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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

hi, i have a request! nat and r decide to get married (will leave the timeline to you), it's a very small and private ceremony, only yelena, clint and his family, and a few other avengers are present. the ceremony gets crashed and r is kidnapped so they all go on a quest to save r. bonus points for nat kicking ass in a wedding dress/suit.

the bells

| natasha x reader |

warnings: violence, duh

a/n: didn’t do much of the marriage, sorry. but there is badassery. also r is a wimp because I can be realistic: if I got kidnapped I’d be blubbering for nat to save me within minutes

You can hear the music going outside: a slow, low tune. Yelena has left and it’s just you now, with your flower stems encased in your sweaty palms, your face ashy in the mirror.

It’s stupid that you’re nervous. Ridiculous. You close your eyes to banish your terrified reflection and think of Nat, picture her in her suit with flowers in her hair and that lopsided little grin on her face as she watches you walk towards her. All that stands between you and the rest of your life is a quarter-open door, where the sunlight is flooding in.

When you open your eyes, there’s a figure behind you in the mirror. The shock hits you before your thoughts can, and you open your mouth to scr

You blink sluggishly. The floor is pressed to your face, the nice white plush carpet. So soft. You could just sink into it, fall asleep.

Arms loop under your arms and heave you up, as easily as if you were made of paper. Your head droops. There’s a pain starting at the back of your skull, dull and throbbing. The world wheels this way and that and settles on the mirror. Through half-closed eyelids you see a thick face, a square jaw. A man, dragging you backwards across the floor.

The fear hits. You try to kick out, to stand, but your legs won’t move. You tighten your shoulder and slam your elbow back and up into the man’s jaw. He grunts and drops you and you hit the floor, burning your hands on the carpet. You try to scramble for the door but your body gives up and you tilt sideways, hands clawing. Your head hits the floor and you pass out.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

It’s the rumble of the engine that wakes you, and the unpleasant sensation of a tire jack sticking into your thigh. Your head aches harshly as you open your eyes, your vision a burst of blue and grey, so you shut them again.

You’ve been stuffed unceremoniously into the trunk of a car, your legs and arms at odd, painful angles. The car goes over a bump, jolting you up and whacking your head against the lid of the trunk,

“Ow!” you complain, shoving a hand out blindly and bracing yourself against the wall. You try to shift into a more comfortable position and your dress tugs, but doesn’t give. They’ve shut it in the mechanism, the morons.

Your head gives a particularly sharp ache and you moan wearily, half in pain and half in sympathy for the beautiful train of your dress, which must now be crumpled and smeared beyond recognition. The headache is splitting now. The man must really have hit you hard.

You dare to open your eyes again as the pain begins to recede, and see the dim red backglow of the tail lights, nothing else. You can smell that new-car smell, crisp in the carpet, fresh paint and lacquer.

You begin to search the interior with fumbling, shaking hands, but there’s nothing around except for you and that damn tire jack. You try to kick it away but you only succeed in bruising your foot. They haven’t bound your hands or legs. Maybe when they open the trunk you can leap up and bludgeon one of them to death with it. You’re certainly angry enough now that the realisation of what they’ve done to your dress and your wedding day has hit you, but the idea fades quickly. Your hands are heavy and clumsy with shock and pins and needles. Besides, Nat’s the one who does the bludgeoning, not you.

Nat. She’ll come. She’s probably on her way right now, incandescent with fury that some idiot in a nice new car has kidnapped her fiancee right before you were about to walk down the aisle. You imagine her perfect, beautiful face and the strong curves of her legs in her battle suit as she kicks down a door or bursts through a window and it makes you feel a little better. She really will be furious.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

The trunk lid lifts an eternity later, flooding your dark little prison with daylight. You scowl up, your eyes adjusting.

“You two, get her out,” someone says, and two pairs of hands reach in, grip you by the arms and legs and haul you painfully from the trunk. Your muscles cramped long ago, so you don’t put up a fight: you just wince and allow yourself to be lifted. A shoulder lands none too gently in your stomach and you’re draped like a sack, the concrete-laden ground swaying beneath you.

“Ow,” you protest halfheartedly. It’s more of a wheeze, and the shoulder beneath you refuses to acknowledge it.

You crane your neck up to look around. They must have been driving for ages - the low evening light glows over an abandoned parking lot surrounded by wispy fields and patches of barren earth. Middle of nowhere. Fucking great.

Following you are two more people, a woman with blonde hair scraped back into a low bun, and the thick-faced man, a blue bruise flung across his jaw. You remember him from the mirror, remember your elbow flying up to crack into his jawbone, and feel a little bloom of triumph. The shoulder beneath you, or the person belonging to the shoulder, lumps you a little more securely onto them. The movement jolts your diaphragm and you glare vaguely at the two following. Thye both ignore you.

The shadow of a doorway passes over you like a cloud. The concrete is intterupted by a thin plank of wood, a doorstep, and the floor becomes dirty, gap-toothed planks.

A few more steps in, echoing now in the building, and then you’re dumped down onto a hard plastic chair. Your wrists are grabbed by the blonde woman and cuffed behind you, the link passed between the chair legs. Your shoulders are tugged cruelly down and begin to ache almost immediately.

There are four people in the room: the three who pulled you from the trunk and a man in a three piece suit, talking urgently and quietly into his phone. The building is narrow and tall and grey with the dusk, and you hear a pigeon hoot softly up in the dim rafters.

Finally, the fear begins to seep in. So far the shock and the headache have been keeping it easily at bay, but now that you can see properly and these rough and angry people in their dark bulky clothing are eyeing you up and you’re really, completely helpless, there’s no way you can temper down your panic. You don’t know where you are. You don’t have your phone. What if Nat doesn’t find you? What if they kill you before she gets here?

A panicked sob climbs your throat and you gulp it back, your shoulders jarring with the effort. The handcuffs clank and one of the men shoots you a sharp look. Tears begin to fill your eyes.

The man in the suit ends his call, stows his phone away and looks over at you. His eyes are dark and wide, almost guileless. His expression settles.

“Easiest way to get her here is to bait her,” he says, and you know he’s not talking to you, even though his eyes remain fixed to yours. A single tear dribbles down your cheek. He hands his phone to the thick-faced man. “Serena, rough her up a little.” Those words hit you like a punch to the gut. You whip around to look at the blonde woman.

“Wait-” you say.

“Like how?” she asks, cutting you off. She studies you critically.

“I don’t care,” says the man. “Just don’t make her unrecognizable. And she’ll need to speak, to say the address.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” you say, the words hitting the air one after the other. They are your only protest, your only form of defence as you strain against the handcuffs. “Please don’t, please don’t-”

“Doesn’t matter too much,” the man adds. They’re all ignoring you. “We’ll kill her before Romanoff gets here. Hurry up.”

“What?” you say, alarmed. Serena circles you like a shark. The tears are coming freely now. You’ve never been hit before, but you know it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt. “Please-” you try, and Serena backhands you across the mouth. Your head whips to the side. Pain explodes over your lip like a burst balloon and you grunt from the force. She’s wearing a ring. Your head hanging sideways, you taste blood, your own tears creeping into the corners of your mouth.

Serena grabs your chin and yanks your head forwards. Your ears ring. Your mouth stings. She pulls a pistol from beneath her jacket and slams the butt of it into your cheekbone. You cry out, her hand keeping you from flying backwards, the pain blinding you.

When you blink away the fuzz of tears, she’s surveying you from above. “Give it a second for the bruises to come in,” she says. Your lip is split. There’s snot in your nose and you sniff messily. The third man, the one who’d slung you over his shoulder, is scribbling something down on a notebook balanced on his knee. The man in the suit is outside, his shadow slanting through the open doorway.

The thick-faced man raises the phone. “You done, Billy?”

“One second,” says Billy, the man with the notebook. He scribbles a couple more words, then rises and flips the notebook to face you. It’s covered in large lettering, but you still have to squint through your tears to read it. “Here are your cues,” he says, grinning. The first page says CRY LIKE YOU MEAN IT. You try to glare at him.

“Alright,” says the thick-faced man. The phone camera points at you like the barrel of a gun. Soon enough the barrel of a real gun is going to be staring you down, unless they choose to beat you to death. You imagine your body still tied to the chair, shot clean through the face, imagine Nat finding you like that, and you have the sudden, rising urge to throw up. Bile stings in the back of your throat and you start to cry properly.

“Good girl,” says Billy. “Lights, camera, action.” He flips to the next page. You hear the click of a video recording starting on the phone. You try to clear your vision. You’re no use to Nat if you’re just sobbing uncontrollably.

On the page is written an address. You stumble through it, your voice wavering, tears dripping from your chin and into your lap. Billy flips the page.

BEG HER TO SAVE YOU

Your face crumples, and the tears take over again, the panic rising until it’s clouding your mind, all you sense, all you know. They’re going to kill you. They’re not even going to give her a chance to save you. You are a throwaway. You don’t matter, not after this moment.

Serena cuffs you round the back of the head and you rock forward, your shoulders heaving. The ground is rough with dust under your heels. Strangely, it’s this that grounds you.

“Nat,” you say to the ground. Your voice is thick. “Please. Please come and get me.”

“To the camera,” grunts the man holding the phone. You raise your head. You must look awful. Billy flips another page.

FIVE MINUTES, STARTING NOW

“They said-” you try, and tears fill your eyes once more. “They said you have five minutes.” You take a breath that catches in your throat. Stalling will worsen it. Will give her less time. You close your eyes. “Starting now,” you say. A click. The recording has ended.

“Sent,” says the thick faced man. You stare dismally at the floor.

“Alright, timer’s on,” says Serena.

The next five minutes are the longest of your life.

You think about Natasha, your thoughts a constant stream of her. Yesterday evening when she kissed you goodnight. The first time you met. The second time you held hands and you could feel her gun callouses on her palms and you struck the little voice from your head that whispered is this a good idea? The wash of red hair down her bare back, and following the scar down her spine with the tip of your finger, listening to the unsteady hitch of her breathing.

You dredge up every memory of her, of her voice and laugh and the spark of her eyes and you clutch them tight and close your eyes, swaying in your seat.

Your head hurts.

An alarm tone goes, snapping you out of your thoughts. Your memories scatter like a thin cloud on a windy day. The thick-faced man switches it off with the press of him thumb. “Billy,” he says, and he tucks the phone away.

Billy pulls a gun from under his jacket. You want to cry: you should be begging right now, or screaming at them, grasping at some last words. But your head hurts. It hurts so much because it’s full of Nat. Because she takes up so much space, all that joy, all those memories, the fact that you’d almost had everything you’d ever wanted with her.

The gun is dark and matte and reflects no light. Serena steps away from you and you’re sitting there in the chair but really, you’re tied to a wire, swinging free in the air, straining to reach the ground. The fear turns everything white. You breathe and breathe and breathe, except it can’t have been that long, they would have shot you by now.

Billy is staring over his shoulder with a quizzical look on his face.

“Billy-” says Serena-

The man in the suit comes flying through the open door and hits the opposite wall. The gun goes off with a bang and you scream before you even realise that you’ve opened your mouth. The entire east wall explodes, shard of wood, dust ploughing the air. You feel the impact, feel it lift your feet from where they’re brushing the ground, and the chair tips and you fall backwards.

Even unconsciously, you brace for impact, for the crack of your skull on the floor. It never comes.

You open your eyes.

Nat hovers above you, one hand out gripping the back of the chair behind your head. Her lip is split and her hair washes across her forehead.

“Hey, baby,” she says. She sets the chair back on all four legs and pulls out a tiny blade to fiddle with your handcuffs. The dust is still everywhere, blinding you, but you can hear the whine and blast of Tony’s repulsors, the hiss of Sam’s wings and the thud of Clint’s arrows, even Yelena grunting somewhere, the shadow of her kicks rising up and up again.

The cuffs give and your arms swing down to your sides. You wince at the pain, even as Nat’s sliding an arm around your shoulders and under your knees, and hoisting you into the air. “Hold tight,” she says, warm in your ear, and she runs. Right through where the east wall used to be. You flinch, but instead of slamming into hard wood, the two of you emerge into the sunlight, and you hear Natasha’s feet hit the grass. You can tell she’s trying hard not to jog you around.

“You can put me down,” you say, watching your dust-coated dress trail flutter in the wind.

“I’ll put you down in the car,” Nat argues, obstinately.

“Okay,” you say, and you rest your head on her shoulder. When she reaches the car, she sets you down carefully in the passenger seat, and then, horror of horros, tries to pull away. You grab at her, fingers finding a collar: and that’s when you realise she’s still in her wedding suit. “Oh,” you say. There’s something about the blood on her lip and the strands of hair wild and loose from her braid and the flower, dust-covered but still perfectly arranged in her buttonhole that’s making your mouth water. What a ridiculous thing to be thinking, when you can still hear the sound of Tony beating a man into the ground with his metal fist not five metres away. “Don’t you look dashing,” you say. Nat grins, that sideways grin that’s on the verge of preening.

“And you look beautiful as always,” she says. You smile, and then your jaw twinges and you flinch at the pain and realise you really must look awful. Tears color your eyes again.

“I don’t really,” you say. Your eyes drift away from her morosely. “God, we’ll have to postpone for a bit, so I don’t look like John Wick on a bad day, won’t we?”

Nat grabs your face between her palms and twists your face gently towards hers. “I’d marry you if you were wearing a trash bag and had lost all your teeth,” she promises. “I’d marry you whatever you looked like. However many bruises.” She adds a perfunctory, “Don’t be so stupid.”

You sniff your tears back. “That’s an image,” you say, a smile appearing uncertain on your face. “Love you too.”

“Love you more.”

You smile at her idiotically.

And then you see him - the man in the suit, holding his jaw, staggering up behind her. Nat’s eyes flick to the wing mirror.

“Nat, look-” you say, but she’s already turned. He lunges at her and she blocks his punch with a forearm and slams the side of her hand into his throat. The man drops. His body hits the gravel with a heavy crunch.

“Let’s go,” Nat says. She closes your door gently, kicks the man aside and marches around to get in herself. Once she’s in and the door’s shut and the engine’s up, her hand settles on your knee, like she’s reminding herself that you really are there. Her face is stormy.

“Nat,” you say. She turns to you and her expression relaxes. “I’m okay,” you say.

“Good,” she replies. “I’m still going to kill him slowly, you know.” She squeezes your leg. You decide not to argue.

“I didn’t think the others were going to come,” you say, as the car moves off. Nat looks over at you for a quick second and you grin at her. “I know you could’ve taken all of them at once,” you say. She sits up a touch straighter in her seat and directs her smile through the windshield.

“Yeah. I could’ve.” Right turn, her hands crossing over on the wheel. The noise of the gravel vanishes, replaced by the relief of the silent tarmac road. “Everyone was coming, but they got there the quickest. I think I heard a sonic boom the second I told the others over the phone, actually.”

“When do you think we can get married again?” you ask, closing your eyes and setting your head back against the seat. You feel Nat shrug.

“Right now, if you want. I’ll marry you anywhere.”

So you marry in the courthouse of Austin, Pennsylvania, and the judge casts his aspersions on your bruises but Nat is holding your hand the whole way through, grinning like she’ll never stop, so you don’t care.

“You’re my wife now,” Nat says, when you step back out into the sunny air, her face still splitting with that dopey grin.

“No, you’re my wife,” you say, and the two of you bicker over it all the way to the car. Your smiles don’t drop.

