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darsynia · 2 years ago

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They Show Their Truth (one single time) | Oneshot

gif from @marvelheroes

Summary: Steve's managed to keep how he feels about Natasha a secret, but the vision he saw in South Africa shook him.

Caring about Natasha Romanoff this much means that when there's a chance to heal her wounds by revealing his secret, Steve throws himself on the grenade, because of course he does.

Length/Warnings: 5,443 | Porn with plot, unrequited love. Minors DNI

Tags (please forgive me if this isn't your thing, feel free to ignore if so 💚): @ronearoundblindly @munstysmind @chickensarentcheap @themaradaniels @starryeyes2000 @deepbatched @chibijusstuff @caplanreblogsfics

This was written as a request for my friend @salovie a while back!

They Show Their Truth (one single time)

“I don’t trust a guy without a dark side.”

The worst part is that Stark would probably appreciate what Steve is struggling with. He might even trust Steve more because of it, and isn’t that just exactly the worst conclusion to draw, tonight?

Steve’s on his back on the floor in the Barton family room. He’d feel more comfortable if he could rest on his side with his back against the couch, second best to the wall, but every square foot of wall in this room is filled with shelving. Toys, books, puzzles; the accoutrements of a life he’ll never live, all stacked up with the chaotic order of an unexpected visit. The couch is ready for Natasha, with a sheet covering the cold, worn leather. He’s left her the handcrafted afghan and the better of the two pillows Clint’s wife had offered, and kept the sports fleece for himself.

It makes sense that they’ve put the two of them in here; whatever is going on between Bruce and Nat means it would be irresponsible to force them to share. Stark’s by himself on an air mattress in the laundry room instead of in the guest room with Bruce, because out of all of them, he’s the one most likely to accidentally set Banner off-- and just like Clint said, it’s not that they don’t trust Bruce. They don’t trust Tony.

Steve likes Laura Barton. It seems to him that she understands the purgatory they’re all putting themselves through, most of them, anyway. He sure as hell hopes she hasn’t caught on to his, but she couldn’t have.

If she had, she wouldn’t have put him in a room with Natasha.

He gets up and turns off the overhead light, using the chain, then flips off the switch. The ceiling fan’s breeze is just on the edge of too much, but if Nat wants it on, it’ll be set up so the light won’t disturb her. He walks over to the door and cracks it, listening. Laura and Natasha are still talking quietly in the kitchen. Steve pushes the door mostly shut again, and turns off the light that’s across the room from the couch, leaving just the one lamp directly next to it.

He winces. The room is now bathed in an orange-yellow glow that reminds him of the quality of light in the vision he’d seen in South Africa. The truth is that practically everything here reminds him of the vision.

The glint of the sun off of the axe had reminded him of the flashbulbs.

One of Barton’s kids had spilled juice, and its blood red color had been like the wine on the soldier’s chest.

A rare moment of collective laughter in the dining room with Nick Fury had pulled Steve out of the moment and thrust him, unwillingly, back into the vision.

He’d had to walk away, away from the mirth, away from her red hair as she faced away from him, so similar to the twice-damned vision where Peggy Carter had asked him to dance. As he’d turned to say yes, she’d spun away, dress flying off to reveal a tight-fitting black jumpsuit, the brown wig falling away to red, her familiar, beloved face morphing into Natasha Romanoff’s familiar, beloved face.

Because she is. Beloved. Despite everything. No amount of brutal training at the gym until his hands are numb and bruised, no amount of self-denial or self-recrimination has cured him of it. Hell, no monk has ever kept himself as pure for the sake of his God as Steve Rogers has, for fear of thinking of his teammate in a way that is definitely unholy.

The result has been the exact opposite of his intention; all roads lead to Natasha in his mind, because as ever, Steve Rogers aspires for that which cannot be. The only thing he’s learned from being chosen for the program, from rejecting orders and saving his best friend despite everything, from crashing the plane to save the world, from waking up after seventy years on ice, is that fate loves to give him what he wants.

