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pastel-peach-writes · 16 days ago

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Switched Roles | Natasha x Nurse!Reader

╰┈➤ PLOT: Now in a committed relationship with each other, you and Natasha have found your groove. You, now being a practicing nurse in the Compound, and she, the patient who seems to never get enough of you. What happens when you're the one hurt this time?

╰┈➤ WARNINGS: Not Proofread, Second POV, No Use of Y/n, Nurse! AU, No Cursing, Usage of the Term Girlfriend/Girlfriends/Partner, But Otherwise Gender-Neutral Reader

(A/N): This is technically a sequel and/or another part to "Learn To Take A Break", my Natasha x Reader Nurse! AU but you don't need to read the three parts to understand what's going on here!

⍣ ೋ Enjoy!⍣ ೋ

You glanced around the kitchen of the Compound, the open and sleekly designed room empty and as still as the trees that surrounded the facility. It was only a matter of time before the Avengers got back from their mission that ended a little over an hour ago.

You wanted to grab a quick sneak of some snacks in the kitchen. You had your own kitchen and mini fridge on the nurse's side of the Compound, but the Avengers had way better snacks. It wasn't filled with all that new-age health junk Steve and Clint tried to get you to eat.

Sorry, guys. But the all-wheat bars with just a hint of fruit flavoring isn't enough to keep me satisfied for the day.

And also, you were out of your good snacks anyway. You just need to find time to go grocery shopping, but why go grocery shopping when a perfectly stocked kitchen is right here? And it's not like this would be considered stealing. You live here! Just... in a different wing... on the opposite end of the campus– Whatever! You're hungry, and you want a good snack.

That shouldn't be a crime.

You peered into the cupboard, the white shelves filled from ceiling to floor with all kinds of snacks. You had your classic chips, your wacky flavored chips, sweet treats, healthy treats, all the cereal you could imagine, and some Trader Joe's specials Wanda liked to dabble in from time to time.

What that woman finds in that store is amazing. You were always asking for her snacks whenever she came walking by eating.

At the top shelf resided your favorite snack of all, your secret pleasure, Zoom O's. They were bite-sized pockets of goodness that had a sweet yet not overwhelming taste to them, with the perfect amount of salt to combat the sweetness. The texture, at first, has a satisfying crunch from the thin icing layer before it turns into chewy goodness.

You had no clue where the Avengers found this snack. You tried every store within a 100-mile radius and even checked online but you haven't had any luck. Given the box's slim yet geometric design with a futuristic blue color and flashy font, you could guess that this snack wasn't found on this world. Or maybe even, this universe.

Turning to the door where there was typically a step-ladder to reach the highest shelf, you found yourself staring at a blank wall instead. Your brows furrow in confusion as you search the pantry and even close the door to see if the step-ladder was on the other side but to no avail.

Where was this step-ladder, and why wasn't it in its rightful spot?

You could stand here and blame every single person that resides in the Compound for not putting the item back where it belongs, or you could take the initiative and do some out-of-the-box thinking.

You nod to yourself, a short smile on your lips.

Yeah. You were gonna do some out-of-the-box thinking.

The shelves are sturdy enough to withstand the weight of a god and the strength of a genetically modified green monster; it could definitely take your weight.

Your socked feet find the lip of the bottom shelf as you pull yourself up to grab onto a higher one. You grunt, eyeing the contained snacks by your feet and making sure you weren't touching them. Once your space from the food was as far as you could get it without slipping off, you reached your arm up to the box of Zoom O's only to find that you're still a few inches short.

The back of your throat possesses a grumble before you step onto another shelf and repeat the same steps as before. Currently, you feel as if you are rockclimbing, which wasn't too bad unless you count the lack of harness and mats to be "dangerous", but you're fine!

You're in the Avengers Compound, for Pete's sake, the safest place on Earth!

Reaching your arm once more, you still find yourself a few inches short from the box. The arm gripping onto the small shelf at your chest was screaming from a sort of break from all the muscle tension you were currently possessing.

Come on... Almost... Almost...