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notes: tried to make it a tiny bit silly and goofy UNLIKE tends to stick around which will hopefully have a heartbreaking 2nd part sometime soon. also i don’t know how people get married in courthouses leave me alone

taglist: @when-wolves-howl @fayhar @maggieromanov @transbi-spidey @romanoffscottage @blackxwidowsxwife @lizlil @screechcat @maddess @mellxa @haeva @diaryoflife @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @strangegardentaco @phantomvael @lorsstar1st @blckrwidow @ima-gi–na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok @thorya22 @olicity-boo @iliketozoneout

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff #natfic!#fic!#fanfiction #anon cuties #written fic for anon

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

hiii can i request nat x reader where reader hides an injury from Nat and Nat finds out? maybe angst ending with fluff

band-aids for bullet holes

| natasha x reader |

warnings: injuries

a/n: thanks for the angst :) I'm enjoying torturing you guys. BUT it does have a happy ending, as requested

The apartment is dark when you open the door. You scan for any signs of Natasha, a plate on the drying rack or her jacket thrown over the back of the couch: nothing. But your tired eyes skim right over the takeout box on the coffee table, and you stumble into the bathroom down the hall without noticing it.

You discard your ruined shirt on the edge of the bathtub without bothering to close the door, and begin to rifle through the medicine cabinet. Painkillers, cough syrup, even damn hand sanitizer, anything you can find just to take the edge off the pain in your side.

You can't bear to look at the wound yet, but even in the dim light, you can see your stomach is slick and wet with blood.

You shake three paracetamol into your palm and take them dry with a desperate swallow and a wince. Then you sink down onto the toilet lid, slowly, slowly to avoid agitating the pain, and rest your head back against the tank with a clunk.

You touch the wound tentatively. The light brush of your fingers sends a sting through your ribs and you suck your bottom lip in past your teeth, bite down hard so as not to make a sound. You're stiff, your head swimming. God, if you'd just dodged the idiot, this wouldn't be happening.

With every movement sluggish and careful, you slit open the first aid kit and try to clean yourself up. You wet a cloth with water and drip it down your side, ignoring the pink puddles it makes on the bathroom floor. Then you blot the cloth with antiseptic, take a deep breath, and press it all up against the wound.

The pain is instant like a burn. You whimper into your teeth. Thank God Nat isn't here, thank God she's not going to see you like this and worry and panic-

"You okay?" comes a voice, from just down the hall - Natasha's voice, low and rough with sleep. You freeze, your side stinging like a bitch. Her feet thud closer, purposefully noisy, and she calls your name as she emerges from the hall. You react, slamming the door closed with your foot, and you hear her stumble backwards. "Um..." she says.

"I'm naked," you blurt. You smack yourself in the head. I'm naked? Seriously?

Predictably, Natasha laughs. "Okay, babe. What are you actually doing in there?"

"Cocaine," you reply acidly, fumbling for a bandage. She tests the door handle and you push your heel more securely against the door.

She says your name again, worry creeping into her voice.

"I'm fine," you reply.

"So let me in."

"I'm having a bath."

"I didn't hear the water running."

With the bandage now in your teeth, you can't reply, and she then she says your full name, her voice tinged with urgency.

Uh-oh.

"Let me in," she says. No room for argument. You thump your head against the toilet tank and glare at the ceiling. Then you release your foot from the door.

It swings open torturously slowly. She stands in the doorway, head tilted, surveying the mess you've made. And when she speaks, her voice is tight. "What the hell happened to you?" she says. Rhetorical question. Her face is carefully, casually blank. She's angry.

And she's right to be. You'd only recently been shot in the shoulder by an asshole with a sawn-off shotgun, and after that she'd made you promise you wouldn't go picking fights by yourself. Promises mean too much to her in your opinion, but you really had intended to keep this one.

"Knife," you say, in between your short breaths. "Nat-"

"Don't," she says shortly. Ice cold. Sharp as a blade. You shut your mouth. You'd been about to apologise.

She steps in, avoid the smears of blood on the floor, and kneels next to you. She pulls your hands from the wound impatiently. Were she less pissed, she'd be scolding you for not cleaning it properly, but now there's just thick, freezing silence between the two of you.

She cleans you up, stitches you closed and bandages the whole thing in clean, methodical movements, her touch gentle and her face hard as stone. You watch her hands move and wait for your chance to speak, a lump in your throat. You never want to scare her. Never.

When she's finished, she stands to wash her hands without looking at you. You sit slumped on the toilet lid, blood crusting and drying on your skin and clothes.

Natasha stoops to pick up your ruined shirt and leaves silently. You let her go. You hear her pedal open the kitchen bin and drop the shirt in amongst the trash.

Natasha's never forceful when she's angry, never loud or abrasive, never emotional. She's silent, viciously so, which is somehow worse. She'll speak softly - you know she hates to get mad, especially at you. And you know her well enough to recognise all the signs.

She doesn't talk to you when you limp out of the bathroom, your side aching. You avoid her eyes.

Until she's turning to walk away, and you realise she's put pants and a jacket on, and she's about to walk out.

"Nat, wait," you say. She halts, reaching for the door handle. Her shoulders are tight, her knuckles pale as she grips the handle. You search for words to fill the silence. "Where are you going?" you ask. They fall flat in front of you.

"Out," Natasha replies. She offers your bandaged ribs a cursory glance over her shoulder. "I'll be back to redress that."

"Can you just-" you say, your throat thickening. "I'm sorry. Please stay." Useless right now. She wants to be alone. But you can tell she's reluctant to leave.

She releases the door handle, and clenches her hands by her sides instead. "You promised me you'd be careful," she says. Her voice is not cool and vicious anymore: now, the vowels shake and her shoulders are tight as she gets the words out.

"I'm fine," you insist. "It was a mistake. Just one mistake." She turns to face you, but she doesn't look at you. Her eyes are rimmed angrily red. "Nat?"

"If I can't trust you, of all people, to keep your damn promises," she says, and she takes a large breath that seems to catch in her chest. Her eyes drag painfully up to yours and narrow. "Then who can I trust?" And she turns, yanks the door open and is gone.

The jamb clicks. You can't hear her footsteps receding.

Fuck.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You're sprawled across the couch when Natasha gets back, your eyes closed and a frown resting like a stone between your eyebrows. She closes the door quietly. Waits. Watches.

She regrets arguing and growling and leaving. She regrets that she didn't really explain anything at all.

You wake slowly, sensing a shift in the room. You turn left, right, and your eyes slide right over her before you double take and snap back.

"Nat," you say, your voice slurred with sleep.

She twists her hands into the front of her shirt. I'm sorry. So easy to say, two words, three syllables. "How are you feeling?" she asks instead.

You blink at her, still registering her presence. Relief rising: she came back, she's not so angry that she wants to leave you hanging off a hook like a guilty idiot who took the bait. "You're back," you say. Your breath rushes out of you and your side twinges and you wince back from the pain. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry-"

"No, it's okay," Natasha says, and she crosses the room and pushes your hair off your face. She kisses your cheek. "It's okay. I'm sorry." She traces a pillow crease down the side of your jaw. You frown at her. "I should have explained. I should have trusted you. I know you can take care of yourself." The sentences come piling out of her mouth, each one eager behind the other, like three bullets in a wall. You grip her wrist.

"You were so angry," you say sadly. But she shakes her head.

"I wasn't angry, I wasn't. I was upset. I was - I was scared. I shouldn't have taken it out on you." She doesn't seem able to keep your gaze.

"Okay," you say. You press your lips to the inside of her wrist, feel the tendons relax. "I'm sorry I got my ass beat."

Above you, she snorts. Her fingers play over your skin and you lean into her hand.

"Stay tonight," you mumble, your eyes closing. Her other hand drifts through your hair.

"I will. I'm sorry."

"And stop apologising." You know what she feels, even if she still hasn't explained. She cares far more for you than she ever has for anyone before: it's a terrifying thing. But losing this is even more terrifying. You grip her arm and tug her down to kiss her.

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taglist: @ima-gi--na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok @thorya22 @when-wolves-howl @fayhar @maggieromanov @transbi-spidey @romanoffscottage @blackxwidowsxwife @lizlil @screechcat @maddess @mellxa @haeva @diaryoflife @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @strangegardentaco @phantomvael @lorsstar1st @rysnwilder

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff #fic!#natfic!#m answers #written fic for anon #fanfiction #natasha romanoff x you

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

omgomg can i request number 86 on the kiss prompt for either tptf and opf?? i love both so much and the prompt is so cute

p.s. i love your writing so much it’s so detailed and amazing

86. “ you kissed me first. “ “ i definitely didn't. “ “ you were literally all over me. “

| natasha x reader | prompt list | only pretty faces

warnings: fluff so sweet and dumb you'll throw up

a/n: YES

"So who asked out who?" Clint asks, settling further into his seat. He shoves a pizza crust into his mouth and dusts off his hands. Across the room, Kate Bishop is licking her fingers clean, eyes glued to you. She hasn't looked away since she first stepped in the door: whether with wariness or curiosity, you don't know.

"She pinned me to the floor when we were fourteen," Natalia replies. "Does that count?"

Clint nods. "Oh yeah, the good ol' sexual tension sparring."

"Fourteen, you creep," Natalia says. She chucks a piece of pepperoni at him and he catches it in his mouth, grinning.

The TV is on with subtitles, muted in the corner. It's darkening outside, the sweet humid nine o'clock of a summer evening.

You miss Greece. You miss the quiet of your apartment, hung so far above the street that the cars and shouts and trains were distant to the ear. You miss the heat. The solitude with Natalia, knowing she's only ever a few metres away.

But New York is fine. New York is pizza and Clint's playstation (that you're really damn good at) and Clint's humour and Clint's dog, who is currently lain half across your lap, blinking up at you morosely as you chew.

You pet the dog's head and Kate shifts in her seat. She's nervous.

Fair enough.

"Okay but like actually," Clint says after a pause. Natalia cuts him off with a groan, her head tipping back against the cushions of the couch. You allow yourself to trace the column of her throat with your eyes, the bob of muscle as she swallows. A little more overt than you should be, perhaps.

"Shut up," Natalia says.

"I wanna know," Clint protests.

"Fuck off."

"Nata asked me out first," you say. Natalia blinks at you.

"Right," Clint says, a grin growing. "Was this before or after you recovered from the brainwashing?"

"After," you say. You open your mouth to continue.

"I was nice to you before," Natalia cuts in. "Don't you dare say I wasn't."

"I wasn't going to," you say. She narrows her eyes at you and you smile, sweetly.

"Aw, Nat, you romantic," Clint says. Natalia launches a cushion at him and he allows it to hit him square in the face as he laughs.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

"You're squashing me," you say, shoving Natalia half-heartedly. "My leg."

"It's not my fault this bed is two feet wide," Natalia grumbles. She shifts, and her elbow sinks into your stomach.

"My stomach," you complain.

"It'll be your lungs next if you don't shut up," she says.

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you," Natalia counters. She pokes your cheek. "I love you. Even when both your knees are halfway up my ass."

"I know where my knees are. I've found the stick you've got lodged up there, too," you say. You press your face against hers and try to kiss her, but she rears back, almost falling off the bed.

"Someone's found her attitude," she says. "Couldn't you tell me you love me once in a while?"

"I hate you."

She laughs.

You fall silent again. The curtains are rustling in the light breeze. A car honks below the window and you jump at the sound, your muscles tightening for a second.

Natalia's hand flattens over your stomach. "Hey," she says. "It's okay."

You shove your head against her shoulder, your heartbeat slowing. How stupid. You're like a spooked horse.

"Fuck," you say. "I don't like it here." You're voice is muffled against her shoulder. She winds an arm around you and strokes the length of your spine, slowly.

"I know," she says. She waits a beat. Then, "I didn't really come on to you first." You frown against her skin at the change of subject.

"Yes, you did," you say.

"Discounting everything before," she says, and her voice is matter of fact. She's been thinking about this. "I didn't."

"You can't just discount fifteen years," you say.

"Come on. You kissed me first."

You think about it. It hadn't really been a kiss. You'd probably intended for it to be a punch. "I definitely didn't," you decide.

"You were literally all over me," Natalia replies. She's teasing you.

"Shut up."

"You love me."

"That is a lie," you protest, and you reach around her and pinch her leg. She kicks at you, her foot tangling in the blanket. "I barely even like you."

"So if I kissed you right now..."

"I'd drop you out that window," you say. She tugs on your hair, none too gently, coaxing your face up to hers. You pretend to try and squirm away, but she's fast and she kisses you before you've made it an inch across the mattress. You make a gagging sound, and she giggles and kisses you again. Again. Again. "Stop," you complain, as she presses kisses to your cheeks, your chin, the tip of your nose. "Let me sleep."

Natalia tucks her face into your neck and blows a raspberry. You squeal, laughing, and push her away.

requests | masterlist

notes: emotionally stunted IDIOTS

@ima-gi--na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok @thorya22

#only pretty faces #m answers #natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff #fic!#natasha romanoff x reader #natfic!#written fic for anon #prompts!

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Text

to play the fool pt 1

| natasha x fem!reader | request by @strangegardentaco | part two, three, four

summary: You’re not an Avenger. Not even close. But sometimes, damn, you really wish you were so everyone would stop getting on your ass.

warnings: blood, violence, spidey-baiting, r is an idiot

a/n: this was the greatest request I’ve ever received. I wrote way too much and I’m sorry. Probably will have a part 2, maybe a part 3. Also I’M ONE FOLLOWER AWAY FROM 150! i know that’s probably not a lot to most people BUT IT IS TO ME so I posted this because people always follow me after I post my fics :)

It’s not often that you look out your break room window and see the Avengers getting their super-asses kicked by an army of robots in the street below. Right by your favourite convenience store, too. How inconsiderate.

You’re not exactly the avenging, famous, skintight-suit hero type. Which is exactly what’s going through your mind as you tug your mask on and slip out the window onto the fire escape. You’re a vigilante, and not one with a fantastic set of morals.

“This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid,” you mutter, stomping up the fire escape stairs with a set of sonorous clangs. Fifty metres below you, Captain America goes sprawling, ripping up chunks of road and slamming headfirst into a car, denting the hood substantially. You grimace. He doesn’t get up.

Somewhere above you as you climb onto the roof, in a cloud of ozone and dust, you can hear Iron Man getting thrown about like a toy in a dog’s mouth, clangs of metal, the blast of repulsors.

“I’m gonna die,” you say, as you draw your baton from your belt. You take a deep breath. Surely this is Spider-Man’s job, right? There’s a clump of robots converging on Captain America’s prone body, moving fast with their gross little legs skittering over the uneven ground. “This is stupid,” you breathe once more, under your breath.

You feel the static in the air around you, the faint dregs of electricity leftover from a thunderstorm a couple of nights ago. You draw on it and sparks gather at your fingertips, in your hair beneath your hood, racing down your legs to your feet. You channel it until you can feel the heat and crackle racing down your arms, until you can feel your feet leave the surface of the roof and your baton begin to flash. You’ve done this a million times before.

Except for this time, there’s only a couple of feet between those robots and Captain America’s head, and you’re tired because you couldn’t sleep last night and a hundred other things– You narrow your eyes, fling your arms forward, and fire a stream of electricity right towards the crowd of robots. The energy hits the ground in front of them and the impact sends them all flying backwards. You shield your eyes from the bright flash and when you can see again, they’re all lying crispy and fried on the floor, some legs weakly twitching in the air. You step to the edge of the building and hover there for a second, scanning the ground for Captain America.

He’s gone.

An idiot panic grips your throat for a second as you wheel through possibilities – you vaporised him. Oh, God, you vaporised Captain America – nope. He’s right there, starfished out on the hood of the car. Your blast must have thrown him up.