And he wants her.

“Not this time,” Steve murmurs from his position on the floor, one knee up, arm behind his head.

“Well, if that’s the way it’s gonna be,” Natasha says in a sultry, teasing voice from the doorway.

Steve launches himself into a stand as if she’s the personification of an enemy, and in a way, she is.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Steve, but you’re a little edgy.”

“You and Clint are always telling me to rough it up a little, just trying to follow orders,” Steve jokes, backing up out of her way as she walks into the room.

“We were thinking more along the lines of getting you to watch some porn, grow some scruff,” she tells him. “So, you trying to be chivalrous, leaving me the couch and the best blanket?”

The tingling awareness he’s been fighting down for hours rears back to life at her provocative words, even more so when she immediately tempers them with a challenge about the couch. He knows her. Her behavior tells him that she thinks her words were reckless, that’s why she’s covering them. That means there was some truth to what she said, that they were revealing. If he were an enemy, it might be a trick to let him lower his guard, but she doesn’t know that he’s been fighting her in his mind for months. At least, he hopes to hell she doesn’t.

“Not at all,” Steve lies smoothly. “It’s pure math. I don’t fit.”

Nat turns her warm, impish gaze towards him and Steve feels a jolt of pure, unadulterated desire. Don’t, sweetheart. Don’t, he begs in his own head. She’s vulnerable, open, teasing, coy. Because she trusts him.

“Now, come on, soldier,” she says, sweetly mocking. “That’s boy scout math. Unimaginative math. I could probably fit the whole team on that couch if I had to. They might even enjoy it.”

He’s hardly ever seen her like this, but he knew she had it in reserve. “Well,” he says in his best regimental, Team Captain voice, hoping she won’t hear the regret he feels in pulling it out to dash water all over her lush, flirty flames. “That might be so, but that has nothing to do with sleeping.”

“Oh no, Steve,” she says, amused concern woven through the husk of her voice. “Turn it off, I absolutely cannot sleep with a Steve Rogers figurine in the room with me tonight!” Natasha comes over to him, her lips curved into a smile under furrowed eyebrows, and before he can fully understand what she’s doing, she’s got her hands on him, stroking along his back, and he’s hard, his heartbeat spiking, she’s going to know, fuck, fuck…

“Nat, what--” he chokes out, throwing his arms out wide in hopes that he can talk himself down before she walks back around.

“I’m looking for the pull cord,” she says, resting a hand on his arm so she can lean over and catch his eye. “For your sayings. You know, ‘It’s the American Way!’ and ‘Do it for your country!’”

Every single thing she says sounds like innuendo to him. To think that Tony fucking Stark thought he doesn’t have a dark side. He’s sworn more in silent frustration about this gorgeous, unattainable woman than Stark probably has in the whole year, on purpose, out loud.

“Lay back and think of Uncle Sam?” Steve suggests, forcing his limbs to move, walking toward the other side of the room as he pulls his arms out of the long-sleeved overshirt he’s wearing.

“I’ve actually done that, you know. Multiple times,” Nat tells him, chuckling.

“Are you going to sleep in that? Do you want me to leave the room while you change?” he forces himself to ask. She’s got her own dark, long-sleeved shirt on, over a soft, grey thing that clings to her curves in a wholesome, farmhouse way that doesn’t stop him from finding it sexy in the slightest.

“You wouldn’t have to even if I wasn’t,” she tells him in a voice that chastises him for even asking.

I don’t trust a man without a dark side, Tony’s voice repeats, in his mind.

He should have just confessed to Stark. ‘Some nights I’m so desperate for thoughts of Natasha that I’ve tied my hands to my own bedpost. Just enough resistance so I wake up if my hands drift down to touch myself. It’s her face in my erotic dreams, her body in my everpresent thoughts. Not Peggy’s. I’m not wholesome, Stark. I’m a sinner. A hypocrite.’

