#And u can bet Steve trying to use all the dirty tricks to get a taste of that pie.Like kissing Danny many times while all sweaty.

[quietlyimplode]

oh ok! i was wondering if u could do something that’s sort of like a rewrite of the scene in winter soldier where steve grabs natasha and says she messed up the mission and it like triggers her and she starts panicking and thinking that steve is gonna hurt or punish her for it and he has to talk her down and apologize and he learns a little about her past with the red room. i’d also prefer for it to just be a friendship dynamic! ty again and once again i adore ur fics

(Hey Anon, this is 3/4 of what you asked for, thanks for the prompt, and your words, it’s actually been really fun to write and take my mind off things this week.

In other news, if you know a health care worker, please give them a hug. Things are rough.)

Warnings for vomiting, alluded to sexual assault (not graphic but a thought is there), canonical violence.

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Flicker Beats

He looks smaller, she thinks, as he walks to the vending machine.

Maybe that’s what everyone looks like when they’ve had the wind knocked out of their sails and their world turned upside down.

She cares though. With Fury dead, Maria gone to ground, and Pierce in charge, her alliances on this side of the Atlantic is narrowing far more than she feels comfortable.

Natasha sighs, the usb heavy in her pocket as she chews her gum and waits for Steve to realise that it’s gone.

She’d laugh, if the situation wasn’t so dire, at his confused look. She chews absentmindedly walking forward when it becomes clear there’s no one following him.

As the gum pops his face turns from confusion to anger and she doesn’t quite expect the violence that eventuates next.

The force of his hands pushing her backwards through the door and up against the wall makes her suck in a breath. Her hands instinctively move to his arms, but it’s no use against his power.

“Where is it?”

The anger is palpable as he keeps his hands pushed against her. There’s surprise on her lips and searching in her eyes as she tries to see how far he’s willing to push her.

Instinctively, she knows she can’t overpower him to get out of this room, but trickery words will save her.

Disguised with the truth; she tells him only what he needs to know.

“Safe.”

Anger is written all over his face.

He’s already done more than she thought he would, and to think she marked him as safe.

It’s wrong.

“Do better,” he growls.

God knows she’s trying.

“Where did you get it?” She bites back.

It’s obvious, only Fury would have it.

“Why would I tell you?”

Why, indeed.

He tightens his hand on her and she winces, allowing it to pass onto her face. He misses it and she ploughs on.

She can do this, she’s done harder interrogations in more trying circumstances.

“Fury gave it to you, why?”

She searches his face but all she sees is annoyance and enmity.

“What’s on it?”

He answers her question with a question so she meets it with indifference.

“I don’t know.”

She shrugs. It’s the wrong move and it takes all of her training to remain stoic.

“Stop lying.” Steve’s voice is low,

“I only act like I know everything, Rogers.”

He looks behind him.

Interesting.

He’s not as stupid as he looks in his rage, he knows they need to move, even if it’s instinctual.

“I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn’t you?” he accuses.

“Well it makes sense,”

“The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you…”

His hands tighten around her arms as he picks her up and pushes her against the wall again. Natasha can feel the bruises on her ribs now, the ones on her arms likely to be worse as all the breath leaves her body.

“I’m not going to ask you again,” he spits.

She can smell his breath. She wants to tell him to stop as he towers over her.

She’s lived with angry men all her life. The trick is to not meet anger with anger, you need to meet anger with surprise.

Angry men can see placation, and usually it derides into more violence.

There’s hand marks on her ribs, probably her back, now her wrists and arms. The last time she was bruised simultaneously in those three positions…there’s a sense of dissociation that threatens.

Hate burns in her, as she brings her shoulders up to protect her neck. If he goes for her throat, she can creat enough space to defend herself.

She needs to get this done.

Interrogation is easy, she tells herself.

“I know who killed Fury.”

There’s surprise on his face as he loosens his grasp. She keeps talking. He won’t understand anyway.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists, the ones the do call him The Winter Soldier.” She pauses, looking at him intensely.

There’s no reaction as she names him, but she feels the cold of her childhood move through her body.

