A/N: I've decided to list two songs per chapter — I stumbled upon a forgotten one in the depths of my iPod, UNDONE (FFH), and can't believe how perfect it was for chapter one. So. Perfect.
Thanks and hugs for my reviewers: That-girl-from-outer-space6, Fuinn13, MESPX13, MysticFantasy, TheFreelancerSeal, Vak, DaughterOfPoseidon333, Rosa Cotton, Mandarin Fiend, Skewbald, and the two Guest reviewers.
Also, much thanks to my followers (almost 50!), as well as those who are reacting on Figment (only one so far, but hopefully, there will be more eventually.)
And a great big shout-out to MysticFantasy, who added this story to a community under the Avengers category: "the soldier and the spy". Thank you!
Readers, your combined enthusiasm has truly made the past several days that much more wonderful, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't encourage me to update quickly.
Lastly, this story is now double-posted (on under Shadows of a Dream, and also on Figment under Laura Genn.) Just a heads-up. If some or all of the reviewers' names seem out of place, they're probably from the other website.
Without further ado, I give you chapter 2. What do you know – it's longer than chapter one. Forget what I said about a short update. XD
Also, it's 23 minutes to 1:00 AM right now, but I swore to myself that I'd post this today (so please excuse any typos I may have missed, and feel free to notify me of them so I can edit them later.) EDIT: Posted the rough draft by accident... I need to sleep. Here's the revised version.
~x~X~x~
The second time they touch, she's drunk and he's lying about not wanting to kiss her, and God forgive him for entertaining the thought.
Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff have a complicated relationship. It's been nearly two years since the first night of the Chicago affair — since he held her in the dark and she fell asleep in his arms — but that's all it was, one night, and they kept their clothes on and their mouths apart and their hands strictly to themselves, because it wasn't about sex, or even about mere attraction. It was about nightmares, about the broken things in both of them, and really, Steve should talk to what's-her-name from Statistics because he and Natasha are strictly platonic.
On the other hand, Steve can't fault anyone for making assumptions.
Lately, Natasha works with him whenever Clint Barton is unavailable. Steve doesn't know if it's at Fury's direction or her own private whims. He can't bring himself to ask. In the past months, Black Widow has become more than his opposite. She is beginning to feel like his shadow, inexplicably ever-present, guarding his back without explanation.
Truth be told, Steve likes it that way. He likes trusting (anticipating) that her twin pistols will cover his back. He likes teasing her in the quiet moments between conflicts. He likes never being able to predict how she'll react under pressure, and he likes that he's always impressed.
By trying to shed light on exactly what they are, Steve knows that he would frighten his shadow away. So they don't talk about it. For the time being, they're allies: nothing more, nothing less.
But that doesn't stop Steve's heart from clenching when Natasha sees the body.
Nick Fury, the beating heart of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Nick Fury, snuffed out into endless, endless silence.
If S.H.I.E.L.D. is a family, then Fury was its father.
Natasha looks at his corpse – absurdly still, both eyes closed, no eye patch needed. She looks and looks, not blinking. She lays an open palm against Fury's forehead, and her eyes say, Wake up, Nick. You have to wake up.
"Natasha..." Steve says her name, low and fierce, the way he did in Chicago, like he's trying to tear her from a nightmare's grip; but this is real, and Nick Fury is dead, and when Natasha shoves past Steve's outstretched arm — out the room, down the hall, starting to run once she thinks no one will see — Steve knows she's crying on the inside.
Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff have a complicated relationship. He knows that she can compartmentalize, but not forever. He knows that she'll need to talk tonight, but that she won't say a word; he knows the first sound she'll make is when she wakes up screaming. He knows that he should go to see her, and that she'll tell him to get the hell out of her house, and that he'll have to stay until the swearing stops and time somehow slows and they can just talk, like they did in Chicago.
Steve Rogers drives to her apartment with singular purpose, convinced that he knows exactly what to expect. It goes without saying that, when Natasha opens the door — hair disheveled, face flushed, but otherwise, the picture of total calm — Steve has no idea what to do. She doesn't look sorrowful; she looks... relaxed.
"What's the matter, Captain? Didn't want to sleep alone tonight?"
Blinking, Steve does a double take. "Natasha?" he says, like he called the wrong phone number by accident (which has happens with smart phones more than he'd like to admit.)
She arches an eyebrow. "Expecting someone else?"
He doesn't say anything, only stands there. Dumbstruck.
"Well?" she slurs, her hands on her hips. "You're staring, Captain. See something you like?"