“The figurine comment was metaphorical, Steve,” Nat is saying. She’s inches away from him somehow, because once again he’s caught up in his thoughts. “You okay? Tony said you were unaffected, but--”

“He’s wrong. She got to me.”

“Yeah,” Natasha breathes, looking up at him. “Me too.” Her eyes are troubled, hurt, practically anguished.

Steve’s resolve weakens, and he smiles down at her with a fraction of his feelings showing through as reassurance. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Nat looks up at the ceiling and does a little frustrated shiver. “Talk, no. I either need to--” she breaks off and looks at Steve, her eyes shining with repressed tears. “There’s something really wrong about punching Captain America in the face because I need a release of tension.”

He thinks he knows what her aborted sentence was. I either need to hit someone or fuck someone.

Steve says what he was thinking out loud. “People see me as standing for the way things ought to be. Fairness. Doing your duty. Things working out the way they’re supposed to.” He lets out a short, frustrated sigh. “Life doesn’t always happen that way, and reacting with frustration against that fact is very reasonable. If you need to, go ahead. Punch me.”

“She really did get to you,” Nat whispers.

“I mean it. You know I can take it, Natasha. Physically, I mean. I won’t take it personally.” He wants her to. If he can’t have her softness, he’ll take hardness over nothingness.

The regretful vulnerability is back on her face. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew why I need it.”

“They’re trying to tear us apart, Natasha. The best way not to tear is to reinforce the connections you already have.”

“It’s not about what I saw. At all. It’s about wanting someone and being rejected, not even because I’m not enough, but because he’s too broken.” She reels back in reaction to even saying the words, and impulsively, Steve reaches down and takes her wrists, shakes them until she responds by resisting his actions.

“You didn’t want to set him off in Clint’s house. You won’t set me off,” Steve lies. She already has, in exactly the wrong way. “Shove me, hit me, punish me. Get it out.” He pulls her hands, despite her resistance, until they’re flat on his chest. “He said he was too broken?”

Natasha’s lovely face crumples for a split second before her jaw tightens in anger. She shoves him; Steve was ready for it, doesn’t stop himself, lets the momentum carry him back a little.

“As if being broken is some kind of contagious!” she bites out, her voice angry but restrained. There are children sleeping in the house somewhere, after all. “As if I’m not a shattered teapot--” another shove. “--held together by the kind of toxic glue that builds up--” she punches his shoulder in a jab that does more than sting. “--in your system until I’ve killed you just by doing my job!”

For the word ‘job,’ Natasha drops back and her foot flies out, catching him in the chest. If they had been anywhere else, Steve would have let the full force of it knock him across the room, as intended, but he can’t risk the sound bringing someone who might see the heat he’s trying to repress. Instead, he takes the hit, his foot braced on the door, which shakes but doesn’t make much noise. Steve ends up on one knee, looking at Natasha, who is breathing heavily out of fury rather than exertion.

“Isn’t that just the perfect kind of symbolism,” she sighs, sounding defeated.

Steve raises his eyebrows, biting his cheek inside his mouth against the way his pants are pulled tight and uncomfortable against his arousal. That should be enough to kill it, but she’s walking toward him and all he can focus on are her hips, the way they sway. He wants to see what they look like with his hand gripping them, his thumb pressing against the thin, delicate skin that curves toward her inner thighs.

“You have my shoeprint on your chest, Rogers,” Nat says.

“What, it’s visible now?” he quips. The hold she’s got over him has been too close to the surface for too long.

“Now don’t go trying to make me feel better,” she says in that rich, amused voice of hers, tossing him a look before starting back toward the couch. It reminds him of the first time he ever wanted her; she’d said something in that tone and he’d found himself suddenly desperate to trace the origins of the sound with his lips and tongue against her neck.