You drop off the edge of the building and fall, hands by your sides, the air stripping past your masked face. You catch yourself with a cloud of energy a foot from the concrete sidewalk, almost tipping forwards onto your face. You catch yourself with one hand against the ground and get to your feet.

You advance on the car, checking left and right for any more robots. As you pass the puddle of crackling, overworked robots, you step carefully around them.

You’re almost to the car when Captain America raises his head. You stop dead. Well, alright then. Job done.

He raises a bloodied hand to his ear, eyes narrowing as he takes you in.

“We have a hostile in the field,” he says. “Enhanced. Engage on sight.” You open your mouth to correct him, but of course, he can’t see it beneath the mask: and that’s when he launches his shield full force at your face.

You’re not nearly fast enough. It hits you just as you turn to the side and crashes right into your cheekbone.

You’re not sure what happens next. You’re sure of a blinding, colossal pain in your face, of the ruined concrete road harsh against your side and your temple. Not much else. For a second, you panic vaguely, utterly sure that you’ve lost all sight in your left eye, your vision black and grey.

You can hear yourself making little terrified grunts through heaving breaths. Your head would be delightfully, dizzily light and airy were it not for that immense pain. There’s something warm and damp beneath your nose.

Footsteps are hitting the ground, slow, almost drunken. Unsteady and hard, and you can feel them through your face. Oh, God, your face. Oh, Jesus, it hurts.

The footsteps are getting closer, closer. You’ve got to get up: there’s a certainty that you have to move, making itself known in the back of your mind. But you’d like to just lay here forever - if you move, the pain will intensify until it’s too much to bear.

No. No, you have to get up. You curl one hand into a fist and punch it into the ground, levering yourself up, your head hanging down.

“Ow, ow, ow,” you whimper to yourself. “That was so not fair.” Your face gives a particularly painful twinge and you groan. You get to your knees, to one knee.

Captain America looms out of nowhere and you have nothing, no baton in your hand, no energy to throw. You launch yourself sideways with a yell as his fist comes soaring towards you. He misses. You crash to the ground and roll away like a fish on a boat deck.

You swallow blood: wouldn’t do to have to wash your mask for the billionth time. You were only trying to help, dammit. Maybe if you fry a couple more robots, he’ll stop trying to kill you.

You struggle to your feet, hands on your thighs. You can see him staggering towards you out of the corner of your eye, in his stupid dusty blue suit that’s probably bulletproof, with his shield slung back onto his arm. You hold up your hands, palms up.

“I come…in peace,” you wheeze. Your face stings with the words. “Didn’t mean to electrify you.”

“Kinda gave me the wrong impression,” Captain America says. His hands curl into fists.

“Please don’t kill me.”

“Converge on 2nd Avenue,” Captain America says, into his wrist.

“I’m trying to help,” you say desperately. You can hear the click of robot legs, the whir of robot wings.

“Got ‘em,” someone says, directly above you, a mechanical voice. A shadow sluices over you. You fling yourself into a sideways roll just as Iron Man slams right into the spot you’d just been standing. You skid along the gritty ground, palms skidding on the concrete. Oh, you’re gonna feel that later. “Not got ‘em,” says Iron Man, standing up and brushing himself off with a scrape of metal on metal. He turns to you and starts to walk. You hear his repulsors build up. “C’mere, let me finish you off.”

“No thanks,” you say, getting to your feet. You try to walk, dizzy, your feet out of time, ankles crossing over each other. You almost trip and right yourself. “Jesus Christ, you guys pack a big punch, huh?” You back away as Iron Man advances, the sunlight gleaming off his dusty metal shoulders. Maybe you should run now. You should definitely run now.

“Tony, robot!” Captain America says, and you turn to see one of those damn metal bastards leaping for your face. Without thinking, you drop into a crouch and it flies over your head right into Iron Man’s chest. He grabs it by a leg and flings it at you like a frisbee: you raise both hands and blast it, hard as you can.

When the light fades, Captain America has his hands over his eyes and the robot is nothing more than a sad, crispy bit of circuit board on the floor.

You turn and bolt before they have time to get their shit together. You leap over a ripped-up section of concrete, the ground tilting nauseatingly beneath you, and it’s a second before you’re aware that your feet haven’t touched the floor. Your jacket is pinched around your ribs, tight, and you look up to see one of those goddamn robots gripping you by the back of your suit, bearing you up into the sky like a bird of prey.

You choke on curses and swipe at it, wishing for your baton. It’s too dangerous to try pulling a gun on this thing, swinging precariously up in the air. The two of you fly higher and higher, windows and balconies flashing past. It’s probably going to get you high enough that when it drops you, you’ll hit the ground dead. What a lovely way to go. You take another swing at it, fingers crackling with energy, and the electricity must throw off its circuits or something because it lists dramatically to the left, throwing you hard against the edge of the roof of your building. The air rushes out of you like you’ve taken a punch to the sternum: you fold, hands flying out to grab at the rooftop.

The robot, drunken and swaying, releases you and tumbles down onto the rooftop, its little legs whirring beneath it. You start to slide backwards, off the edge of the roof, and you grab at the ledge, your feet slithering against the wall, trying to find purchase.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

You look down and suck in a painful breath, squeeze your eyes shut. The ground is very very very far away, Captain America impossibly tiny beneath your hanging feet. You’ve been on so many rooftops: maybe it’s the broken face and possible broken ribs and definitely sprained shoulder that makes it a little scarier.

You haul yourself up, inch by torturous inch, teeth gritted so hard they creak like they might crack. Wouldn’t make much of a difference. You’re pretty sure that shield took half of them out anyway. You get your belly on the ledge and shove yourself harshly forwards, squirming onto the roof with your knees and bleeding palms.

Bad day. Just a bad day.

You don’t think Daredevil ever got punched by Captain America. You flop onto your back, breathing shallow to alleviate the pain in your ribs. “Is it the mask?” you ask the sky. “Should I add some colour?”

“Not sure you should be lamenting your design choices right now,” someone says, and you scramble upwards into a sitting position. More blood pools in your mouth. There’s an arrow aimed at your face: an arrow, for Christ’s sake. Someone needs to get these superheroes some better tech. Hawkeye raises an eyebrow at you.

“Nice tights,” you say. The side of Hawkeye’s mouth twitches up. “You can shoot me if you want. Not sure I’ve got it in me to kick your ass, too.” You sway to the side: the robot is upside down, an arrow sticking out from its belly. It’s not moving. “Damn,” you say. “Kinda liked that little guy.”

“Get facedown,” he says. “Arms out to the sides, cross your ankles over.”

“I’m not really in the mood to get arrested,” you say. You can feel the blood on your lips now. You crack your knuckles, and Hawkeye’s draw arm twitches threateningly. “Bye,” you say, and you fling your arms out in front of you, drawing energy from your last reserves. The stream catches Hawkeye right in the chest and blasts both of you backwards. You cut it off before he tumbles over the edge of the roof, but then your foot catches on the ledge and you trip, staggering backwards into nothing.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You drag yourself into your apartment through the window, the one above a sheer drop of wall that you leave unlocked so that your neighbours don’t see you staggering in through your front door dressed like a shitty Comic-Con version of Batman.

It’s always a challenge, but with broken ribs and the way your power is sputtering in your palms, it’s even worse – you have to haul yourself up to the windowsill with your fingertips. You’re going to get a lot of questions at work tomorrow.

You pull your boots off sitting on the windowsill, and brush the mud out of the grooves in the sole, holding them over the street below. Then you set your feet down on the floor inside and pull the sash down. Finally, home.

“You look rough,” says the dark interior of your tiny living room. Unthinking, instinctively, you draw your gun and point it in the vague direction of the voice. Your heart thunders in your ears. God, not today. Not right now.

“What the fuck do you want?” you ask. You fumble for the light switch and flick it on, and the room floods a dim yellow. There’s a woman in your armchair.

Normally, you’d be thrilled.

She’s got one leg crossed over the other, hands flat on the armrests, and she’s dressed down a little. Jacket over a hoodie. Jeans and combat boots. She looks tired, and you wonder where you’ve seen her before. Red hair, back in a braid. She gives you the slightest of smiles.

“For fuck’s sake,” you say. You didn’t mean to. Just slipped out. It’s been a long day, and suddenly it’s getting even longer. You weren’t exactly expecting to come home and find the Black Widow of all people sitting in your armchair. You don’t lower the gun, but you do correct yourself. “Sorry.” Your mother would kick your ass if she heard you speak like that. “What do you want? Did I kill your best friend? Totally an accident.”

“I don’t have a best friend,” she replies. “And if you did kill him, you’d already be dead.”

“We’re talking about the same person, right?” you ask, incredulously. “Hawkeye?”

“Regrettably. He’s fine. Complains of a concussion, but that’s nothing new.”

“Okay,” you say. You hadn’t exactly asked for his medical history. “So is there a reason you were lurking in my apartment in the dark? The dramatic flair? You scared the sh- you scared me.”

“You’re the one holding me at gunpoint. Where’d you even get that?” She sounds annoyingly patronising. It’s also super weird that she’s talking to you like you’ve met before. But you’ve heard stories about her – you know she likes to play with her food. Your grip tightens on the gun. If it comes down to it, and you fight, she’ll win: the only reason you’re still alive after eight months of blasting muggers into next week is that you can shoot electricity from your hands and you can run pretty fast.

“A Target in South Carolina,” you say. “Don’t worry, I have a permit. You’re not a cop, right?”

If you didn’t know better, you’d say she was holding back a smile. To be honest, you don’t really know better, in any sense of the words.

“No.” She shifts in her seat and raises an eyebrow at you. “But I am about to hurt you if you don’t stop wisecracking and start talking.” Her tone has flipped from teasing to ice-cold in half a second. You swallow the iron taste of blood.

“I was trying to help,” you say. “Not my fault you’re all so damn reactive.”

“You almost killed Captain America.”

“Did not,” you snort. “He’s fine. He was about to be eaten by those robots, or whatever the hell they were trying to accomplish. I fried them into next week.” You pause. She doesn’t look particularly impressed. “You’re welcome.”

“Well,” she says. “You’re certainly not the criminal mastermind type.” You stiffen with indignance at the stress she puts on those words, then wince in pain.

“I could be,” you say. She gives a gentle, aggravating little snort.

“How’d you break your ribs?”

“A robot hit me with a building,” you say. “Also some guy punched me in the stomach like…an hour ago.”

She tilts her head. “Why?”

“I tried to pull him off this girl. I think he was trying to stab her. Messy dynamics,” you say earnestly.

“How heroic of you,” says the Black Widow, her voice utterly dry.

“I do my best,” you say. “Anyway, not to be rude or anything, but you’ve kinda overstayed your welcome.” Your gaze drifts downwards. “Also, this is a no-shoes apartment.” She looks down at her feet, then back up at you.

“My bad,” she says, not sounding particularly sorry. “Why’d you…” she gives a vague wave of her hand, “...step in? With the robots.”

“You guys were getting your asses handed to you.”

“You didn’t exactly help much.”

“Yeah, I figure it’s more Spider-Man’s area of expertise, but apparently he’s on vacation. Maybe he went to lay some eggs, I don’t know. Never can tell with superheroes.” You shrug.

“Says the girl who can shoot electricity out of her hands,” Black Widow says.

“Um,” you say, searching for a clever response and finding none. You scowl at her accusingly, knowing she can’t see it. “How’d you find out where I live? You have a habit of breaking and entering?”

“It’s my job,” she says coolly. “To answer both your questions.”

“Does that mean you know everything about me?”

“Can you please put the gun down?” she asks, wearily, as if she’s talking to an idiot. You hadn’t even realised you were still holding it, and your arms are beginning to ache. You lower it, but you don’t holster it.

“Wasn’t planning on putting holes in my furniture anyways,” you reply. You pause. “God, are you still here?”

“I’m not done evaluating the threat,” she says, in such a casual tone. A chill hovers guardedly at the back of your neck and for a second you wonder if you shut the window properly.

“D’you want to hurry up about it?” you ask. You shift a little too suddenly and your ribs twinge. Your hand shoots up to cradle your side. Black Widow’s eyes follow it.

“Why? You want to go lick your wounds?” She licks her bottom lip, and it’s distracting. Annoyingly. “You don’t look too good.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” you reply, sourly. “I got hit in the face with twelve pounds of vibranium, what d’you expect?”

“What do you expect when you go charging in on a fight that has nothing to do with you?” she answers. Her voice has returned to that cool, vicious tone. “Have you ever even had any training?”

“I do kickboxing,” you say, attempting to keep the injured tone from your voice.

“You’re out of your league,” she replies. Her gaze is sharp, her words cutting.

“Could you have got to that point ten minutes ago?” you snap back. You shove the gun back into its holster and stalk away from her, into the kitchen. Maybe not the smartest move, turning your back on the Black Widow, but you’re pissed now. You don’t break into someone’s apartment, threaten them with violence and then lecture them for no good reason after they’ve just saved Captain America’s life.

You yank open the fridge door and grab a bottle without bothering to look at the label. You flick the cap off on the scratched-up counter, lift your mask to shove the bottle under and take a long, cool sip. Beer, bitter and stale, floods your mouth. It tastes like shit, but it’s something, at least. Maybe paired with aspirin it’ll help.

“Are you in a frat?” Black Widow asks, and you spin around to see her leaning against your kitchen counter, a thin smile on her face as she surveys your empty fridge shelves.

“No,” you say. You kick the fridge door shut. “I’m just broke. Stop following me.” You long to take your mask off and breathe heavy breaths and chug the entire bottle in one go, but that’s not happening in front of her. Even if she already knows where you live.

How the hell did she find out where you live? You were so careful.

“You know,” she says, after a short period of silence wherein you gulp your single sip of beer down and glare at her over the lip of the bottle, “I’m letting you off easy right now.”

You snort with derisive laughter: you can’t help it. “Saintly of you,” you say. She raises one eyebrow.

“I’m being serious. You want me to knock you out and drag you down to Manhattan? That’s what I’m supposed to be doing here.”

“Oh, so you’re putting your neck on the line for me?” you drawl. “That’s so sweet. I don’t care.”

“You’re aggravating,” she says, utterly calmly.

“You’re the one who broke into my apartment!” you reply. You manage to keep your voice down, but only just. She just tilts her head again, a tiny frown appearing between her eyebrows.

“I did not break anything,” she replies. She nods to your ribs. “You should really see a doctor.”

“A doctor?” you exclaim. “What is this, Sweden?”

She plants her palms on the counter and leans forwards, her face falling to seriousness. “They’re not happy, kid. Rogers especially. They think you’re some new villain on the scene, and you bet your ass you don’t want them coming after you.”

You wish she’d stop jumping topics. Her constant switch of tone is giving you emotional whiplash: maybe that’s one of her tactics. Her Black Widow Tactics.

You honestly can’t believe this is happening. How did this happen to you, of all people? “I’m not a kid,” you tell her. “I’m twenty-five.”

“I’m eighty-eight,” she replies, with not even a hint of sarcasm. “I don’t care how old you are, you’re nothing compared to me. And you’d better hope you’re listening to me right now because this is the only grace you’re going to get.” Her voice is tight and angry now. You wonder if you’ve actually pissed her off, and you blink at her, wide-eyed.

“That’s pretty old,” you manage, weakly.

“Hm.”

“What’s your skincare routine like–” She moves faster than you can see and has you by the throat in a second, shoving you hard up against the counter. You make a choked sound as your ribs stitch with pain, one palm sliding against the edge of the sink, the other hand gripping the neck of your bottle so tight you think the glass might crack. “Ow,” you gasp.