The slam of a door a few feet away and the loud arrival of Tony Stark and the others startles you out of your concentration. Your arm and hand finally gives up on keeping you steady on the shelf and your feet slip out from under you, sending you falling back onto the floor way faster than you indented.

You brace yourself for a long fall but because the fall was shorter, you land wrong on your knee and almost end up twisting your ankle. Thank goodness you didn't, otherwise--

The sudden tripping over a plastic jar of jam sends you tumbling into the pantry door. Your only hope to catch yourself is the handle, but you try and stand yourself up, the handle moves and you lose your grip.

You nearly faceplant the floor before using your hands and knees to catch yourself. The only downside to falling hands and knees is that now the palms of your hands sting and the knee, the one that you landed wrong on before, banged against the floor. You groan out in pain, the feeling of hitting your knee familiar to hitting your funny bone.

You could see the bruise now.

This is what you get for trying to sneak snacks from places you weren't supposed to. You should've been an adult and gone to the store like everyone else. It's not your fault the store was at least an hour away from the Compound. You chose to live on campus; that was your issue.

"Whoa!" Scott commented as he entered the kitchen. He wore a blue flannel, regular jeans, and he smelt of regular soap not like must and sweat like the Avengers did when they returned. There's no way he showered that fast. "You okay?"

You pull yourself up to your feet with a hobble, an embarrassed smile at your lips as you try to reassure him. "Yes, I'm fine. Just misstepped. How long have you been here? Did you not go on the mission with the others?"

Your attempt at redirecting the conversation was successful but trying to play off your aching knee and now ankle you swore was blowing up in your sock seemed to be the challenge.

You didn't know that mentioning Scott not being on a mission with the others and him not even knowing about the mission was going to be the cause for a never-ending conversation about his feelings.

You didn't talk to Scott much due to conflicting schedules, but boy. When this man speaks, he speaks. It took Natasha coming into the room with Tony to get him to stop talking.

"Hey, Miniscule Man," Tony called out to him, much to Scott's frown. "Could you not talk my nurse's ear off? Thanks. We need them down in their office, where they should be–" Tony gives you a pointed glare to which you innocently whistle and look away. Natasha chuckles softly at your action before Tony continues, "–to do an after-mission check-up and analysis to make sure none of my guys are hurt."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Scott waves Tony off in an apologetic way. "Totally. I was just making sure they were alright and then we started talking and– am I not a part of the team, by the way?" He gestures questioningly towards Tony. The other man only groans in response. "Because I heard that you guys were on a mission and I was like, 'hey, I'm a part of this team too so I should be on the mission', right?"

As Scott continues to ramble on in a conversation Tony can't seem to get away from, Natasha steps over to you with a playful smile on her face. "Come on, My Nurse. Let's get you downstairs and talk about why you're up here in the kitchen and not in your office during hours."

Her voice had a teasing hint in it, her lips trying to suppress a smile but only for Tony's sake. If he wasn't already peeved off from how today's mission went, she wouldn't care about sparing his feelings and making the occasional joke.

You smile warmly at Natasha, your eyes meeting each other's as you both snake away from Tony and Scott and make your way back to your office.

As you two begin your journey down, your girlfriend can't help but notice how you're favoring your right side and trying to keep your face stoic when you're in obvious pain.

She'll mention it to you later, but for now, she wanted to see how far you were going to go in masking your pain.

Just weeks ago, you called her out for doing the very same thing you're doing. She couldn't help but find the irony and humor in this otherwise serious situation.

"So, you gonna talk to me or are you going to let us walk the entire time in silence?" Nat chimed from beside you. "Because I'm perfectly fine with walking in silence. However, you typically ask a lot of questions when we come back from assignments."

You bite the tip of your tongue, both out of embarrassment and suppressed pain. "I do not," you croak.

She raises a brow at the delivery of your sentence but doesn't say anything about it. "Oh, you don't?" She chuckles to herself. "You always ask how it was, if we're okay, if the people are okay, and if anyone needs immediate attention. Actually," Natasha's head tilts in amusement while a snarky smile sits on her face, "I don't seem to remember a time where you didn't ask us questions."