“Any man who doesn’t want you is definitely broken,” Steve tells her, standing.

If she doesn’t recognize his confession, is that his fault?

“Even if that’s true, and I know it’s not, I’m just as easy to brush off,” she says, nodding at the way he’s wiping away the dust of her shoe so it doesn’t soil Laura Barton’s bedclothes. His hands still, not just because of what she’s said, but because Natasha’s rolling up the sheet and tossing it to the side, adding the pillow seconds later.

“What are you--” he starts, cutting himself off when she tugs the couch cushion off of the frame of the couch and sets it beside his makeshift bedroll. “Nat?”

He can’t sleep beside her. He can’t not sleep beside her, not after Bruce seems to have done his best to fracture her confidence into little pieces just so he could sweep her away more easily.

“You asked what you can do? You can do this.” Her words are short, choppy, defensive. “I can’t sleep next to Clint and take my confidence from him, not when he’s doing that for Laura right now. Unless you--”

“Here, my arms are longer,” Steve says, picking up the sheet and unfurling it over the cushions for her before she finishes that final, uncertain sentence.

“Thanks, Captain,” she tells him, her lips twitching up into a tiny, precious smile.

“At your service, Ma’am.”

He doesn’t let himself watch her wriggle into a comfortable sleeping position, choosing instead to walk over and turn out the light. He seeks out his own sparse sheet and too-short blanket in the fresh darkness, turning his back so his arms can’t seek her out in his sleep. Steve does scoot back far enough that he’s up against her cushions, the only concession he’ll allow himself to her nearness. He reminds himself sternly that it is just to give her the warmth and closeness she said she needed, nothing more.

Steve wakes to the feeling of a small hand worming its way under the tight shirt he’s wearing. He can feel Natasha’s body pressed up against his back, all softness and curves and forbidden sweetness.

Is she awake??

This is the stuff of his nightmares, dreams he’s forcibly categorized as such because of the moral implications. Her arm has snuck under his, so he lifts his arm, hoping the change of pressure will be enough to wake her up. Instead, this earns him a closer snuggle, one where he can identify her breasts along his back, the dip of her pelvis molding against his ass.

“Nat?” he whispers.

“Cold,” she says, her lips and nose nuzzling the word against his shoulder. Steve doesn’t know what to think. Her hand on his stomach is warm. In his sleep-fuzzed laxity, he decides to react the way he assumes he would if he didn’t have an attachment to her, which is to roll over and encourage her to curl up against him to warm herself up.

Steve rolls onto his back, the movement brushing his body against her in thrilling ways.

“Mmm,” she murmurs, chasing his heat as he carefully scoots over so that she can slot into the warmth of the place he’d been lying. Steve only succeeds in moving about three inches before Natasha throws her right leg out and twines it around his left leg as she slips down from the thick cushions toward him. Before he fully understands what’s happening, she’s mostly on top of him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her hot hand tucking ever so slightly into his waistband.

“Natasha, this can’t be what you do with Clint,” Steve hisses at her, desperate for her to stop moving before he shames himself with the speed of how fast he hardens for her. So far he’s controlling himself through sheer embarrassment on her behalf, but that won’t last much longer if she keeps squirming.

“Mmm, you’re right. He would have shoved me off by now, and we would have sparred about it or I’d have headed off to have a hot shower and a thorough conversation with my own hands,” she says, her voice wavering between an actual whisper and a tone husky with vocal fry.

Steve is nearly speechless. “Shower it is, then?” he suggests.

“Fresh out of hot water.” Natasha tells him, using a firm grip on his waistband to haul herself across his body to straddle him. Steve lifts both of his hands up over his head in self defense, but he’s essentially lost the battle. She’d removed her pants at some point in the night, and she’s sleep-mussed and gorgeous. Their enemies’ mental handiwork has done its job, led him right to what he’s always wanted, and it’ll be the end of them. She has to feel his reaction to her.