Her face is close to yours, carved with anger, half-flooded with light from your living room, half in shadow. “Do not test me more than this,” she says. Her voice is utterly, terrifyingly calm, like a frozen moment in a hurricane. You feel her breath on your neck, hot and slow. Her fingers dig into your pulse point, and you know she can feel your heartbeat thundering under your skin.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m…sorry. Please let me go.”

She releases you. You fall back against the counter, gasping, blinking hard as your vision swims.

“Jesus Christ,” you splutter, wiping your lips free of saliva.

“I’ll get them off your back this time,” Black Widow says. She wipes her hand on her jacket, and you’re indignant until you see that some of your blood has rubbed off onto her skin. “But you’d better stay in your lane from now on. Friendly neighbourhood–” she gestures vaguely at you– “whatever. Alright?”

“Uh-huh,” you say, massaging your bruised throat. “Thanks for dropping by. Really appreciate it.” For a moment, she looks like she wants to throttle you again. Then she turns her back on you and leaves.

You hear your front door open and close, and you sag against the sink, tug your mask off and press the cool, damp beer bottle to your aching face.

What a day.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You’ve been different ever since you got your powers. Everything seems to thrum with colour and vibrancy. You’re stronger, not much, but noticeably. You heal faster, you can hear high tones wavering in frequencies normal people can’t reach, and your bruises fade quickly.

So your rib bones knit back together in mere days once you’ve set them properly, and the ache in your face recedes with time. Luckily, you hadn’t lost any teeth, and the road rash all down your side is gone soon enough.

You suppose it’s a blessing: no awkward questions or gentle, understanding tones in aside conversations, but at the same time, there’s no recognition either. No one realises you’re out every night attempting to bust the drug trade or wipe the floor with drunk idiots who can’t keep their hands to themselves. No one will ever know you saved Captain America’s life.

It’s better this way.

You run through that thought in your head over and over as you squat at the edge of a roof in the dark, a twenty-four story building stuffed full of offices. Below you, red tail lights swim through the blackened imprint of the road, storefront neons flicker and shut off, and sparse pedestrians make their way home, shoulders hunched beneath coats.

The wind is chilly up here. No one can see you.

You sit there the rest of the night, shivering. You break out the hand warmers at about a quarter to two. You know if you go home you won’t sleep: you’ll ruminate about being unwanted and you’ll glare at the dark ceiling blindly until the sun comes up.

Nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t, because you deserve some luck after such a shitty day.

Well. Nothing happens until the first rosy fingers of sunlight are beginning to creep up over the harbour and the first pigeons begin to wake and the first trains begin to go, rattling like earthquakes under the ground. That’s when a truck backs out of a tiny alley off 8th Avenue, with no reversing lights and no beeper.

You watch it progress with narrowed eyes, scanning for a number plate: none. Suspicious.

You drop to the street level and catch yourself with a crackle of energy just behind a dumpster. One of the truck’s headlights winks and flickers in the shift in electric fields, but the man waving the truck back is too preoccupied to notice and the driver looks utterly bored. You creep along the wall until you’re sliding into the tiny gap between the truck and the dirty brick wall of the building, in a half-crouch. You slip under the carriage, flat on your back, and think about the charges and forces around you. Magnetism’s gotten pretty easy over time.

With a flick of your wrists, you shift the fields around your fingertips and toes and instantly you shoot upwards, sticking to the undercarriage of the truck with a clang. You wince, but neither of the men appears to hear you.

Suddenly it strikes you just how much of an idiot move this is: where might the truck be going? How long can you hold magnetism for at two in the morning with healing ribs and the road spinning out beneath you? But it’s too late, the truck is doing a one point turn and the big wide concrete street is now below you. You can’t drop now or you’ll be seen. You just have to hang on.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

The journey is torturous. Twice now, you’ve accidentally fallen asleep stuck to the undercarriage, and woken in a rush of terror with one hand hanging down and your shoulder and knuckles grazing the fast-moving ground, burning through your suit.

You see the sun come up on either side of the truck’s shadow, lighting the road a bright golden grey. The wind chills you head to toe, slipping like ice down the back of your neck, and the engine fumes choke you like gas. Your muscles tremble and sear, your mind a vague whirl of survival instincts and keep hold, keep hold, keep hold.

The truck tires grind to a stop over gravel, and the undercarriage jolts to a halt with them. For a second, you can hardly believe it. The driver’s door opens and boots thump onto the grit, past your head. You release one trembling hand from the undercarriage, and you plan to go down limb by limb, but that’s when your powers give out, sensing your body’s exhaustion, and you drop to the ground, spine first.

The wind rushes out of you and you try not to gasp and splutter, you try to keep as still as possible. The ground cuts into you from all angles. You hear the end gate of the truck swing down and hit the floor with careless force, scattering dust and pebbles. Another set of footsteps.

“That’s what we got,” says the driver. He scuffs the ground with his shoe. There’s a heavy thump as someone steps up into the body of the truck, the carriage shaking with their weight, wheels sinking against the ground. You keep every muscle locked still, listening.

A heavy shift, like a large wooden box being shuffled to the side.

“Good,” says the person in the truck. “I’ll have them unload it. Then you get back behind the wheel and drive away, understand?”

“I get paid,” the driver corrects. “Then I drive away.” The person in the truck makes a dismissive sound. They jump, and their boots hit the ground with a plume of stones.

What the hell are you going to do? You don’t even know where you are. And you sure as hell can’t survive the journey back to New York, clinging like a spider to the underneath of the truck. The driver will move off and you’ll be left lying there in bright daylight.

You’re going to have to do something.

The second person turns sharply and begins to walk away. You wait until you hear their footsteps fade to nothing and the driver sits down on the edge of the truck gate with a hefty sigh. You might have mere minutes before the second guy returns with back-up.

You roll out from under the truck, wincing as the grit presses into your road rash. You get dizzily to your feet and the driver turns, a frown ready on his face. He sees you, clocks you, suit and mask and all. His eyes widen.

“Fuck–” he says, and you dash forward and punch him right on the jaw. Knockout button. His eyes roll up into his head and he slumps sideways. You catch him before he can hit the ground headfirst, prop him up against the wall of the truck. It’ll look like he’s having a bit of shut-eye from a distance, maybe that will throw them off. You dig quickly through his pockets and extract a wallet, a packet of candy, and the keys to the truck: you tuck it all into your pockets.

You climb into the truck, ducking under the canvas covering: it brushes your head even when you’re bent practically double. The truck is stuffed full of wooden crates with solid walls and nailed-down lids. Their sides are blank, the wood new. You pry a few nails out of one of the crate lids and rip it up, peer inside.

“Well, shit,” you say to yourself, just because you can’t help it. The contents of the crate are glowing, a very familiar purple. It looks like all that alien shit from a couple of years ago, when the sky split open above New York like something out of an H.P. Lovecraft book and started raining lizards. Lizards with glowing purple sticks that blew stuff up. You know because you almost got one to the kisser.

What to do, what to do, what to do? You fumble for your phone, conscious that any second a bunch of probably very large men are going to come climbing into the truck and you’re going to be crouched in the corner looking threatening. You don’t like your odds, and you barely even know them.

Whose number do you have that you can call? You could probably find Tony Stark’s number somewhere on the internet with a laptop and some wifi and half an hour of time.

The crunch of footsteps outside on the gravel sounds, and you panic, panic, panic. “Hey, the driver’s down!” someone says. Deep voice.

“There’s someone here,” says another guy. “Look in the truck, quick.” Okay, time to do something incredibly stupid. You back up against the far wall of the truck, squinting at the bright square of daylight open at the end. A big, looming shadow of a guy steps up to the gate, and you push off the wall, launch forwards, and spear-tackle him right in the gut. The two of you go flying and you’re thrown off him, into the ground, your head smacking hard against the gravel. He gets to his feet before you do and pulls a knife from nowhere, a big sharp chunk of metal – this is going badly. You stand and shake yourself off, dizzily.

“Careful with that,” you say, nodding to the knife as the big guy advances on you. There’s another guy checking the cab of the truck, two more standing by, waiting to get in on the fight. “Might take someone’s eye out–” He stabs at you, faster than you’d expected, and you twist sideways on instinct. Too late. The blade slashes through your suit and into your skin. You feel it scrape your ribs.

He pulls it back and stabs again. This time you move, crumpling to the floor to duck, and the knife whistles over your head. You gasp and clamp your hand to your side, feel blood hot and wet through your glove. It stings, the pain muffled by a cloak of shock. You’re gonna feel it later.

The guy bears down on you again and you lunge for his legs, wrapping both your arms around his knees. In desperation, you feel a wave of electricity surge through your arms and he stiffens as he hits the ground, muscles spasming. You get wearily to your feet again as he writhes in the dust, eyes rolling back in his head.

The other two men back away from you. You turn the energy up, letting it spark and crackle in your hands, making a show of it: you don’t have the reserves to blast them right now. They turn and take off across the gravel parking lot, towards a building in the distance.

You drop your hands, and turn to slam the gate closed. There’s still a guy poking around in the cab, oblivious to the fact that his friends have left him alone. You creep up behind him and slam the door into his head when he turns. He crumples and slides out of the cab. You jump aside as he hits the ground. Nice.

You heave yourself into the driver’s seat, leaving smears of blood all over the covering. Tug the door closed, stick the keys in the ignition, start the engine. It all takes too much effort. Lucky the truck’s an automatic. You put it in drive and stomp on the accelerator.

It takes you five hours to drive back to New York, and by that time the sun is low on the horizon, hot through the windscreen and the driver’s candy has left your mouth dry. You’re still bleeding, finding it hard to stay awake with one hand on the wheel and one pressed to your side. You manage to back the truck into a grimy little parking lot a block away from your apartment, and you tumble out of the cab and lock the door behind you. You lean against the wall of the truck for a good long minute, trying to get back breath that won’t return, gasping and panting. The wound in your side is burning like someone’s taken a match to your flesh, and your entire side and half your thigh is drenched with blood.

You don’t have the capacity to plan out whatever the hell you’re going to do with the truck or think about who might be really really angry that you’ve stolen it. You stumble back to your apartment as the evening comes on, hiding in the dusk and down the backs of tiny streets where people don’t look up from their feet when they walk. You go in through your front door and collapse on the floor just inside. With the last of your energy, you kick the door closed and hear it clicks as it locks. Then you rest your head on the floor and close your eyes. Just a few minutes, you tell yourself.

You wake under a bright light, your vision swimming. You make an incoherent sound of panic, one that was probably meant to be a curse, and you try to sit up only to discover that you’re already propped up against the bathtub. You lean forwards far too quickly and smack heads with someone. Reeling, you slump backwards, blinking hard.

“Ow!” says the person. “Fuck!” Your vision clears from a smear of white and grey. Black Widow is crouched in front of you, a hand over her nose, eyes watering. She scowls at you.

“Hnng,” you say.

“That really hurt,” she growls.

“Don’t kill me,” you stammer, wanting to raise your hands in front of you. Your arms don’t respond and you panic further, imagining that she’s done something awful like chopped them off. Then you look down and there they are, limp by your sides. You’re in the bathroom, sitting on the cool tiles in your underwear. In your underwear. In your underwear. Black Widow undressed you in your bathroom. Your mask is still on. The bright fluorescent light is on, blindingly bright and the sky outside the window is a deep navy, lit with the glow of the city.

“I’m not trying to kill you,” Black Widow gripes. “Jesus Christ.”

“What are you– what are you doing?” you gasp. You’re lightheaded, the world rocking like a pendulum as you try to cling to reality.

“Stitching you up,” she says. She rubs her nose one more time, then reaches for something to her left: a square dressing and a roll of tape.

“Huh?” you say cleverly.

“Yeah, you were half-dead when I found you so I figured it was only polite,” she says dryly.

“How’d– why were you in my house?” you ask. She slaps the dressing onto your side and doesn’t look at you. “Have you been following me?”

“Let’s not make accusations,” she replies, light and casual.

“You have been following me!” you say. “Could you not have been there when that idiot twice my size decided to stab me?”

“You can make better decisions, you know,” she says. She rips a length of tape off with her teeth. “Like calling the police.”

“Spider-Man doesn’t call the police,” you say.

“Is he like your idol or something?” she asks, almost explosively. “You’re not Spider-Man! You’re an idiot with a death wish.”

“That’s rude,” you say. She just huffs.

She finishes taping your side up and squats back on her heels. “Done,” she says. She stands and flicks the sink faucet on with her elbow, sticks her bloodied hands under the stream. “That’s some road rash you got.” You look down at your shoulder, which is stinging in the cool air. It appears to have been washed. Your knuckles are bruised.

“It’s nothing,” you say, wary of the sudden calm tone she’s using. “You should see the road.” She snorts at the mirror, then turns back to you and sits on the closed toilet lid. Rests her elbows on her knees.

“Tell me what happened,” she says. You frown at her. She raises one red eyebrow at you, elegantly.

“I got stabbed,” you say.

“That’s not a stab. It’s barely a scratch.”

“I almost died!”

“You did not. Tell me what happened.” Her voice is straying dangerously into annoyance. You don’t want her to throttle you again, not in this state, anyway.

You sigh, heavily, then regret it when you feel your wound twinge. “There was this truck.”

“Hm,” she says. She sounds unimpressed.

“I hitchhiked. Ended up five hours away in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Bunch of alien shit in the back. So I stole it and brought it back.” There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. To avoid looking at what you’re sure is a glare hot enough to melt steel, you poke the dressing on your side and inspect your purple knuckles.

“What were you planning to do?” she asks. It sounds like a rageful rhetorical question.

“I don’t know,” you say. “Hand it over to the Avengers?”

“The same Avengers who believe you tried to kill Captain America not even a week ago? Those Avengers?”

“Pretty sure there’s only one set of Avengers,” you supply helpfully.

“You’re making this very hard for me,” Black Widow says.

“Okay, so you’d rather some massive maniacs had control of a truck full of alien gear?” you prompt. “I think I did America a favour, actually. And I’m not usually inclined to do that.”

“Where’s the truck?” Black Widow asks shortly. “I’m at the end of my rope here.”

“You’re always at the end of your fucking rope,” you say. “A block over. Parking lot next to the basketball court that no one ever uses.”

“Hm,” she says again, and she gets to her feet. She looks down at you. Nods to your dressing. “Take that off and replace it tomorrow morning,” she says.

“Thanks,” you say, injecting as much sarcasm as you can muster.

“Take an Advil,” she says, and she walks out, leaving you sitting there half-naked on your bathroom floor.

You tug your mask off and glare at the tiled wall.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You don’t really expect to see her again. You don’t even really think about it, besides a half-hearted Google search for her name. But then barely a week later, you’re lying on someone’s balcony with a sprained ankle and a nosebleed from some asshole who’d tried to rob a tiny little convenience store down in Queens, and you’re so far from home and you’re miserable and any moment the owner of the apartment might look out the balcony door–

“You look awful,” she says, stepping into your line of sight. She’s dressed all in black, a hood up over her hair. You can see a tuft of red hair at her collar. Natasha Romanoff.

“Where you going, a goth rave?” you ask, still out of breath. She grins at you, disarmingly.

“Do you need a hand?”

“Yes I need a fucking hand,” you grumble, and you hold out your arm. She considers you for a second. Then she reaches down, yanks you half off the ground and lifts you across her shoulders. You let out an oof as her shoulder sinks into your solar plexus. “What the hell?” you ask, grabbing at her arm, feeling horribly off-balance. “Put me down!”

“You wanna walk?” she asks you, tipping back to look up at the building.

“No,” you snarl, fingers fisted in her jacket.