"Um..." Steve says, looking over her shoulder to the room beyond. There's a bottle of vodka on the table. It's open, circled by assorted shot glasses. He swallows. "You're drunk, Natasha."
"I'm sober as hell," she says, eyes glazed. "It's cheap vodka."
"Cheap vodka is still vodka."
"I'm Russian."
"So?"
Natasha crosses her arms, defiant. "I am not drunk," she says, the words running together. "I am not drunk on cheap American vodka."
"Your stomach might disagree in the morning."
Silence falls between them.
Steve looks at Natasha, past the haze of alcohol and into the wounded woman beneath. For the first time, he can read her like a book. He has never seen her like this — entirely vulnerable, every emotion pulsing right beneath the surface, as though they could bleed out at the slightest touch. She's fractured and grief-stricken and angry, and she's so far gone that he's not even sure she realizes it.
"Why are you here, Captain?"
"To talk to you."
Natasha's gaze travels over his chest, taking in every inch of chiseled muscle. "Is that all?"
"Yes," Steve says, his face burning. He takes a step away. "And if you don't want to talk, I'll go home."
Natasha pauses, processing. Then she says, thickly, "Let me pour you a shot."
If he can get past her drunken stupor, if he can get into her head, maybe he can help. Maybe he can make this miserable day better.
"All right," Steve says on impulse. "And then you'll talk to me?"
"Shot first."
"Then talk to me."
"Fine."
Steve follows Natasha into the kitchen. She sways slightly as she walks, like a fallen leaf in the wind, but she can walk a straight line, nevertheless. Steve wonders if Russians really do have a higher tolerance for alcohol.
"You like vodka, Captain?"
"I don't know," he admits. "It's never been my drink of choice."
Natasha reaches for the bottle with one hand, choosing a shot glass with the other. "Sorry this is the cheap stuff," she drawls. "Long day."
Steve shrugs as he takes a seat. "I don't mind."
Natasha struggles with the cap of the vodka. Apparently, she tightened it too much after her last shot. Her eyes are blank. Glassy.
"I'm sorry," Steve says. "About Fury."
At that, Natasha's fingers clench around the bottle. The cap pops loose and falls to the table, clinking. She turns her head and looks, not at him but through him.
"Soviet-made," she says through her teeth.
"What?"
"The bullet."
Steve's throat closes up. He knows precious little of Black Widow's past, but he knows enough. He knows that she's aided the Soviet regime, far more than she's ever fought against it. He knows that it haunts her every day.
"Natasha —"
"Nick let me stay," she slurs, tipping the bottle towards the shot glass. "S.H.I.E.L.D. was his. Clint should've killed me, but he saved me. And Nick let me stay."
Vodka slips over the rim of the shot glass, spilling on to the table.
"He wouldn't blame you," Steve says, even as he reaches for a roll of paper towels. "Don't blame yourself."
"You do."
"What?"
"I remember, Captain." Abruptly, her gaze is lucid. Searching. "I remember about Bucky... what you said."
Bucky. Steve's chest clamps. The guilt is killing him, eating him away in every hour, every minute, and he knows it. He doesn't want that sort of half-life for Natasha. She deserves better... She deserves freedom —
She is still pouring vodka into the shot glass.
Damn it.
Steve throws a wad of paper towels on to the mess.
"Don't do what I do, Natasha," he says, the scent of the alcohol making his head spin. "Don't spend your life listening for echoes of yesterday."
Suddenly, Natasha seems to realize that a significant amount of vodka has been donated to her kitchen table. She sets the bottle down, sliding the shot glass towards Steve. "Drink your shot, Captain."
Steve does. It stings on the way down, burning the skin of his throat. It's far worse than he expected; it tastes like rubbing alcohol. He chokes, almost gags, but swallows the shot.
Steve blinks, his vision fuzzy at the edges. "Why the hell would anyone drink straight vodka?"
"You just did," Natasha says.
Because I'm an idiot.
Steve's stomach does a somersault. Some of it must show on his face, because Natasha laughs, long and tipsy, and Steve can't help but laugh with her — and somehow, in that moment of time, everything and nothing is all right.
Their laughter fades into silence. Seconds pass, neither of them speaking.
Then Natasha blinks.. Confused, she asks, "Why are you here?"
"I already told you."
"You did not."
"Fine," Steve sighs, setting down his shot glass. "You win. I didn't."
Natasha rolls her eyes. "Of course you didn't."
She tries to sit, but she moves too fast, landing on a chair's edge. As the chair slides back, she starts to slip.