He closes his eyes and turns his head away. “I’m not going to fight you,” he says.

“That much is obvious,” she observes.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks between gritted teeth. “Put any man in this position and he’ll react the same.”

“Anything but that,” Natasha says in a small voice. Steve looks at her and sees pain in the angle of her head, the tightness around her eyes, the straightness of her back. She’s not putting all of her weight on him, he can tell, and just imagining the coiled strength that she’s exerting to rest so lightly and devastatingly against his thighs is undoing him.

She’s holding steady, but it feels like she’s pressing down thanks to his reaction to her. His body is gorging itself on a futile hope, and there’s no way that Natasha Romanoff doesn’t know this.

“I’m not Bruce,” he says, simply.

Her smile is a slice of pain. “Obviously,” she says, lowering herself fully and rocking her hips, pinning him with a challenging gaze.

Steve’s instinct is to stop her, but when he tries, his hands clutch naked skin and soft lace. The smile she offers him in response freezes him in place.

He shakes his head, delighted, miserable. “What are you looking for? Validation?”

“Goddamnit, Rogers, stop trying to fix everything,” she says, grinding against him again, making him gasp. “If the team’s fucked, the team’s fucked, so why not fuck the team, right? That’s what I’m trained for.”

The agony in her voice is all the worse because she doesn’t sound vulnerable anymore, and her eyes have lost the sheen of regret. She’s bitter, determined, and so broken in the process that Steve aches for her in a whole new, terrifying way. He reaches up to touch her face and she slaps at him before grabbing him, tearing open her shirt and clutching his hand to her breasts, fighting to keep him from fisting it.

Steve sits up, alarmed at her violence, and she tightens her thighs against him, rocking rhythmically.

“This is just sparring with different weapons, Nat, don’t do this,” he says.

“It’s all I have,” she snaps. “It’s my role. Tony would do it, you know he would.”

The jibe hits him in just the right way to be really painful, and Steve wrenches his hand away from her breast, trying to mitigate the way she’s ramping his desire up so skillfully with the drag of her body.

“Tony couldn’t, not in the way you want,” he says, his heart pounding, realizing that her plea for him not to fix it will have to be the one that will go unanswered. He knows exactly what she needs. Exactly. It’ll rip him apart to do this, in all of the best, soul-destroying ways, but it’s what she needs. Steve Rogers, throwing himself on the wire for his team.

“You and your stupid fucking rivalry--”

Steve interrupts her by arching his back, thrusting up against her, holding her gaze. “That’s not it.”

Natasha’s still hard-edged, scoffing. “I should have realized that would set you off. It must drive you crazy that his giant tower puts him ahead in your dick-measuring contest.”

“You think Tony wants you the way I want you? He doesn’t,” he says, blunt and honest. Her hips stutter in surprise, and Steve lets himself slide one hand up to the front clasp of her bra, flicking it open. “He’s known you longer, sure.” Natasha’s green eyes are wide, stunned. He takes advantage of her momentary stillness to hold her steady as he sits all the way up, sliding his other hand up to cup her face. “But would he throw away everything he has at the very thought of kissing you again, on purpose this time? No.”

“Steve?” she breathes, hesitant, haunted.

“Say the word and I’ll sleep on the porch and never mention this,” he tells her, hoping to hell she doesn’t.

“What even is ��this?’” Natasha asks, tracing his face with doubtful eyes. “You trying to make up for Banner? I’m not a grenade, Rogers.” Her words are vulnerable but her voice isn’t. She’s using it as a weapon, pushing her sex appeal into the tone, sultry and challenging.

He watches himself push one of her wild curls back behind her ear, indulging a long-held desire that has nothing to do with the other ways he wants to touch her. “Seems like you’re trying to blow up like one. You just picked the exact wrong person to prove your point.” Steve makes eye contact with her. “Since when do I lie to you? About anything?”