You would be defending yourself and indulging in this witty conversation with her if you couldn't feel your literal knee plate move with each step you make and your ankle pulse.

"Ha ha. You're so funny, Natasha," you dryly express.

Natasha hummed, satisfied with your answer. Out of the corner of her eye, she can your face twist with pain. Her green eyes travel down your legs, more specifically on the leg you're not favoring, and she takes notice of your hand just barely covering the bad knee.

"Okay," Natasha exhales. She stops her movement to look at you with her arms crossed over her chest like a mom. You stop moments after, barely masking the soft hop you had to do to face her. She makes a gesture to your knee. "What did you do?"

"Nothing." You shrug at her. "I didn't do anything."

She scoffs a chuckle, though there was no humor behind the exhale of laughter. "You expect me to believe that? You're limping and holding your knee like a high school football player after a tough game."

You snort. "I don't think that's a fair comparison."

She shrugs. "Doesn't need to be. You're hurt." She steps closer to you, carefully analyzing your legs and how you move as you step—er, hobble—further back.

"Natasha," you mutter, trying to give her actions awareness. Your words fall upon deaf ears. She keeps walking towards you, your proximity threatening to close each time until you hobble backwards. Eventually, she had you backed against the hallway wall. Her eyes remained glued to your legs.

You grunt in slight pain.

Your back pressed against the concrete wall. Your heel and Achilles now throbbing since you scuffed them against the wall as you were backed into it.

"You're hurt." Natasha's voice sliced through the air, her tone firm. Her green eyes flicker up to hers, and while you expected some sort of disappoint in them, you couldn't find that at all. Instead, you found concern and a hint of frustration. "Why would you try to hide that you're hurt?"

You give her a weak shrug. "I didn't think it was anyone's business. It literally just happened a few minutes ago."

Natasha opened her mouth to scold you but decided to listen to your full story before assuming the worst and so, she took a deep breath. "Okay," she strains. "Why didn't you say anything before our walk?"

"Again, I didn't think it was anyone's business. It's just my knee and ankle, okay? I gotta get these evaluations done and then I can tend to my needs if I still need to."

The redhaired woman sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose while the other hand rested on her hip. "Should I remind you that you're a nurse? You, out of all people, should know some things can't be ignored."

"Okay, well, this one thing can. I have a job to do."

You understand Natasha's concern, but you couldn't bring yourself to listen to her statements. You were embarrassed by the way you injured yourself. If someone were to see you icing your knee or walking in somewhere with a wrapped ankle and/or crunches, questions would arise. Questions you really, really didn't want to answer.

Imagine how much of a fool you'd look like telling literal superheroes who survive aliens, falling buildings, and who knows what else that you hurt yourself by trying to get a snack. It was humiliating. Your best bet right now is to ignore the cries of pain your body's making and tend to them later.

After dark.

When everyone, especially your girlfriend, is fast asleep.

"How can you expect to do your job when you literally can't walk?" Natasha retorts. You snort at her, hands on your hips and an interesting smug smile on your face for someone who was in pain mere seconds ago.

"I have a really cool swirly chair."

Natasha deadpanned and met your eye only to find a playful glint in them. The same playful glint you gave her when you made a terrible pun in the examination room the first day you met.

She hated yet loved how your smile made her feel. How she wanted to cup your cheeks or pinch at them teasingly as if she was a grandma. How she wanted to shake her head with a smile she failed to hide, even despite her best efforts. Or how she wanted to place kisses on your cheeks just to make you smile wider.

The training she endured in the Red Room did nothing to prepare her for your smile. Nothing at all.

You know Natasha too well to not notice her own smile trying desperately to break through while she averts her gaze to the side with a snort. The apples of her cheeks puff up just ever so slightly, the beauty mark on her cheekbone making her look cuter than she already was.

"You're a dork," she finally says while letting a smile seep through.

"Yeah, I know. You like it, though."