Unthinking, Steve moves to catch her — and he does, but she's heavier than he anticipated, and the shot of straight vodka has addled his brain.
They fall together. All at once, Steve is on his back with Natasha on top of him, breathing hard, loose strands of her scarlet hair teasing his face. Their lips are inches apart. She looks at him, eyebrows raised, like she doesn't remember how she got there.
She smiles wickedly. "If you wanted to speed things up, Captain, all you had to do was ask."
There's vodka on her breath. Her eyes hold his, framed by dark, delicate lashes.
It would be so easy to kiss her. Instead, Steve rises to his feet before helping Natasha to do the same. She leans on his shoulder, panting.
"You should lie down," he says.
"Want to join me?"
Steve kicks himself for hesitating "No," he says. "Come on." And he stumbles toward her bedroom, Natasha leaning on his arm. Her fingers tighten around his bicep. He tries to ignore it, but his heart races.
When they finally reach Natasha's room, she all but falls on to the mattress, completely wasted. Steve watches her for a few seconds. Then he turns to leave.
Behind him, she whispers, "You don't like me."
"That's not true."
"Fury didn't like me, either."
He turns. Looks her in the eyes. "Natasha –"
"This is how it is, Captain... you and me... alone in the world." She pauses, bleary-eyed, before announcing, "I need another shot."
"No, you don't."
"Like hell I don't."
Without warning, Natasha lurches to her feet, but another shot is the last thing she needs, and Steve moves to black her path. When she tries to shove past, she collides with his chest instead. They're frozen, eye to eye. Skin against skin.
Natasha lifts an open palm to Steve's neck, where his pulse pounds. She leans closer to him, her lips gently parting.
"Kiss me," she slurs.
Steve's breath hitches. "You're drunk."
His flat refusal only angers her further. Natasha digs her nails into his shirt, gathering the fabric in her fists. "Kiss me, Steve," she says.
Steve's heartbeat courses through his whole body. He's only human; he only has so much restraint. She's beautiful, he thinks, and in this moment he realizes how much she means to him. She is beautiful, but she is more than that. She is brave, strong, dignified, enduring. She is impossibly valuable. Too valuable to give herself away in a drunken stupor.
Steve swallows. "I don't want to kiss you."
"You don't?" she says, her breath hot against his mouth.
"I don't," he says.
It's the second time they touch, and she's drunk and he's lying about not wanting to kiss her, and God forgive him for entertaining the thought. She's not in her right mind, and he refuses to do something she'll regret in the morning. He's willing to wait until another day – a day when she's sober, and they're standing in the daylight, and she asks him to kiss her in full view of the world. And when that day comes, he will.
Natasha sinks down to her the mattress. Dejected. Tears streak her flushed face, tears she will not remember in the morning. Steve murmurs an apology, then turns away before she can touch him again. He's outside in half a minute. The air is cold, but his skin is burning.
With a sigh, Steve Rogers leans back against the apartment door. He could have kissed her — easily. Could have leaned forward and captured her mouth with his. Could have held her flush against him in the dark.
He came so close, and he walked away. He's proud; he's shattered. He tells himself, She'd probably taste like alcohol.
He probably wouldn't mind.
~x~X~x~
A/N: Hopefully, when Black Widow says, "Kiss me," on the escalator in WINTER SOLDIER, you will never hear it the same way again. Steve, according to my mental canon (including the story as canon,) remembers the drunk Black Widow incident; Natasha presumably spent the night puking, took a science-fiction anti-hangover pill in the morning, and resumed the movie as we know it with no recollection of these events. So when Black Widow says, "Kiss me," on that escalator, maybe she is just trying to keep them alive, or maybe not – regardless, it makes Steve remember this, and that's part of why he hesitates.
Anyway...
I've had quite an awkward time googling types of alcohol, how much vodka one needs to get drunk, what straight vodka tastes like (sounds nasty!), symptoms of inebriation, and so on. I'm not even seventeen, so I won't be trying any alcoholic beverages for a very long time. And let's face it: getting drunk is stupid, anyway.
Thanks: to my sister, who provided several ideas for this chapter, to my friend Scott, for suggesting the cheap vodka gag, and to my father, for advising that Natasha refer to it as cheap American vodka in particular.
Please review, and thank you for reading. It really does mean the world.
Songs for this chapter: 1. C'est la mort (The Civil Wars) 2. Dog Days Are Over (Florence + the Machine)
The next chapter will probably be the shortest of the projected five. Hopefully, I'll be writing it soon!