“Hang on, then,” she says. She raises her hand: there’s a hiss, a clang, and the next thing you know you’re being jerked upwards, the balcony vanishing below you. It’s just half a second of nauseating vertigo, and then Natasha lands on the roof with a thump and a stumble. You groan into her ear. She kneels and sets you down on the roof. It’s damp and the wetness soaks through the ass of your suit.

“Warn a girl,” you say, shaking out your hands, which have cramped from holding on to her so tightly.

“I wanted to get you out of sight before I assessed the situation,” she says airily. “What happened? Is it dealt with?”

“I tripped,” you say, attempting to keep the sulk out of your voice. Natasha offers you an unsympathetic look.

“How?”

“A guy punched me in the face.”

“I’m not following the chain of events,” she says blankly. You roll your eyes.

“You don’t need to. I knocked him out and called the police, alright?” You cross your arms. It’s hard to be above-it-all when you’re sitting in a dirty puddle and she’s standing above you, chin tilted up so her eyes catch the last of the evening light, hands in fists by her sides. You notice then that her knuckles are smeared in blood. “What’d you do with the truck?” you ask.

“I turned it in to SHIELD,” she says. “They were more than happy to receive it.” She looks down at you. “You know the others would have attacked you if you’d turned up with it.” It sounds almost like an apology.

“Yeah,” you say heavily.

“And if they see you anywhere around…they won’t hesitate to engage.”

“I know,” you say. You pick at a loose thread on your pants in frustration. “I just don’t know what I can do to convince them that I’m…” you trail off vaguely and shrug.

“Save some lives,” Natasha replies. She takes a seat next to you and brushes her palms off on her jacket. “You’re not above that, are you?”

You throw her a look. “Don’t be an asshole. I save lives all the time.”

“Save the President’s life.”

“Don’t like the President,” you say. “And he’s all the way in Washington, anyway.” You tip backwards and lie down, the roof cold through your jacket. “Maybe I should just give up.”

Natasha scoffs. “Right. As if you would.”

“You don’t know me,” you say, to the greying sky.

“I know more than you think I do.”

“Creepy. Are you gonna help me home, or what?” you say. You push yourself up onto your elbows. She’s looking at you intently.

“You can fly,” she says, after a second.

“I’m tired. Don’t you have a car?” You give her your best expression of desperation. When she doesn’t cave, you widen your eyes very gradually until you’re sure you look like a kid denied dessert.

She leans in close, her face impressively blank, and says, “You are a very annoying person.”

“No,” you say, “you’re mistaking annoyance for attraction.”

“Oh, baby, sweetheart, I can’t keep my eyes off you,” she says, her voice completely flat of affect. She’s very close to your face, her hand planted on the roof barely an inch from your thigh.

“Knew it,” you say, grinning up at her. “Give me a hand up.”

She helps you (drags you) down the fire escape on the opposite side of the building and bundles you into a car like she’s staging a kidnapping. You complain the whole way down, so maybe that’s why.

“This is a nice car,” you say. She slams the door closed on you and gets in on the other side. the car starts with a happy growl when she turns the key in the ignition. The seats feel like real leather, the dash inlaid with hundreds of buttons like jewels. “Je-sus,” you say. “I might be getting your seats a little damp.”

“Hmph,” Natasha says, checking her rearview mirror. She puts the car in gear - it’s a fucking manual, of course she drives a manual, she probably likes feeling above everyone else even though she’s already got a car that costs four times your apartment lease and she doesn’t need another goddamn ego boost - and backs out of her parking space.

She drives you home in silence. At one point, you consider switching on the radio and playing some menial pop song just to piss her off, but she gives you a look like she knows exactly what you’re about to do and so you slump back into your seat with the most innocent expression you can muster.

“Don’t try and look all cute,” Natasha says. She smoothly turns a corner. “I know you’re the devil incarnate.”

“You can’t even see my face!” you protest. “Asshole. You’re so rude.” She pulls the car into a jerky brake against the kerb, throwing you forwards against the dash.

“Oops,” she says casually, as she kills the engine. “Should’ve put a seatbelt on, hm?”

Credit where credit is due, she does at least help you up the stairs, graciously ignoring the scowls you’re shooting at her over your shoulder. The fact that she’s extraordinarily gentle with one hand on your spine to keep you balanced doesn’t help the fact that you’re attempting to be annoyed with her at all. You unlock your door, balancing on one foot with the other ankle throbbing like mad, and swear loudly when the damn key won’t stick in the damn lock. Eventually, Natasha shunts you aside and opens it herself, with one smooth twist of the key.

The door swings inwards. Your own apartment is betraying you for her.

“Get inside,” Natasha orders, checking up and down your hall. You obey, hopping forward and feeling incredibly pathetic. To your surprise, Natasha follows you inside and pulls the door closed behind her. She throws your keys at you and you catch them one-handed against your chest, and then she’s walking towards you with purpose and you try to stumble backwards, but you forget that you only have the use of one foot and you go floundering down into your couch. She stands above you, eyebrows raised. “Are you scared of me?” she asks, after a long silence. She sounds casual again, as if this is a question she asks every day. As if she expects a casual answer.

“Little bit,” you say, and you congratulate yourself internally on how unbothered you sound.

“Huh,” she snorts, and she sinks to her knees in front of you. Your brain short-circuits. She pulls a roll of tape from her pocket and you feel stupid, instantly.

You hate how she can pluck your emotions like harp strings.

“Take your shoe off and put your foot up on this,” she says, grabbing one of your throw cushions and laying flat on the opposite end of the couch.

“Yes, sir,” you mutter insolently, reaching down to tug at your laces. Your head swims, throbs violently and you tip forward, losing balance. Your hands go out to catch yourself and land on Natasha’s shoulders, pushing her back: you try to let go, but you can barely find the strength to sit back up again, a headache pounding in your ears. She grabs you by the waist and shoves you, depositing you against the back of the couch. “You’re strong,” you say drunkenly, because you’re not thinking, your thoughts are moving like sludge in your head and spilling stupidly out of your mouth.

She smiles very slightly. “You’re useless,” she counters. She tugs at your laces herself and works your boot off your foot. She squints up at you and you frown, wondering what the problem is. “Nice socks,” she says. “They really flatter me.” You tip your head against the back of the couch and groan, and you can hear her start to grin.

“You’re the worst,” is all you say. Of course today had to be the day that you wore your Avengers socks out on a mission.

“It’s okay, I’m not judging you.” She is totally judging you.

She grabs your leg and swings it up onto the pillow, ignoring your wince of pain, then produces her roll of tape and binds your foot to the cushion. You look down at her.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” you ask. “I can’t go to work with a pillow on my foot.”

“Then take a day off,” Natasha replies. She rolls her eyes at you. “It needs rest. If you go running about on it, you’ll never heal.” She gets to her feet with her hands splayed on her thighs, and looks down at you. You glare back up at her, arms crossed.

“Get me an ice pack,” you say.

“Your fridge is barren,” she replies. “There’s no way you have an ice pack of all things in there.”

You heave a huge sigh. “Please,” you say. “I have a bag of peas in the freezer draw.”

“Hm,” Natasha says. “Fine.” She walks around the back of the couch. The instant she’s out of your line of sight, you feel her swat you on the back of the head. Enraged, you twist and try to hit her, but she’s damn fast and she’s in the kitchen before your hand’s even finished its arc. You settle back against the arm of the couch.

She opens the fridge, pulls open the draw with a crunch of ice, and you wait until she’s surely grabbed the bag of peas before you say, “Oh, by the way, it’s open.” There’s a filthy curseword spat out and the sound of frozen peas rattling across the floor and you grin to yourself. She slams the fridge door shut. “Did you find it okay?”

“You’re going to be finding moldy peas everywhere for the next two years,” she calls back at you. “And you’ll deserve it!” You hoist yourself up on the back of the couch and crane for the open door of the kitchen to see her crouched on the floor, sweeping peas into her hand.

You snort and sit back down again.

She enters holding the bag of peas gingerly in two hands like it’s a bomb about to go off, and dumps it in your lap. Thankfully, she’s tied the top closed. A single pea bounces off your thigh and disappears under the TV stand.

“Thanks,” you say, grinning up at her. Natasha throws herself into your other chair with a discontented grunt.

She makes a lot of those little sounds.

“Aren’t you gonna go home?” you ask, slapping the peas over your ankle. The pain begins to fade almost immediately with the cold and you groan, eyes closing, and rest your head back against the armrest in relief. There’s a short silence before she replies.

“I’m resting. Making sure you don’t pass out and choke on your own vomit.”

“Charming,” you say, cracking one eye open to look at her. She’s observing you intently. “What?”

“What what?” she shoots back, in an instant. You shrug helplessly.

“I don’t know,” you say. “Can you take my other shoe off?”

With a huge sigh, she unfolds herself from the armchair, grabs your uninjured foot, and yanks your boot off without untying the laces.

You wiggle your toes in her face. “Thanks.” She slaps your foot away from her face and tosses your boot over her shoulder.

“You’re bleeding,” she says astutely, studying you from below. You panic for a second, hands going to your ribs, your legs, checking for wounds. “From your face, idiot. It’s soaking through your mask.” You tug one glove off and press your fingers to the lower half of your mask: it’s only a dollar store masquerade mask over a bandana, but it usually stays on well enough. And soaks up all your blood. The amount of times you’ve had to wash it is honestly insane.

Sure enough, the fabric is wet, a little crusty with blood. You probe gently at your nose, teeth gritted against the pain. It doesn’t appear to be broken, thank god.

“I’ll get you a tissue,” Natasha says unprompted, and she gets to her feet and moves off. She’s back before long, and she stuffs a length of toilet roll into your hands, before collapsing in the armchair again, facing the window away from you.

You stick the tissue up under your mask, against the flow of blood. “Thangks,” you say, slightly muffled. She looks around at you, and you stick two bloodied thumbs up at her. “I’ll be fine. You can go.”

Natasha looks a little torn for a second, only a second before it’s gone again and she shrugs, climbing out of her seat and brushing her pants off. “You’d better not go comatose,” she says warningly. She stops by the amrest where your head is and looks down at you, her face indecipherable.

“Sure won’t,” you say. You try to pretend like your headache isn’t building with every second, like you don’t wish that she’d put cool hands on your bare forehead and talk you to sleep: you know her voice could send you to sleep if she wanted it to.

Natasha reaches out and taps your mask on the hard curved bridge of your nose with one finger. “Get some rest,” she says, inexplicably gentle. Then she cocks her head to the side. “And remember, if you stick your nose in where you’re not wanted again-”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, rolling your eyes with difficulty. “You don’t have to say that everytime we see each other. I’ve got the message now.”

“Uh-huh,” she says dryly.

“Leave.” You point sternly to the door.

“Leaving,” she says, hands raised in mock surrender. She gives you one last smile, and walks out. Through your door this time. How kind of her.

requests | masterlist

notes: hehe they’re gonna kiss soon

#natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #fanfiction #natasha romanoff #natfic!#fic!#slowfic!#request #long fic

579 notes · View notes

mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

i just saw your most recent reblog and the tags. pleaseee do m!reader i would die. well written m!reader fics are way too sparse in number! idc what it is but this is me (a desperate male) asking - :)

no one compares to you

| natasha x m!reader | part two

warnings: none

a/n: i wanna be her bf and give her everything she wants

"You look incredible." The words are out of your mouth before they've even reached the forefront of your mind.

Thankfully, Natasha smiles at you: not the blinding, graceful blessing she saves for the cameras. No, this is a grin, hidden half behind her glass. "I know," she says. "Tony knows how to pick a color." And a cut, you think, and thankfully this time your thoughts don’t get ahead of you. Her dress is royal blue, the neckline daring and the decoration tastefully extravagant. Her hair is curled and swept and pinned to one side, leaving half her throat bare and white under the brilliant lights.

You look at your feet.

“Not too bad yourself,” she says, and your head snaps up. “You pull off that suit much better than the hundred and one other men wearing the exact same thing.”

“Shut up,” you say, a smile latching careful beginnings on your face. You tug your left sleeve sharply down and her eyes follow your movement. Her glass is nearly empty. “Refill?”

She looks at her glass. “Oh. Yes, please.” She holds it out between delicate fingers and you take it dutifully, already moving off even before your eyes have found the bar.

Tony made it an open bar: you’d say he was an idiot for it, but you guess even the combined efforts of a dozen or so superheroes on the alcohol supply wouldn’t make even the smallest of dents in his fortune.

As the bartender takes your glass for a refill, you feel someone step up beside you.

“Glass of red when you’re done,” they say: deep voice, cracking hard on the low consonants. Grainy and almost unpleasant. You turn to look and find a man with a face that matches his voice: thin and sallow and pale and observing you with great interest. “Hello.” He holds out his hand to shake and you take it cautiously. “John Vermont,” he says, and you drop his hand almost instantly.

John Vermont, the journalist who’s recently made a name for himself digging up things about Tony, and where Rhodes was born, and what Steve’s mother did for a living and generally being quite spiteful about what he manages to find. You’ve never met him face to face, and never wanted to. You’re not really in the mood to be one of his next targets, although with how waterproof your identity is, you’d truly be suprised (and grudgingly impressed) if he ever did find anything worth writing about.

You introduce yourself coldly and his eyes gleam.

“Pleasure,” he says, his voice dripping with something belying rudeness. “Another of Miss Romanoff’s handlers, are you? Or perhaps the latest...date for the evening?”

So he’s after Natasha. You can’t help the way your shoulders tighten, but you can disguise it by reaching for the glass the bartender hands you. Vermont watches your arm move at the shoulder interestedly.

You know what he’s implying.

“No,” you reply stiffly. “And no.”

And before you can come up with a cutting rebuke, from somewhere over your shoulder - “He’s actually my boyfriend.” An arm slips through yours, pale and edged at the shoulder with that damn royal blue dress. You blink hard at the glass in your hand, registering the words very slowly. A flush begins to form at your ears and you pass Natasha her glass whilst directing Vermont a cold smile. Her fingers pass over yours.

Your ears are ringing. You vaguely register Natasha giving Vermont a few sweet, carefully chosen words. Oh, God, you have to pull yourself together. She looks over at you, and she’s chosen a pretty smile showing white teeth and a position that makes the extent of that neckline very visible to you. To save your eyes from wandering and perhaps your throat from subsequently being slit, you look back up at Vermont, who is eyeing the pair of you with great interest in his slate eyes, once again. You see his fingers itching for his pocket.

“...so if you don’t mind, we’d like to go and dance,” Natasha is saying, and she squeezes your elbow. You take the hint and wheel around, then dive into the crowd with Natasha clinging to your arm. You can feel Vermont’s eyes hot on the back of your head as the dancers close in around you. “Slow down!” Natasha insists, hiking her dress up and stumbling after you. “I’m wearing seven inch fucking heels, for Christ’s sake.”

“So that’s why I can finally look you in the eye - sorry, the forehead,” you say, earning yourself a slap on the arm. It stings. “Ouch.” You slow as a couple whirls past you, and Natasha steps on the back of your shoe. She circles you and positions herself in front of you, hands held up. Her glass has disappeared somewhere along the journey into the crowd. “Um,” you say. You squint at her.

Natasha rolls her eyes monstrously. “We’re dancing, Мудак.” She settles her arms over your shoulders, links them around the back of your neck, and looks you seriously in the eye. “Now dance. You can dance, can’t you?”

“You’re being mean,” you complain. Your hands settle uncertainly on her waist. She tilts her head.

“You like it when I’m mean.”

You lead her into a box waltz and she raises a perfect arc of an eyebrow at you. “Don’t be mean,” you insist.

“You’re the only one who’s got the balls to come back with something,” Natasha replies. She steps purposefully on your foot.