“He’s credited with over a dozen assassinations in the last fifty years,” she pauses. It sounds absurd, but realistically so is the notion of Captain America in her opinion.

“So he’s a ghost story.”

He says it as a statement, and it’s not her words but she can see how he thinks that.

Ghost stories have a funny way of coming from truth.

Finally he drops his hands away from hers but his body is still too close.

If it’s proof he needs, it’s written on her body.

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control and went straight over a cliff.”

He’s silent so she continues.

“I pulled us out, but The Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him.”

Natasha lifts her top and shows her scar of survival. Clint had said that they could reduce the keloid scar.

But she didn’t want to. She always wanted to reminder of how hard she fought to survive, the purposeful decision to live and not give up.

It’s one of her favourite scars, and as she shows it, she feels like she’s giving something of herself away.

“Soviet slug. No rifling.”

She pauses and disarms him with a smile.

“Bye bye bikinis.”

There’s more inches between them now, a more comfortable distance as he jokes with her.

“Yeah, I bet you looks terrible in them now.”

She feels she should warn him. As angry as she is at him, there’s pity too. Little tin soldier is not a spy.

“Going after him is a dead end. I know, I’ve tried.”

This needs to end, she decides.

Holding up the usb she looks him dead in the eye.

“Like you said, he’s a ghost story.”

Natasha feels sick as he takes the usb from her.

“Well, Let’s find what the ghost wants.”

She wishes that was it. Steve steps back again, and it’s finally enough room for her to leave.

Adrenaline fading, Natasha makes it a point to push past him, and stalk off, trying to gather herself. She hears him call after her but the shaking has become too pronounced for her to stop.

If he’d kept his hands on her, he would have felt it and she would have been pushed further back into the past.

Shaking body, men’s hands holding her down. Her vision whites out as she runs her hand on the wall, feeling for the door.

She can still feel Steve’s hands on her.

It wasn’t his intention.

Hands holding her, bruising her.

She makes it into the next room before vomiting into the wastes bin.

A hospital. She’s in the hospital.

She finds her knife and holds it tight. The hilt in her hand and the blade held backwards against her wrist ready to do damage.

Anger pulses at being caught unaware of his strength and rage.

It occurs to her, that she hates hospitals, but not before another wave of nauseousness washes over her and she vomits again.

The memories of recovery from Odessa, match with memories from being strapped in a cot after graduation. The nauseousness rolls into breathlessness and Natasha’s vision blurs as the last two days catch up to her.

She can’t remember what she last ate, what she’s even throwing up as her mouth feels acidic.

She hears her name as his frame appears in the door way and her sense of danger spikes. She can’t handle him pushing her against the wall again, she can’t even formulate sentences.

“No.”

As soon as the words leave her mouth, her body moves faster than her mind.

She holds her knife up in front of her face, elbow bent and blade glistening.

Steve stops, taking her in.

He heard her vomit.

He sees the imperceptible body tremors that flow through her.

And now, as the knife is protectively in front of her, her top rises and he sees bruises; his hand prints where he’s pushed her against the wall.

Wide eyes, he swallows his guilt and raises his arms in submission.

Taking a step forward, she takes a step back.

“I’m sorry, Natasha, sometimes I…” he runs his hands through his hair, wondering how to tell her that he doesn’t know his own strength, that sometimes there’s no control.

It’s not the time though.

“Are you okay?” He opts for.

He notices her glazed eyes, that her breath is coming out in huffs. There’s a wild look as she backs up again.

“Natasha?” He tries again, because he doesn’t know what this is. He’s only seen her as the wise cracking shield agent, that he’s a little scared of.

He knows the rumours of course, and the shear bad-assery she’s known for, but this; this is something else.

It looks like his asthma attacks, or his panic attacks that Bucky used to coach him through.

The knife is still high as another appears, and for Steve it feels like she’s done a magic trick, making it appear out of nowhere.

He thinks all she sees is threat when she looks at him. Which, given the way he just treated her, is a fair assessment.

“Natasha, it’s me, Steve. I’m going to sit down, okay?”