“You want me,” she states dubiously, tossing her head, shaking it as she questions him, as if even saying it at all is too much to be believed.

“Very much.”

“I find it hard to believe this is anything more than a seventy-year--”

Steve buries his hand in the curls at the back of her head and kisses her, pouring all of his longing into the sweep of his lips, coaxing her to respond. For all the time he’s wanted this, he’d always thought if he got the chance again, it would be like the first time. Unexpected, unplanned, uncomplicated, unrepeatable. Not like this. Not with ardor, affection, adoration.

Natasha shifts toward him after a few seconds, letting out a small noise and tilting her head to deepen the kiss. Her movement sparks the napalm in his blood, little explosions of pleasure that follow her hand as she grabs his shirt, dragging it up his back to bare it for her fingernails. Steve can’t help it, he thrusts up into the sweet heat of her thighs in his lap, even as she gasps her mouth open for him to taste her. Natasha pulls back and rips off her shirt.

“Touch me, please, Steve, touch me,” she begs, grabbing his hand from where he’s been gripping her hip like a lifeline.

“I--” he starts, completely forgetting what he was going to say as he watches her throw her head back as soon as he palms her breast, shifting his grip so he can trace his thumb across her nipple. “Ahhhh, fuck,” she groans. Steve dips his head to suck an open-mouthed kiss against her neck at the same time he uses both hands to circle his thumbs across her nipples again. The sound she makes in response is as resonant and aching as he’d always hoped it would be, from the outside.

“Do you believe me now?” he says, each word a kiss.

“I might need more proof. You could be very dedicated to my well-being,” she laughs. It’s throaty and sexual, and he surprises her and even himself by the way he abandons what he was doing to hold her down as he grinds his hardness against her yet again, blatant and demanding. “Yeah?” she encourages.

“Yeah,” he pants, screwing his eyes shut to settle the overpowering urge he has to wreck everything about himself and the team, rip off their clothing and rut with her. He wants to keep this, and to hell with Banner and his reticence.

“So, you’re saying…” she dangles, reaching down and unbuttoning his pants, taking down the zipper, and lifting herself up long enough for him to yank everything down in a frantic rush. Steve can barely believe what’s happening until it happens-- she takes him in her hand at the same time she curls her other hand around his neck to haul him down for a filthy kiss. Every single nerve ending in his body is a conductor for her electricity, and the two of them together prompt a chemical reaction that send his pleasure centers into overdrive.

With a herculean effort, Steve pulls back from the kiss, cupping her face with one hand, the other fisted in the fleece beneath them, channeling all of his excess energy and desperation. He’s not in control, and he knows he could hurt her by accident.

“Was supposed to be about you,” he manages to say between a gasp and a groan at the way she’s working him with expert movements.

“Are you kidding? You should see your face,” Nat says in that rich, sensuous voice of hers. “Very complimentary. But how did you keep this from me?”

Steve drops his head, overcome, when she leans over and tongues his nipple in a completely unexpected, devastating move. “S’wrong,” he slurs. “Ahhhhh, stop, stop, Natasha, you-- stop.” She stills her hand slowly, easing him into the loss of it, and it’s so thoughtful, so thorough, so Natasha, that the action cuts the last threads that held his heart back from its inevitable fall.

“Bet you never thought you’d try to stop me,” she whispers in his ear, hooking her chin over his shoulder for a second, her various movements inexplicable until suddenly they’re not, she’s naked and sinking onto him, and Steve’s gone, he’s gone, his back arching, hips chasing her heat and tightness.

“Shhh, shhh,” Nat reassures. Her hands smooth over his back, his arms, his face, and finally he can open his eyes and see her, sweat-touched and exquisite.

“Natasha,” Steve whispers, shaking his head. He has never felt so clumsy and imprecise in his life. “I wanted to make you see,” he tries to explain. She’s given him everything he’s wanted, freely, somehow, but his goal had been to tear apart her insecurities, not force her to support him in exposing his own.