“I just had those shoes polished.” She’s warm under your hands, but not so warm as the back of your neck is, not so warm as your chest as your heart throws itself desperately against your ribs with a panicked, fast beat.

You need to calm the hell down. You’re only touching her. Holding her. Holding her by the waist and waltzing her in slow circles as her eyes follow the room lazily and her fingers play with the back of your collar. You’ve seen Tony dance with her hundreds of times, the two of them touching each other naturally, and you know that’s never meant anything because Tony’s gayer than the day is long and-

Natasha sighs as the music changes and shifts against you, looping her arms further around your neck and pressing her chin into your shoulder. “Your heart’s going very fast,” she notes casually, and you almost grind to a halt and run right there and then. You don’t, because you’re not stupid and not a coward and you’d never be able to face her again if you did. You let a few steps pass before you reply, your voice low and easy.

“Vermont’s got a face like a mad rat. It’s the adrenaline: I keep thinking he’s gonna spring up on us.”

She laughs against your ear - why?? Is she trying to kill you? You almost miss a step. “God, this is dull.”

Your heart droops like a wilting puppy. “Sorry to bore you,” you say, careful to keep the acid from your voice.

“Oh, you’re not dull, don’t worry.” She pulls back from you and studies your face thoughtfully for a second. With great effort, you raise your eyebrows at her and keep your expression otherwise neutral. “Wanna get out of here?” Fuck. What does she think she’s doing to you? “I need a couch or something. Someplace I can take off these fucking shoes.”

“Yeah, I need to bin this tie,” you say, and it’s true: your collar is uncomfortably tight. Since when was the room this hot? You distract yourself by searching for an exit.

Predictably, Natasha finds one before you do. She grabs your wrist and propels you hurriedly towards it, easily dipping between couples and groups talking and dancing until the door is looming at you and she’s leading you through it. You grab at the knot of your tie and winch it open, then pull the entire thing off over your head and drop it in a passing trash can as Natasha bears you onwards in her search for a couch. The place is all white walls and tasteful art prints in tasteful frames and indoor pot plants (not the plastic kind, not for Tony Stark) and before long Natasha finds what looks like an ante room: leather couches and soft-seated wooden chairs and a long glass coffee table.

She sinks into a seat and works her heels off with a soft groan.

You avoid looking at her and drop down onto the couch, lie back, slipping open your top two buttons and letting out a sigh. The party’s only been going for an hour and a half and you’re already exhausted. One arm droops over the side of the couch to brush the floor. The ceiling is cream and smooth, the lights a warm yellow.

It’s silent in here save for the rustling of Natasha’s dress, the music and chatter distant beyond the walls.

When you do look up, she’s got her chin in one palm and she’s staring at you. One leg is crossed over the other: there’s a slit in her skirt and it’s falling away to reveal her thigh, tight with muscle. You turn your gaze back to the ceiling and try to count to ten in your head.

You have to swallow before you can speak again. “How are your feet?”

“They’re fine.” It’s an uncharacteristically blank reply. You can still feel her eyes on you. Unsettling.

“What are you looking at me for?” you ask.

“Well, I can’t help it, you’re just so devastatingly handsome,” she replies, and this time her voice is biting with sarcasm. But when you look up at her she might not have said it at all. Her eyes are on your shirt buttons.

She rises from her seat restlessly, tests her toes out on the carpet, and then she paces the length of the room and back, arriving at the arm of your couch by your feet. She plops herself down on it with a sigh.

She looks at you and looks at you. You’re instantly all too aware of your rumpled shirt and ruffled hair and your arm thrown back behind your head and you shift uncomfortably. Her hand descends on your knee and you freeze. “No, don’t move,” she says. “You look like...” and she trails off. She’s not one for pretty words. You know all these things about her.

Natasha slips off the arm of the couch and you expect her to walk away but she doesn’t, she keeps going down and your heartbeat keeps rising.

All those months of stealing looks at her, of trading sharp remarks softened with amused grins, of having her back and knowing she’s right beside you. You even knew, maybe unconsciously, that she’d be right there to save you from Vermont at the crucial point.

Now the crucial point is this, is her sinking to her knees and shifting up beside your head to brush her fingertips over your hair and down the side of your face. You’re sure your lungs don’t work. All you can do is keep your eyes on hers. You’d never dared to hope. Never let yourself want.

What if she just gets up and walks away?

Natasha dips her head towards you and like a dance, like you’ve choreographed this moment, you raise yourself to meet her and she kisses you, tender like her fingers at the back of your collar on the dance floor. You can taste wine on her lips. You can taste her. You can taste your own ecstasy rushing through you as you lie prone on a couch like some lamenting Greek hero and you kiss Natasha Romanoff and she kisses you back. Soft, a hand ghosting over the side of your face.

requests | masterlist

notes: I am so doing an nsfw part two

#natasha romanoff x male reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #m!reader #natfic!#fic!#m answers #anon cuties #written fic for anon #:) anon

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mr-m-murdock · 3 years

Note

Hey can you do a fic where stark!reader is married to natasha and meet nat family for the first time at the compound but tony, pepper and Morgan were visiting the reader so its just a big meeting of getting to know you new family in-law

out-laws

| natasha x reader |

summary: pleasant surprise for a friday afternoon, overwhelming stress. it's a wonder you haven't spontaneously combusted already.

warnings: mentions of sex : rating [G]

a/n: this was super fun thanks anon. i went for the black widow movie family cause I assumed you meant them

You look up from the soldering iron at ten minutes to four, and swear loudly. You’d told yourself you wouldn’t lose track of time today, that you’d be upstairs to eat in the middle of the day instead of caving to hunger halfway through dismantling an engine or a circuit board only to find that everyone else had already eaten.

You push back from the workbench, wipe your hands on a ragged oilcloth, and turn to glare at DUM-E.

“You were supposed to poke me!” you say, as accusing as you can. DUM-E reaches out and pinches your upper arm, leaving an angry mark amongst the smears of oil. “Ow!” You jerk back. “Asshole.” DUM-E’s claw lowers like a chastised child, and you shake your head. “You’re not getting guilt out of me.” With one last scowl, you grab your overshirt from the bench and make for the stairs, pulling it on as you go.

You hear voices as you leave the lab, and you pause at the bottom of the stairs, working your collar out from under your neck. Voices you don’t recognise. You cock your head and listen for a second.

They don’t come closer. They don’t grow distant. They needle at you: no one said they were having guests over except when Pepper texted you today to say she was dropping by at four. And that’s definitely not Pepper’s voice.

You flick the ringer switch on your watch and it changes with a click and scrape of metal. The glove grows over your hand and powers up with a whine. With the other hand, you pull your knife slowly from its sheath. You’ve learnt not to take chances, not even in your own home.

You creep up the stairs, practically flat against the wall. You’re halfway up when you realise you left your damn glasses downstairs. Too late now.

You can see shadows moving against the smooth floor when you reach the top. Gesticulating hands, crossed arms, straight backs. They’re speaking Russian and if you’d kept your headphones on, you’d fucking well know what they’re saying, but you didn’t. You feel bare and terrified, your neck and head and forearms too exposed without your suit. You paused at the corner and suck in a slow, slow breath.

You step out fast, raise the gauntlet, knife braced underneath, eyes narrowed and you yell “Freeze!” Click of weaponry rising and you see three pistol muzzles and a throwing knife make their way into the air: this was a bad idea, this was a very bad idea–

“Oh my God, put them down!” someone cries: Natasha. Your head flicks to her – she’s standing encased in the doorway, hands outstretched.

“Nat?” you say. The gauntlet is still powering up: you’ll either have to fire it or deactivate it now.

“Down!” she says, and the weapons are lowered. You grip your wrist with one hand and spin: the wide glass veranda doors are open. You fire the shot out, the force bucking up your arm and sending you stumbling two paces backwards. You roll your shoulders and watch the shot hit the treeline with a sat phut before you turn back around.

Two women, one man. He's heavyset and red-faced, a long grey beard and grey hair. One of the women is younger, blonde and sporting a coolly amused look on her face: the other is older, a thin face but muscled arms, dark hair scraped back into a tight braid crown. They all observe you, and their gazes seem almost familiar.

It strikes you: their eyes move the same way Natasha's did when she first met you. They don't keep eye contact, they study you top to bottom, gauntlet to oil smears to boots. Appraising and calculating. You feel like you're under a surgeon's scalpel, skin peeled back.

"Didn't know we had visitors," you say, pointedly.

"We really need to work on your 'shoot first, shake hands later' approach," Natasha replies. You allow her a thin smile. Your heart is still thundering. "This is my family," she adds.

You blink. You turn the sentence over in your mind.

"Oh," you say. "He-llo." You introduce yourself. The blonde woman gives no indication that she even hears you, eyes fixed securely on your face. "Nice to meet y'all." The blonde woman's face shifts ever so slightly - something like glee gleams behind her eyes.

"Melina," says the older woman. She holsters her pistol under her jacket and gives you a sharp little smile. "This is Alexei, and Yelena."

Alexei looks far more nervous than a man his stature has any right to be. He fixes his jacket collar. Natasha looks at you. You look back at her helplessly.

"Um, sorry about the wedding-" you start, to fill the silence.

"No, I wouldn't- mention the wedding," Natasha says quietly. She turns to her family and says something cutting in Russian: the blonde woman rolls her eyes. "Don't roll your eyes at me," Natasha adds in English. "Please be nice."

"Do you guys, like want something to eat?" you ask. They're unnerving you, their stillness and the way they hold themselves.

"That would be lovely," says Melina.

"Cool." You make an awkward thumbs up, your gauntlet sliding with the movement. You back away into the kitchen and Natasha follows you, kicking the door half-closed. "Nat!" you exclaim in a hushed voice.

"I'm sorry," she says, practically cringing, and she looks sorry. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I told them to be normal-"

"Normal?" you ask, barely able to keep your voice in check. "I almost blasted them all into next week! You- you sprung them on me!"

"I did not spring them on you," Natasha says. "I told you they were coming. Two days ago." You frown. Tick through your memories.

"Didn't I-"

"Drink four cans of Red Bull for breakfast two days ago? Yes," Natasha replies. She looks decidedly unimpressed. "And you didn't eat today, did you?" You wave a hand vaguely over your shoulder. Not important.

Natasha fixes you with a stare and you cower a little.

"Sorry."

"Make something. Eat. I'm gonna go tell them off," she says, moving to the door. You grab her wrist before she can get too far and she jerks to a stop. Raises an eyebrow at you. God, the power that eyebrow has.

"You don't need to tell them off," you say. "I'll make them mac and cheese."

"You wanna make three Russians mac and cheese?" Natasha asks, slowly. "Did you clock Alexei? He regularly eats his own bodyweight." You snort. Natasha raises the other eyebrow, and your laugh fades.

"Oh. Well."

"You can make them food if you want," Natasha says. She scowls at the door. "I'm sure they'll be perfectly polite about it once I've given them a piece of my mind." You grin, and manage to wipe it off before she looks back around at you. She's endearing when she's cross.

"I'll make food," you say. What better way to get in with the in-laws than to cook for them?

• • • • • • • • •

You make eight pots of boxed macaroni cheese and Natasha's family eats it all.

It's quite impressive. Alexei talks while he eats as well: he might as well be inhaling it. How fast can a metabolism work? You're almost itching to ask him.

"Is Captain America here?" he asks at one point, his face conspiratorially lowered. He's addressing you. Yelena snorts around a mouthful of macaroni.

"Oh," you say. "Uh..." Natasha smacks Alexei on the shoulder before you can finish your sentence. He chuckles and pokes at her, and she grabs his finger with a murderous look on his face and bends it all the way back. Alexei howls and snatches his hand away, adopting an injured look.

Natasha returns to her food.

"What do you do for a living?" Melina asks. You tear your eyes away from Alexei shovelling forkfuls into his mouth at inhuman speed.

"I'm an engineer," you say. You shrug. "Engineer-designer. I work for the Avengers. What about- what about you?"

Melina's smile is cold, but not unkind. "I kill people for a living."

"Oh yeah," you say. "Well, potato, potato. I make weapons that kill people. Lot of press conferences. Not a lot of conscience."

"Oh my God," Natasha mutters into her plate.

"Uh, I'm joking," you say, in an attempt to salvage it. Melina just laughs, seeing right through you. God, you don't know how to talk to fucking in-laws!

"What weapons do you make?" Yelena asks. You turn to look at her: she's got a piece of macaroni speared on her fork and she's studying it against the ceiling lamps.

"Explosive ones," you say. "You can eat that, you know. I assumed you're all immune to cyanide." Her eyes slide to you. "Joking," you say again. Comes out as more of a squeak.

"Very funny." She puts the macaroni in her mouth and chews slowly. Natasha says something quietly in Russian, and Yelena glares at her, cheeks turning red.

"So..." you say. You take a sip of water. "You're all- appropriately terrifying. I see where Nat gets it from." Natasha grins at you.

"Aw, you're not scared of me, are you baby?" she asks. Yelena pretends to gag into her drink.

"Yelena," Melina reprimands sharply. Yelena gives you a look from the corner of her eye and smiles at you. Unsure, you smile back.

You hear your name. Distant. Evidently, the others hear it, too: Alexei cocks his head and Natasha looks up. Your name again, hollered from the hall. It's Tony. Horror crosses Natasha's face faster than a cloud on a windy day.

You stand, your chair scraping backwards across the floor with a horrible noise, and they all turn to look at you.

"Scuse me," you say. You throw your napkin down and escape through the kitchen door.

You half-run down the corridor, checking each room with your neck craned, your heart beating in your mouth until-

"Hey." You jump almost out of your skin, stumbling backwards. Tony, hanging his coat up on the back of a door, surveys you with concern. "Alright, kid?"

"What the fuck are you doing here?" you pant, perhaps a little too viciously. Tony frowns.

"Pep said she was dropping by. And you know she can't go anywhere without me. I'm like her second child."

"What? Where is she?" you ask, spinning around. Damn, damn, damn, you'd forgotten she'd said she was coming at four!

"Kitchen," Tony says casually. "You alright? You seem stressed."

"I do?" you exclaim. "Do I? Do I seem stressed, Tony?"

"Hey," he says. "Calm it, Junior."

"God," you say, half through your nose, and you spin and make off towards the kitchen. Tony follows at a quick pace.

"You know," he says, as the two of you approach the kitchen, "would it kill you to call me dad once in a while?"

"I think I prefer 'Asshole'," you retort.

"Uh, okay, you're grounded," he says.

"I'm 27," you reply. "Asshole." You throw the kitchen door open and freeze. Tony stumbles into your heels. Morgan is sitting on Alexei's lap, grinning from ear to ear. Pepper is seated in your place like the queen of England, one regal leg crossed over the other.

"Hi," Tony says, from over your shoulder. "Hey, Nat."

"Stark," Natasha says stiffly. She looks painfully awkward.

"Ah!" says Alexei, bounding up from his chair. He hands Morgan over to Melina like she weighs nothing more than a cardboard box. "So this is the famous Iron Man!" He strides forwards and you barely manage to stumble out of the way before Alexei is seizing Tony's hand and tugging it up and down roughly.

"Nice to meet you," Tony says. Alexei releases him and he fixes his cuffs.

"You know, we would have been dire enemies had you been born a little earlier," Alexei says joyfully. "I'm sure you would have put up a good fight." Tony reddens a little, and seems to swell in indignation.

"Yeah," you say. "Or maybe he would have been instantly flattened." Tony looks at you and you smile. "I see you've met Pepper, my..." you pause. "Yeah. Pepper." Pepper hides a laugh in her shoulder.

