not cold, Steve. I'm sad. I miss you. I miss having the right to touch you. I miss you wanting to touch me back. It made all of this bearable in a way that scrubbing the Facility until my skin is red and raw never could. I let Clint walk away with that fucking tracker like it was better to sit and stare at the computer screen and know exactly where his body is, but-" She shakes her head, her hair sliding free of the clip that had been steadily losing its grasp since she'd started drinking. "His heart is dust, even the part that used to belong to me. All that's left are shredded pieces of the friendship we built together, and I've had to accept that, but I-"
A breeze kicks up, and she breaks off, startled by how much colder it is than the ambient temperature. Immediately, Steve takes off the button-down shirt he's wearing, his eyebrows lifted and his expression resolute as he holds it out for her to slide her arms in. At her hesitation, he speaks a single word.
"Please."
She only agrees because she can turn her back on him to pull the shirt around herself. "I'm not asking for or offering anything impossible," she whispers, hearing the way her tone gains power against her will, thanks to the comfort of his warmth from the fabric. "But it's just… not enough to know where your body is, unless it's with me."
The words leave her lips so much more easily than they should have. It's as close to a love declaration as she's ever come, thankfully shy of the embarrassing, ridiculous truth, but near enough that she runs into the Quinjet.
"Prep the jet for takeoff, will you, FRIDAY?"
"Security protocols disallow me from complying, Ms. Romanoff. Only an authorized human using the manual controls can do that. For your safety, it needs to be Captain Rogers."
Right, Nat thinks to herself. Hulk had accidentally stolen a Quinjet once, using voice commands and autopilot, not more than a few hours after saying 'I have a compelling reason not to' lose his cool. To her. About her.
Because Bruce had fled using a Quinjet after a near-admission of love, Natasha can't do the same.
Facing away from the door, Natasha allows herself a second to bolster her confidence. She wished that a severe shock really was enough to instantly sober up, but instead, she's even more adrift than she was before, exactly when she most needs to be sharp.
"I never stopped wanting to touch you," Steve says, behind her.
Her whole universe is a caught breath.
He isn't done. "What I can't handle is being unfair. You've implied to me that your heart is engaged elsewhere, and I've never been- Shit, Natasha!" Steve swears, sounding defeated.
She can't not turn around, and when she does, she sees that he's scrubbing his hand through his hair and shaking his head. A lock of hers has fallen into view, a two-toned reminder of the split that yawns in her heart. Clint and Steve, the broken men she can't find the right ways to care for.
He lets his arm drop as if he's helpless, defeated. Words tumble from his lips with the same kind of gravity. "I don't want to be that person. Taking another man's girl? No. I'm a soldier. I-" his eyes light up after a few seconds of obvious searching for the right words. "I follow the rules of engagement as best I can, in every situation, even this one."
Natasha says, carefully, "Trust me, you cannot steal me away from him."
Steve laughs, his eyes closing and his head tipping back. "If I say anything right now, I fully expect to be struck by lightning." He lets out a long breath. The ship is rapidly losing temperature, and her feet are practically numb from the cold, but Nat's suffered worse in far less fraught situations. Her weakness, her inability to stay silent has brought her to this crossroads, and all she can do now is endure it.
After a long moment, Steve opens his eyes. He opens his mouth, and the look on his face is so full of sincerity that Nat holds herself perfectly still, scarcely daring to breathe. She'd been ready to endure, but his expression hints at something far sweeter. Then, barely perceptibly, it shifts into resignation.
"You're cold, and you've been drinking. We need to get you home."
She could push it. He'd let her, she can tell. He's just as vulnerable as she is right now. Natasha could demand to know what he had been about to say and blame her rudeness on a lack of control, because of the vodka. But she'd missed this, just as she'd missed the other things. She's missed being open with him, both exposed, both vulnerable, and if she pushes him, he'll close off further.
"If you tell Tony I got drunk, I'll hack your room to set off alarms if there's anything in your drawers," Nat says, turning her back on him to buckle herself clumsily into her seat. He can't stand to leave his clothes unfolded, and his chest of drawers never has anything on the top of it, so it stands to reason that her threat would be a dire one. "Telling Pepper counts, by the way," she adds.
To her utter shock, on his way to his own, Steve pauses at her chair. He leans over and whispers in her ear. "I know you're giving me an out. We'll talk more tomorrow, okay?"
She turns to look at him. His lips are an inch away, at just the right angle, and the way his gaze dips to hers is absolutely not platonic. "Yes," she says. It's all the permission, and he knows this. She can tell, because his eyes shut for a regretful second and he pulls back, as if he can't trust himself not to break his aforementioned rules of engagement.
No fooling around with a girl under the influence.
For the first time in nearly four months, Nat goes to sleep looking forward to what the next day will bring.