“You did. You are,” she says, but he shakes his head, noses a caress onto her shoulder.

“We’re all a mess in so many ways, the team,” Steve tells her, groaning as she tightens around him, seeking out her lips to taste the groan when he strokes his fingertips over her nipple. “Most of our strengths are outside-in. Yours is inside-out. You’re made of steel, coated in silk.”

“You always fuck so poetic?” she teases, but her eyes are luminous.

“Gotta get it all out now,” Steve whispers, seeing his peak on the horizon and craving as well as dreading it.

“Steve,” she warns, and he shakes his head.

“You know I’m right.”

Natasha leans over, kisses his neck just under his ear, and whispers, “That why you haven’t really touched me?” she challenges.

“I’m inside you, that’s not enough?” he groans, knowing it’s not, feeling caught out, hating and loving the way she absolutely knows him. His avoidance had been subconscious, but she’s a master of that domain.

Oh my, is she.

Natasha sets a hand on his shoulder and caresses him all the way down to his hand, pulling him, unresisting, to just above where they’re joined.

“Touch me, Steve. Make it so every time I see your hands I remember this. If I can’t keep you, if this is it, if this is all I get, give me that to remember this by,” she whispers.

“Fuck, Natasha, you can’t just--” he groans, so close to coming his vision is whiting out, but she stills her hips.

“You kept this from me,” she says.

She’s right.

As penance goes, it’s appropriate.

Steve turns his hand, lightly probing and swirling his fingers exactly where she wants him to. Her reaction rattles him to the core; Natasha had always struck him as an inherently sensual person, even if she only let small glimpses of that show at any given time, and rightly so. But even a light graze of his fingers against that sensitive part of her takes her apart. It’s wrecking to watch, and he craves the chance to see it over and over, again and again, in any and every possible way, even as his orgasm approaches exactly like the tiny death the poets call it.

“God, Steve, yes. Yes, fuck, please, please,” she babbles, her mouth pressed against his shoulder to muffle the noises just enough for propriety, or so he hopes. “Please, sweet-- ahhhhh!”

Because fate loves to give Steve just what he wants, they come apart at the same time, the cloying, clenching, glorious pleasure bearing down on him just as the woman he cares so much about shakes and shudders and begs in his arms.

They hold still for long enough that each of them has to know it’s just to prolong the inevitable.

“Count of three?” Natasha finally whispers.

“No need,” Steve says, and they slowly pull apart, avoiding eye contact. He’s trying to decide which shirt to soil when she brings him a package of non alcoholic baby wipes.

“Thanks,” he says.

“No, thank you,” Natasha says. It’s sincere, he realizes. No sarcasm, no innuendo, no amusement, just a sincere, heartfelt gratitude that feels simultaneously like a slap and a caress.

“You’re important to me,” he mutters, pulling his clothes back on.

“Right back at you, Cap,” Natasha tells him. It’s the transition, he can sense it. He settles back onto the sheet, facing her this time, a tiny concession to plausible deniability. She’s perceptive enough to catch it, of course, but they’ve got a shared secret, now, and that’s just the way things are. There’s just one more thing to do, one final rip through a single word written on a mostly torn piece of paper.

“Don’t give up on Banner,” Steve tells her, his tone as kind and matter-of-fact as he can make it, right now. “Today was probably the worst day of his life. People don’t make rational decisions on days like that.” The smile feels bitter and truthful on his lips.

Natasha’s lying on her side, lifted those few inches above him by the height of the cushions she’s resting on top of. Her expression had been sober, maybe even sad, but on hearing those words, a tiny fraction of lightness crosses her face. One corner of her lip turns up.

“Really?”

Steve’s paper metaphorically flutters to the floor, the bold block letters of the word landing imprecisely, but readable. UNRE QUITED, it reads. The meaning of the first four letters of the second half are not lost on him.

“Really.”

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