"Everyone needs a Pepper," Tony says. "So these are the in-laws, huh, kid?" He surveys them. You can practically see his brain working. "I'm Tony," he says. He claps you on the shoulder. "This idiot's dad." He points to Natasha. "That terrifying woman's father in law."

"We all hate it," Natasha says. Tony shakes his head.

"Don't know how you bagged her, kid, I really don't," he says, not nearly quietly enough.

"You're gonna get punched in a minute," you say.

"I could take all of 'em in a heartbeat," Tony replies cheerfully.

"By me," you say. He puts on his best offended look and you shrug. "I've got to defend my wife's honour," you say. You see Natasha smile stupidly at her plate. Wife. Never gets old, that.

• • • • • • • • •

They all get on surprisingly well. Pepper, ever the diplomat, manages to steer everyone and the conversation into the sitting room without incident, and you and Natasha stay behind to clear up.

You start the taps and lump the pans into the sink, the spray wetting your top. Natasha finishes loading the dishwasher and comes up behind you, reaches through your arms for a wet cloth. She kisses your neck as she pulls back and you grin stupidly over your shoulder at her.

"You like them?" she asks, as she starts to wipe the table. She's very carefully not looking at you.

"They're great," you say. "Terrifying, but funny."

"They're idiots," she says. She comes back to dump the detritus down the disposal and you steal a kiss from her. She laughs and returns it, quick little ones on your nose and your cheek.

"They're not idiots. Tony's an idiot."

"Tony is an idiot," Natasha agrees. She links her arms around your waist and rests her chin on your shoulder. You look down at her hands, where the wedding ring is glinting, and think about that day. You'd eloped, secretly, laughing guiltily about it in the back of a bus, and you'd spent your wedding night on a warm beach on the west coast drinking far too much champagne. You'd fucked on the sun-baked sand, drunk on the moon and the sound of the waves and the alcohol on each other's lips. Completely alone.

Natasha kisses your cheek.

"What you thinking about?" she asks, her voice low and soft right against your ear.

"Wedding night," you say. You feel her mouth move into a smile against your skin.

"Oh yeah?" She grabs your ass and you gasp and flick water at her. It splashes over her face and she draws back, nose wrinkled in disgust.

"Have some decorum!" you exclaim. She wipes the water from her face and mock-glares at you. "I'm sorry," you say, grinning widely.

"I'll make you sorry," Natasha growls, and she lunges for you, hands outstretched. You laugh and dash away, flinging droplets at her over your shoulder. She grabs you by the waist before you can reach the door and pulls you into her. Your ass presses flush against her hips. She dips her head and kisses your neck, open mouthed. Her hands splay over your stomach.

"Oh," you say, tipping your head back. "Mm, I'm not sorry at all."

"No?" Natasha asks, hands pulling your top up. Her fingers press into your skin and you wriggle in her grasp.

"Nat-"

"You said you weren't sorry," she says petulantly. "Apologise." She kisses your neck again and strokes your stomach and you press back into her.

"I'll never be sorry, so long as you keep that up." She laughs, and then her kisses slow down.

"I love you," she says, murmured against your pulse. Her breath is hot and her arms are strong around you.

"Still not sorry." She digs her fingers into your ribs and you twist, laughing.

"Say it back, jackass," she grumbles. You sigh.

"I love you, too."

requests | masterlist

#natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanov #alexei shostakov #yelena belova #melina vostokova #natasha romanoff #tony stark #stark!reader #pepper potts #natasha romanoff x reader #fic!#natfic!#flufffic!#morgan stark #written fic for anon

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

Hey! I love your writing, especially your to play the fool series! Would you consider writing a part where Clint and the rest of the team find out Natasha is seeing the reader? Feel free to make it angsty as long as it has a fluffy ending. Totally okay if you don't want to write it or decide to take it in a different direction!

i would absolutely consider that because it's a great prompt. I love angst. Angst will abound. (But fluff will as well) Thanks for the request!

| natasha x fem!reader | to play the fool

warnings: claustrophobia, angst but it ends happily :)

a/n: consider this a part 4 for anon, @maddess and @strangegardentaco because i don't think I really did a justified ending for the actual story. also the nightmare drabble is set after this.

The week ends with you lying on your couch and staring wearily at the TV, your eyes glazed as the news babbles on. The Avengers this. The Avengers that. The Avengers cleared up the Empire State building mess and we all owe them our lives. Let the villain rot in jail.

You flop onto your back when Tony Stark starts making speeches and promises. You’ve been out of action for almost five days, and it’s driving you bonkers. Not because of the injuries, long since faded, but because you just can’t force yourself into your suit and out the window. It’s not because of the Avengers: you know you can skirt them if need be. Maybe it’s the fear of that tight space and the dirt under your nails and your mask, wet against your face.

Maybe it’s because you haven’t seen Natasha since she disappeared down the hall still wearing your clothes.

Whatever it is, you haven’t gotten up all day. You’ve eaten Thai on your couch and glared at the ceiling. You haven’t been to work since before the Empire State fiasco and you just know your boss is looking for a reason to fire you. You can’t play out the sick excuse for another week.

Frustrated, you kick a cushion off the couch with a twitch of your foot: it flops sadly onto the floor.

It’s just getting dark outside: there’s still time to pull your suit on and go stop a mugging or something. Revert back to your funny little vigilante ways.

“And really,” Tony Stark is saying on the TV, “if it weren’t for the people of New York, the firefighters and the police, we never would have won. You guys are the true heroes.”

“Fuck you,” you say loudly, as Stark grins toothily into the camera. Fuck them all.

The drop from your window to the ground seems longer than ever before, but you make it and stand briskly, dusting off your palms. It feels good to don the mask again, to slip into this persona and become someone else, someone useful for the evening.

You find a roof with a good view, far enough away from your neighbourhood. It’s almost the other side of the city.

A police car winds its way downtown with lights going, siren wailing. Your feet dangle above the street, buffeted this way and that by the wind: it’s almost like old times.

The evening is surprisingly uneventful: you thwart a grocery store robbery and the owner, fresh out of bed, shakes your hand with tears in his eyes. You twist out of his grip, tell him no problem, and walk away.

Maybe you should work on your PR.

When you crawl up your wall back to your apartment, back to a well needed sleep, you don’t bother to check inside before sliding up the window, slipping in and tugging off your boots.

“So,” someone says from the dark interior, deep voice. You freeze. Your boot drops from your fingers and thumps to the carpet, probably scattering mud everywhere. “This is where she was.”

“Who’s there?” you snap. “Turn on the light, for fuck’s sake, or I’ll light you up myself.” You hold out your hand, and sparks fly from your palm.

“I don’t doubt you will.” The light flicks on. You narrow your eyes against the sudden brightness, and when you adjust, Hawkeye is leaning against your front door. There’s a knife in his hand. A bruise under his eye. A deadly look on his face.

“Do you people ever knock? What, is the sitting in the dark thing for dramatic flair or something?” you snap. Your heart is pounding from the shock.

“Or something,” Hawkeye replies. He doesn’t look amused at your biting comments, like Natasha always did. “You brought her back here.”

“What?” you say sharply, adrenaline still gripping you hard. It takes you a second to figure he’s talking about Natasha. “Yeah. You’re welcome.”

“Listen,” Hawkeye says, and his jaw tightens around the word. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to. But whatever the hell you are, whatever the fuck you’re doing to Natasha-”

“To Natasha? What the fuck are you talking about?” you exclaim. Hawkeye narrows his eyes. “I fucking sewed her up and fed her pizza! Where the hell were the rest of you?”

“Why did you bring her back here?” Hawkeye demands, brushing aside your comments. He thinks you’re lying. Lying. You’ve just about had it.

“Sorry,” you snarl. “You wanted me to leave her in that fucking rock fall, did you?”

“Cut the bullshit!” Hawkeye snaps at you. “Every fucking time I ask her about it, she brushes me off. She won’t talk about you! She won’t talk about the explosion! She won’t talk to me anymore! What the hell did you do to her?”

You stare at him. There’s panic written clearly across his face, though he tries to hide it with gritted teeth. Something’s wrong.

“I didn’t do anything,” you say slowly. “She’s probably- dealing with it. I swear-”

“That’s not how she deals with stuff,” Hawkeye replies. His face is tight, but you can tell he believes you somewhat, at least. “Just- stay away from her. You stay away. Alright?”

“Are you threatening me?” you say, eyeing the knife in his hand. “I didn’t think Avengers stooped to that kind of level.” You keep your voice cold. No point reasoning with him now.

“I wasn’t always an Avenger,” he growls. He stares you down, and for a second you see a shock of steel in his eyes. You believe him. He could have been something much, much worse.

He leaves through your door, his knife nicking the wood of the frame on the way out.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Bad day, you think, as you sink onto your bed with your toothbrush in your mouth. Just another bad day.

The threat still lingers in your mind. The stay away from her, the white of bone showing through his knuckles as he’d gripped his knife.

But it’s not like he’ll be inclined to carry it out, seeing as Natasha doesn’t seem interested in returning.

You’re being an idiot about it. Every creak of a foot in the corridor has you perking up, convinced it’s her. You wilt each time it passes. Stupid, stupid. But you find yourself imagining her turning up, even just to give your clothes back. You know what you’d do: you’d invite her in and feed her and the two of you would talk, just the two of you.

That’s probably not accurate, actually. You might just stand there and stare with your mouth open. Who can blame you? She’s pretty, and she kissed you, like eight times.

You spit your toothpaste out in the sink, return to bed and pull the covers right up to your head. You spend the rest of the night trying to get Natasha out of your head. But she won’t budge.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You hear your name in the morning, softly somewhere in the distance. The early, early morning sun is just heaving itself through a gap in your curtains, splayed across your face. You wake slowly.

“Hey, asshole. Wake up.”

“Huh?” you blurt, struggling upwards, eyes half open. Someone waves at you from the foot of the bed, redheaded someone. “N’tasha,” you mumble. You shake yourself awake. “Jesus Christ,” you say, when you’ve registered that Natasha is indeed crouching at the foot of your bed, waving at you with one hand, a gun in the other. A fucking gun. You scrambled backwards, your back hitting the wall, curses flowing from your mouth like water. “Fuck,” you say, pressing yourself against the headboard. Your flight response slows. She’s not going to shoot you. You tip your head backwards and sigh. “What is wrong with you people?” you groan. You check your clock. “It’s four in the morning.”

“Rise and shine,” Natasha says dryly. “What did you say to Clint?”

You rub at your eyes, your thoughts moving sluggishly. “I- what? I- he broke in.”

“Yeah. Last night. Quit playing catch-up and tell me what happened.” She waves the gun illustratively and you cringe back. This is not the Natasha who was eating pizza in sweatpants on your fire escape a week ago. She’s impatient and cold and expecting an answer.

“What do you mean?” you ask weakly. It’s a good thing she’s a couple metres away, or you might take it into your head to kiss her again, after so long. She doesn’t seem right now like she’d want that.

“He knew you brought me here. He told the others.”

“They know where I live?” you exclaim, sitting bolt upright. Natasha just rolls her eyes.

“Calm down. They’re not coming near you, not if I have anything to say about it,” she says. “Besides, they’re not hitmen.”

“Beg to differ,” you say shortly. Natasha’s eyes harden. You regret that comment instantly. “Nat-”

“What does he know?” she demands, her patience clearly lost. You frown.

“What? I told him we ate pizza together. That’s it. He seemed to think you were...off.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” she replies testily. She sighs, frustration evident on her face. Maybe fear. Maybe.

“You don’t want him to know,” you say, the revelation dawning on you. Natasha’s eyes flick downwards, almost shamefully. “Yeah,” you say, slumping back into your pillow. “I guess I’m not really good enough for you, am I?”

“Oh, shut up,” she snaps. She gets to her feet.

“You shut up,” you say, insulted. “Get the fuck out of my house, Jesus Christ!”

She frowns at you, finally that cold cool mask broken a little. “Fine,” she says.

“I don’t need your mess around me,” you say, just to push her further. It’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Breaking things. Natasha backs away to the doorway, hurt evident on her face. But she doesn’t apologise: of course she doesn’t, she never would.

“Fine,” she says again, and she turns and is gone in seconds.

You sag, the moment you hear the door click closed. You roll onto your side, draw the covers up over your head, and yell into your pillow.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

It’s almost two weeks before you decide you have to do something. Two weeks, and although the Avengers tentatively ignore you, you can feel something about to break. Like they want an excuse to come raining fury down on you. You barely go back to your apartment anymore, for fear one of their little freaks is crouching in the dark, waiting for you again. And you won’t let them chase you out of your home.

Funnily enough, it seems that two weeks is enough for Natasha to give up, too. She’s been stoically blanking you at any fight, and though it’s not quite hostility, it puts hooks in you, like blades. You don’t want to be ignored, or feared. You just want her back.

So when you arrive at Avengers tower in civilian clothing with your face uncovered (so weird), and when you feel a tap on your shoulder and spin around, there she is. Eyeballing the ground.

“Oh,” you say.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. It sounds tentative.

“I- came to make the peace,” you say. You stuff your hands in your pockets. “You look nice.” She snorts, and doesn’t move away like you expect her to. “I’m sorry, you know-” At this, though, she rolls her eyes and pushes past you, towards the steps leading up to the tower. “O-kay,” you say, pushing hard down on frustration. Wouldn’t do to lose your temper right now. When you don’t follow her, Natasha looks over her shoulder at you.

“Are you coming, or what?” she asks. On instinct, you start forwards, and you follow her up the steps like a lost puppy.

The lobby is cool and sleek, just like the exterior. A receptionist with perfectly gelled hair begins to inform the two of you that an appointment is required for an audience with Mr Stark, and that the wait is currently approximately six somethings, but you don’t get to hear the last part because Natasha cuts him off smoothly.

“Stop giving me bullshit, Henry,” she says. “Which floor is he on?” The receptionist clears his throat.

“Fourteen,” he says, timidly.

“Thank you,” Natasha says, with a smile you’re not sure you ever want to be on the receiving end of. Henry sinks back into his seat.

You follow Natasha to a pair of silver elevator doors, and she reaches for the button engraved with a shining 14. “Jarvis, tell the idiots to meet at 14. Urgent, twelve,” she says.

“Of course,” says a cool, disembodied voice. You curse and press yourself against the back wall of the elevator, staring around. The elevator jerks smoothly upwards and you catch Natasha smirking in the mirror before she catches your eye and drops the expression. “Should I alert the President?” asks the voice.

“The President?” you exclaim.

“Not necessary,” Natasha says. “Just make sure they’re all there.”

“I have,” says the voice. “Captain Rogers is somewhat distressed.” Button number fourteen glows blue, and the elevator comes to a halt. The doors slide open.

“Morning,” Natasha says, and she glides out of the elevator like she’s on rollerskates. Seven Avengers turn to face you with wide eyes.

“Nat,” says Hawkeye, glaring right at you, a muscle going in his cheek. “What the actual goddamn fuck is going on?”

“Language,” whispers the Falcon, the actual Falcon, out of the corner of his mouth. Captain America is breathing hard. Thor, his head practically brushing the ceiling, is surveying you with a squint.

“Actually,” Captain America says, making an obvious attempt to calm himself down, “I agree with Clint.” His t-shirt says certified nonegenarian in big bubble letters. It stretches almost comically over his chest.

“And that’s a first,” says Tony Stark. You say nothing. There’s nothing you can say. Natasha turns to face you. “Nat, who is this? You just called a national emergency. I have Rhodey scrambling jets right about fucking now.”