He doesn’t know if she’s heard him, but he perches himself on the empty hospital bed. He needs to make this right, but how can he when he’s the source of her panic and pain?

Natasha backs to the wall and stares at him, the knives stay held in her hands as she lowers herself into a squat.

What has he done? He shouldn’t have touched her. Shoved her.

Yelled at her.

Pushed her.

His mother would be so disappointed in him.

He feels like a bully.

Sliding off the bed, he make it to the floor. He sits just out of reach of her.

“My mother taught me better,” he mutters.

He can hear her try to get her breath under control, he can hear when she holds it, and then again when she lets it go. He’s never seen her look this shaken.

And it’s his fault.

“I used to get into fights a lot,” he admits, “usually with people bigger than me.”

He glances over at her and sees she’s watching him intently. The knives glint.

“I used to think, that if I could fight them, I could show them, I’m not afraid.”

He’s not really sure where he’s going with this, but he thinks if he can keep talking, he can help her; maybe undo what he’s just done.

“I never won, always got my ass whooped… beat,” he pauses, looks over again and smiles a self deprecating smile.

Natasha’s knees are drawn to her chest now, eyes watching him closely still, both knives still in her hands.

“When I got strong,” he knows it’s not the right way to word it, but he can’t think of how to articulate it.

“I’m strong. I forget,” he admits, “that my arms hold strength, that the force is more, and that I have to think before touching.”

Steve adjusts his position and matches hers, knees to chest and looking ahead.

“It’s no excuse. I’m honestly so sorry.”

Whatever he walked in on, whether it was panic or pain or the last couple of days catching up with her, he truly feels that it’s his fault.

The need to protect her feels greater than his anger at the situation that has presented itself now.

He gets up, and the knife is still in her hand as she looks at him warily. Leaving the room, he approaches the vending machine and gets two bottles of water.

Venturing back into the room, he sits back in the same position and hand her a bottle.

When she doesn’t take it, he sets it down gently, and opens the other one, cracking the seal and taking a sip.

She sees his gesture and it’s not lost. He’s now seen a side of her that maybe only Clint knows.

She hates it. Feels the need to expand on what it was he saw, that it’s not wholly his fault, but he is the catalyst.

Technically, she should be able to handle a beating.

She just never thought bruises would come from him, however unintended.

“I always won,” Natasha says quietly.

He turns to face her, and finds only one knife, glinting dangerously as she plays with it. He didn’t see where the other one went, but maybe it’s progress that they’re down to one knife.

The motion is unconscious, he thinks, as the knife seems to move around her hands, possessed.

Natasha breathes.

She uses the knife as a regulator, moving it around her hand, giving her brain something to focus on, to be grounded to.

He’s said sorry and she believes him. Her brain supplies that he’s not to be trusted, and she takes it into consideration.

She needs him; whatever is happening.

Shield is falling.

Shield has fallen.

Natasha’s world is coming apart at the seams.

If she was working for the bad guys, then all the good she’s done…

It’s an existential crisis in her mind that she can’t deal with right now. Just like the death of Fury. She boxes it up and deals with the crisis at hand.

She needs him.

She doesn’t care how self serving that sounds.

Swallowing hard and clutching her knife, she continues.

“Where I was raised, there was no room for losing. You either won or you died.”

She doesn’t need see him to know his reactions.

Steve shifts and it takes all of her not to move away.

“You’re not the first person to push me against a wall,” she tells him, and this time watches his face. There’s guilt, regret, and she thinks she sees shame;

It’s good. His apology is likely genuine. It also means she can use it.

“Nat…”

“I’m okay,” she tells him, and hides the knife.

She is, because she tells herself she is.

They need to get on with things; use the usb before the information is useless. Fury gave them this, and she doesn’t trust Steve to do it alone.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

She sighs and makes her body relax.

“We need to get to the Apple store.”

Her mind is ten steps ahead of his, and she doesn’t have time or energy to break it down.

“How do you feel about stealing a car?”

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(Comments and reassurances that I haven’t completely missed the mark writing Steve would be great lol). Thanks for reading. <3