She can't help the laugh that escapes her. "So," she says, laughter at the end of the word as she crouches down to your knee and applies a gentle pressure around the bone. When you wince, she eases but continues to feel around. "I'm going to ask you again, and I want an actual answer this time. What did you do?"

Her persistence wasn't going to go away. When Natasha Romanoff wants to know something or get something done, she gets it done.

It's an admirable quality until it's used on you.

You groan slightly as she presses a tender part on your knee. She mutters a "sorry" before adjusting so you can sit on the floor with your legs in front of you.

She slowly bends your bad leg and straightens it as she watches you both for an expression of pain and an answer to her question.

"I may or may not have landed wrong when trying to get something. And then tripped, maybe rolled my ankle, and banged my knee against the floor as I tried to grab the door handle for stability."

Natasha shakes her head fondly at you. "You should be more careful. Why would you grab onto a handle to support you? All the handles here are janky."

Your knee eases as she lets the leg lay flat on the floor again, and you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. She slides across the floor, not caring if she was getting her pants dirty since they were already dirty from the mission. She didn't have time to shower once they came back.

When Tony asked Friday if you were in your office and the AI said no, she immediately volunteered to go find you. Well, more like she told Tony that she was coming with him to find you, even after Friday told him about your exact whereabouts shortly after saying you weren't in your office.

She wanted to see you. She wanted to see what you were up to and to be evaluated first while everyone else took showers because she loved the way you looked at her when you were doing your necessary examinations. It may be selfish, but being selfish isn't a crime.

And yeah, maybe she should've showered so she didn't smell like city buildings, sweat, and ash and have dirt marks on her face, but she didn't care about that. Thank goodness she didn't; otherwise, who would be here to take care of you in this hallway?

"Yeah. All that money and Stark still can't invest in good things like doorknobs," you snicker. Natasha also snickers, now by your feet and just now noticing that you don't have any shoes on.

"Where...?"

"Oh," you chuckle a little. "I had to take my shoes off to get something. Don't worry about it."

Her face squishes in confusion, head tilted and brow raised. "You had to take your shoes off to get something in the kitchen?" she incredulously asks.

"Yeah," you give her an infuriating vague answer with an "innocent" smile. That same smile Stark calls you out on when you try to play the innocent nurse. "As I said, don't worry about it."

All this vagueness that surrounded your answers was really getting on Natasha's nerves. The "maybe's", the "I'm fine's" when you're totally not fine; it was all ticking her off, and all she wanted was a clear answer from you.

"You know," she said as she peeled back some of your sock to expose your bare ankle. "Even if you don't tell me what happened now, I can ask Friday to give me footage from when you fell, and I would find out then."

As you suspected, your ankle was swollen, but that was the least of your worries at the moment.

"So," she moves her head in a way that would fling her braid to the other side, "you can either tell me now and spare yourself the embarrassment, or I can find out through video where I wouldn't hold back my reaction and share with the team." Her eyes narrow towards you, as if she dares you to choose the latter. "Your choice."

Well, with an ultimatum like that, how could you choose the latter?

You let out a sigh of defeat, and Natasha grows giddy on the inside.

Finally, after all the huffs, puffs, and beating around the bush, she was going to get the answer and hear how all of this went down.

When you tell her how you received such injuries, she deadpans again, her face unreadable this time. You couldn't find the hint of a smile, the processing of information, nada. Just green eyes staring back at you with hooded lids.

The silence as her eyes bore into yours felt like forever. Like you were frozen in judgement and you wouldn't be released into the present time until Natasha deemed you as ready.

She puts the sock back around your heel and ankle, nodding to herself as her tongue pokes the inside of her cheek. "Okay."

You lean forward, hanging onto the words you were expecting her to say, but they never come. "'Okay'?" you echo. "That's it? That's all you're going to say?"

Natasha wraps your arm around her shoulder, and she pulls you to your feet. She moves your body so you're leaning onto her as you two continue your journey to your nurse's office. "Well, what do you want me to say, Nurse?" she chimes. You can basically taste the tease coming. "That you were so smart for that 'out-of-the-box thinking' you called yourself doing just to fall and bust your butt? All over a box of Zoomieo's I might add?"

You whine. "They're called Zoom O's. What the heck is a 'zoomieo'?"

She snorts. "I don't know. You tell me since you wanted it so badly." Natasha can't help the laugh that comes from her belly. She tried to be polite and not laugh about your injury to your face, but the situation was too funny not to.

Besides, she's not laughing at you. She's laughing with you.

You know, for when you look back and laugh about this situation in the future? Yeah. She's just getting a head start.

Luckily, the rest of the journey to your office wasn't as far and leaning onto her side definitely made time go by faster, so you don't have to listen to her laughing and endure the embarrassment for long.

She sits you down on the examination bed despite your pleas to sit in your chair. You watch as Widow effortlessly moves around the room, going into the correct cabinets and drawers for the medical supplies she needs.

"How many times are you in here?" you ask, astonished at how well she knew your system.

"Not much at all." She shrugs with a single-use ice pack and ankle wrapping tape in her hands. "I'm just very observant." Taking her seat in the chair, she scoots forward until she's right in front of your legs. "And when I like something, I tend to keep my eyes on it." She gives you a flirty smile you don't dare to look away from before she moves your sock again and tends to the injury.

You don't know where she learned how to tend to someone like this, but you were grateful she did. Although your job is to tend to people and you could tend to your own injuries in your sleep, it felt nice every now and then to be cared for. You were sure Natasha felt the same.

"Okay, now I need you to ice this until the swelling goes down and keep this compressed." She gestures to your now-wrapped ankle with a wide smile. She twirls across the office, still in your chair, to where you keep the ice packs and comes back with another one. "Same with your knee. Ice it. I didn't feel or see any swelling, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be sore."

"And what about yourself, Miss. Widow?" You hum as she comes back to you. She pops the single-use ice pack and shakes it to get the fluids moving. Once the sounds of liquids sloshing around turns into ice sloshing around, she presses the pack to your knee.

"What about me?"

"Well, don't you and the team need some tending to? I can't do that if I'm icing."

"Oh," she chuckles through a smirk, "so now you listen to me." You playfully roll your eyes before she continues. "Don't worry about us. No one is really hurt from today. Tony's just a little pissed off and wanted to make sure we didn't have smoke in our lungs. That's something all the robots around here can detect and fix. Right now, I'm all about taking care of you."

Smitten and bashful, you smile to yourself. "Okay... and that smell of smoke in your hair?"

"Ain't nothing a shower can't fix, sweetheart." She pats your good knee twice before rising from the chair and cleaning up the mess she made. "I'm gonna take you to your room and then after I shower, I'm going to check up on you."

Again, Natasha moves around your office as if she was the one that built it brick-by-brick and organized it from medical supply to medical supply. You knew Natasha had a nurturing nature to her, yet you never thought you would be the one to receive it. Not in a million years, not even in daydreams.

As she finishes up her cleaning and sanitizing, her back to you, your heart can't help but swell by the gestures and the things she did for you today.

You knew your relationship was more than nurse/patient, and being each other's partner definitely aided in that, but after what she did today, your relationship status finally felt real.

You were Natasha Romanov's girlfriend and she was yours.

"Do you need anything else from me in here?" she asked, removing her jacket to reveal the black tank top she had on underneath. You had to pull your gaze away from her toned arms, not wanting to get caught staring as you did once before, though seeing them was always a treat.

"No," you reply, voice barely above a grateful whisper. "Thank you."

She slings her jacket over her shoulders before doing the same with your arm and helping you off the exam bed. "No problem. Just don't pull a me, okay? If we're going to be partners and work together, there's only enough room for one of us to hide our injuries, and I prefer it not to be my cute nurse."

You can't help but snicker as joyful fleeting feelings fill up your stomach as the two of you walk to your together. "Yeah, yeah."

After feeling like you had to keep your injuries to yourself and convincing yourself that you would be the one doing all the nurturing in your romantic relationships, Natasha took no time in proving you wrong, and that was something you didn't dare to complain about.

FIN.

WC: 4,344

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