“Well, call them off,” Natasha says, with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. You’re all just so slow in getting up the stairs unless there’s food or an emergency.” She shrugs. “And I didn’t have time to make food.”

“And your food is famously terrible,” says Thor, with a chuckle. The whole national emergency thing hasn’t seemed to phase him one bit.

“Nat,” you squeak. “What the fuck? I was going to segway into this.”

“You couldn’t segway into the ocean,” Natasha replies. You might catch a hint of fondness in her voice, but it’s gone instantly. She presents you with two hands, to the crowd of gawking Avengers. “She wants to make peace.”

“Make peace?” Stark explodes immediately. “She tried to kill Cap!”

“No I didn’t,” you interject. You fold your arms over your chest. “That was an accident.”

The room bursts into chatter, angry, accusing chatter. And in the midst of it, Natasha turns to you and gives you an interminably triumphant smile. You just about hold back from hitting her really really hard.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

The fucking peacemaking takes all day. In the end, you have to consent to having your mind read by a lady called Wanda with red stuff coming out of her eyes, which has always been your biggest nightmare. Not least because Natasha is sitting literally right in front of you and you have to look at her while Wanda fiddles with your brain and you’re quite sure, with your face becoming progessively redder and redder, that Wanda knows not just how innocent you are, but how much you’ve thought about Natasha even just in the last day. Because when she pulls away, she gives you a sweet little smile.

“She’s telling the truth,” Wanda announces. “All of it. She wants to be appreciated.” You groan internally. Wanda pats your hand and smiles secretly at you. “Don’t we all?”

“Okay, and is she dating Natasha?” Clint calls gruffly, over Natasha’s head. He fixes you with a glare, but the suspicion is melting fast away from it.

“No,” you say swiftly, before Wanda can so much as open her mouth. “And if it’s alright with you, I’m going home now.” You get up. They’re still surrounding you, and none of them look inclined to move. Stark and Captain America are conversing in rapid, hushed whispers.

“You don’t have to gossip like hens,” Clint calls. He looks at you. “They want to invite you to join.”

“Huh?” you say cleverly. “Join? The Avengers?”

“No, the boy band we hold in the basement,” Stark says. “Yes, the Avengers. One condition.”

“What, that I kiss your ass?” you say sourly. Stark snorts.

“Oh, she’s funny.”

“What’s the condition?” Captain America asks curiously, looking between you and Stark.

“That you and Nat stop fucking around and date each other alre-” he’s cut off with Natasha’s hands around his throat, and you have to force yourself to stop from joining in.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Nowadays, the thing that irks you most about the Avengers is the fact that they leave the toilet seats up in the Tower. All. Of. Them. You’re pretty sure Natasha does it too, just to assert dominance. Or maybe she started it.

Whatever. Life has become pretty good, all things considered. You fight with a team now, a team that’s always got your back and sure, they still mess up and they’re still idiots, but they’re not quite the snobbish, elitist fuckers you thought they once were. They just want to get it right.

The thing you love most about the Avengers, though, that’s got to be Natasha.

Natasha, who turns up at your door sometimes at the oddest of hours, who allows you to plant yourself on her lap whenever you see fit, who will kiss you in front of her idiot friends now without hesitation, who smiles when you trade insults with Tony and who tells you practically every night that she’s sorry, that she would have come for you too, and every variation of those things.

They morph pretty soon into something resembling I love you, that tumbles from her mouth as a mix of speech. And you grin and pull her close and tell her that she’s your favourite idiot.

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taglist: @when-wolves-howl @fayhar @maggieromanov @transbi-spidey @romanoffscottage @blackxwidowsxwife @lizli @screechcat @maddess @mellxa @haeva @diaryoflife @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @strangegardentaco @phantomvael @lorsstar1st @rysnwilder @ima-gi--na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @emril-osvigne @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok

#anon cuties #written fic for anon #m answers #natasha romanov x reader #fic!#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natfic!#tptf #no clint slander please he's my boy

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

your stuff is so well written, with the word choices and the descriptions, i love the way you write so much it’s so..IDK HOW TO DESCRIBE IT BUT LIKE ITS SUPER GOOD!!

i was wondering if you’d write any little drabbles about opf about either reader or natasha being sick and the other taking care of them but like the sick one is trying to hide the fact they’re sick and trying to deal with it alone bc they’re so used to it 😞🫶

how d'you like your eggs?

| natasha x reader | only pretty faces

warnings: none

a/n: I. LOVE. SICK FICS.

The bed is empty when you wake, and you register this with your sleep-sluggish brain.

Then you hear her sneeze, in the bathroom through the door. Twice. Three times. Four.

"Nata," you say hoarsely.

"Yeah?" she replies. You see a glimpse of red hair. Her voice is thick.

"You are disturbing me."

She laughs, and you hear the rustle of tissue. "You're such a jackass."

You pull the sheets more securely over your head, blotting out the sound of her sniffs and the light from the window. "Come back to bed," you say, your arm falling over the side of the mattress to brush the floor.

"Coming." That thick sound again, like there's something stuck in her throat. You stick your head out of the covers and frown at her as she enters, ignoring the fond smile on her face.

"What's wrong with you?" you ask. She grabs your nose and you squirm out of her grasp.

"Rude."

"Why is your face like that?"

"Rude," Natalia repeats. Her nose is red. In fast, her whole face is flushed. She sits gingerly down on the edge of the bed. "You want breakfast?" she asks.

You study her. Her fingers gripping the covers, her wrists trembling. The way her chest is moving shallowly, her breaths in tight little gasps. "I'll make breakfast," you say. She raises an eyebrow at you.

"Oh, you will?"

"Yes, I will." You wave a hand vaguely in the direction of the ceiling. "That thing James said about assimilating back into the world."

She studies you critically for a second, but she doesn't appear to have the energy to protest, and you scramble out of bed, touch her shoulder and make for the kitchen.

Behind you, you hear a whoof as she collapses back onto the mattress.

Natalia only emerges when you begin to burn the food. She leans against the kitchen doorframe, barefoot. Her face is pallid now, her shoulders slumped.

"You're burning that," she says thickly.

"You really are the most observational-"

"Idiot."

You turn back to the oven with a sigh. "Sit." She pauses, then obeys, her feet making no sound against the floor. The chair scrapes and she drops heavily into it.

You serve her a watery fried egg on a piece of toast with the burnt edges cut off, and she beams at you like you've set the world on her plate, her bloodshot eyes turning up at the corners.

"Sit," Natalia says, and when you've sat down, she forks a bit of egg white up and pushes it into your mouth. She's only eaten a small square of toast when she pushes her plate away.

You touch her forehead under the guise of affection. Her skin is hot like sunwarmed stones, alarmingly so.

"You're ill," you say.

Natalia pulls away from your hand, her constant smile fading. "No," she says. "I'm not."

"Okay, so eat," you prompt. She eyes her plate reluctantly.

"I have work to do today," she says eventually, and she pushes herself up to stand. You grab her shoulders and shove her down again: it's frighteningly easy. She stares up at you.

"You're going back to bed."

"I'm not sick."

"Nata," you say, fixing her with a look. Her nose is still red, her lips cracked, her eyes half closed. You wonder if she has a headache.

Finally, she gives in. She leans forward slowly and presses her face to your stomach with a sigh. "Okay," she says, muffled. "Only if you come with me."

You scratch at her scalp, thumbs in circles just behind her ears and she melts into you with a groan. "Of course."

"My head hurts." She shivers, hard like she's been holding it back all this time. "I'm cold."

"I'll get you an Ibuprofen."

Still, she doesn't move away from you. In the end, you have to lift her up with arms around her waist, and walk her into the bedroom yourself. You lay her down amongst the tornado of sheets, draw them over her shoulders, and make for the bathroom to get the medicine. When you return, she's curled into a ball, shuddering under the covers. You switch the light off.

You set the glass of water you'd poured down on the bedside table and climb in next to her. Immediately, she loops her arms around your waist and pulls you in, shoving her face into your shoulder.

"I have pills," you say. Her knee is in your stomach, but you don't move. Natalia's hand worms into yours and finds the tablets. She swallows them dry, her face screwed up in the dark. Then she sighs against your neck and relaxes.

You draw your hands over the curve of her back, gently.

"You should tell me, next time," you say softly. "Don't hide things from me."

"We don't really talk about things, though, do we?" Natalia says. Her voice is muffled and slurred. You paint patterns against the cloth of her t shirt. "Besides, I'm used to dealing with it."

"We could." She stays silent. "We could talk about it," you say. "And you don't have to deal with it. You never made me deal with it."

No reply. Then: "I want to go to sleep."

"Okay." You hesitate. "I love you."

You feel her smile. "Love you too," she says. The shutters thump gently against the window sill. Natalia tightens her arms around your waist. "Thank you for looking after me."

You can't communicate the emotions those words surface in you. How could you? When she's cared for you so much more? When she's saved you from the brink of hell, when she's tolerated and loved you, even as cracked and abrasive as you are, all this time. You will look after her always, in any way, at any time. If this is what you can do to love her and comfort her, you will do it.

You say nothing. You let her sleep, her wet breath warming your skin and think over and over again I love you I love you I love you.

Such a shame you can't say it any other way. You'll run out of I love you some time or other.

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taglist: @when-wolves-howl @fayhar @maggieromanov @transbi-spidey @romanoffscottage @blackxwidowsxwife @lizlil @screechcat @maddess @mellxa @haeva @diaryoflife @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @strangegardentaco @phantomvael @lorsstar1st @blckrwidow @ima-gi--na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok @thorya22 @olicity-boo

#only pretty faces #natfic!#fic!#sickfic!#m answers #written fic for anon #anon cuties #natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #fanfiction #marvel

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Text

to play the fool pt 3

| natasha x fem!reader | request by @strangegardentaco | part one, two, four

warnings: blood, injury, IDIOTS

a/n: final (?) part! hope you guys enjoy

You collapse through your window, a tangle of legs and arms, and sprawl across the carpet.

The ceiling is murky in the dim afternoon light. You can still smell smoke, woven into the fabric of your suit, the twists of your hair.

You don't know how long the two of you lie there, unmoving. Natasha is a dead weight across your bruised ribs. You can smell something else, too: blood in your nostrils, on your tongue.

The sun must go down at some point: it's as if you blink, and the darkness closes in. It wakes you up. When you can no longer see the outline of the couch in the dark, the tunnel-panic clamps hard down on your heart. You grip Natasha by the shoulders and push her with trembling arms until she rolls onto the carpet beside you, and you shove yourself upright, your breath hot against the inside of your mask. You pull it desperately off, fingers catching in your hair, and discard it. You tug at the laces on your boots by the light from the window, trying to calm your heart, to catch your breath. You can still feel the rock against your palms, the soil sneaking down your shirt.

The boots come off and you get to your feet, stumble your way to the light switch. Your pulse staggers on doggedly, faster than you can count. You flick the switch and the room floods with light. You sink against the off-white wall and press your face to the cool, lumpy paint. You don’t dare close your eyes.

Beyond the couch, Natasha is draped over the floor like a dead thing, red ponytail splayed across your carpet. You stay by the wall, your eyes on her, until your heart has slowed and your chest has loosened and your head is firmly on your shoulders.

You move across the room on shaking legs, using the furniture as crutches, towards her. You roll her onto her back, yank up her sleeve and search for a pulse: your fingers leave smears of dirt and blood across her pale wrist. You feel the beat, shallow and weak under your thumb. Good. Good.

Your brain won’t work, neurons firing sluggishly. You have to wake up. You have to assess the situation.

All you really want to do is collapse on the floor next to Natasha and sleep.

But you won’t. You tug your gloves off, wincing as they peel away from your ruined fingernails, and check Natasha’s airway. She’s breathing. You try to think.

You’ve done this before, a hundred times. You’ve stitched yourself up. You’ve dug bullets from skin, you’ve cleared grit from wounds, you’ve done CPR and cracked ice packs and set bones. You can do it.

You hesitate only once more, when your hands move to unzip Natasha’s suit. God, if she ever wakes up, she’s going to be so mad at you. But you take a look at her grey, peaceful face, and worry overtakes embarrassment. You pull the zip down: beneath, her undershirt is ripped and bloodied and dirty with sweat and soil. You peel the suit off her shoulders and down, scanning for wounds - a slice down her upper arm, a huge splay of bruises over her stomach, grazes on her elbows and knees and hips. Little nicks on her legs, seeping blood. Another larger knife wound stretches over her ribs when you roll her onto her side.

And that leg, the one that had been trapped under a rock when you’d first found her: it’s bruised and the knee is bent at an odd angle. Dislocated, perhaps.

She’s battered. You hate it, a deep well of anger that rises like a bucket drawing water the more you uncover. You hate that too, that you care so damn much. She doesn’t care about you. She barely tolerates you - she only ever talked to you to keep you out of trouble. What right do you have to care?

You eventually decide to move Natasha to the bathroom: that’s where your first aid kit is, and the light is bright in there and you have a multitude of fluffy bathmats that you can use to carpet the floor. You hook your hands under Natasha’s arms, brace your legs and pull. You drag her across the carpet, through the kitchen and into the bathroom. You lay her down halfway through the door, and drag the first aid kit and a few bathmats out of the cupboard, laying them haphazardly across the floor. Then you grab Natasha again and haul her in the rest of the way.

You collapse down beside her, your spine to the cold bathtub, knees up, and rest your head on the lip of the bath. You catch your breath. Natasha’s blood seeps into one of your bathmats and you groan, but make no move to shift her. Your energy is spent.

With tired fingers, you tug the first aid kit towards your feet. You unzip it, flip it open. Suture packs and bandages and single-use ice packs stare back at you. This is useless. You can barely lift your head.

But you manage it. It takes you hours. You clean Natasha’s wounds, slather her bruises in arnica, stitch her up, all the while keeping an eye on her sleeping face. She doesn’t so much as twitch, not even when your hand cramps in the middle of a loop through the knife wound on her ribs. Deep sleeper, you think, and you want to slap yourself for noticing anything about her. She’s not your friend.

So why is she unconscious on your bathroom floor? Why did you crawl through a hundred metres of rock to rescue her?

“Fuck you,” you say. Her body doesn’t reply. You don’t want to feel like this, panic sitting perpetually in your throat like a stone lodged there. You shouldn’t have gone. You should have let the Avengers fend for their damn selves, like Natasha was so adamant that they would. You rest your head against the lip of the bath again, and your eyes glaze over. You mustn’t sleep, though: sleep means dark.

The pain reaches you late. Something aside from the grazes and bruises and blood still sitting heavy in your nose. At first you think it’s a remnant of the knot in your throat, of the tide of adrenaline receding slowly and sadly and leaving you on the brink of useless, useless tears as you stare at Natasha’s stone-still face. But it’s not.

It becomes a burn, a sting in your side first, then a flare that becomes impossible to ignore. You unzip your jacket, letting gravity pull your heavy hand downwards.

You’re bleeding. You register this slowly, the soaked and half-dry patch of your dark top, the wetness uncomfortable on your hip. “Ow,” you say, to the empty room. You poke, and the pain intensifies, fades back to ground state. You hiss in through your teeth as you roll your shirt slowly up.

It’s a long gash down your side, the edges of the wound pink and raw like a burn, steadily seeping blood. The gun. The shot. The burst of energy from your eyes. The bullet must have grazed your side, deep. “Ow,” you say, and it drops from your lip as a whimper. With fresh blood on your fingers, you fumble for the first aid kit and drag it towards you, searching one-handed for gauze to soak up the blood. Your shirt keeps slipping down. Frustrated, you pull the shirt up and grab it with your teeth, then press the gauze hard to your side. It hurts, burns, and you grunt through your teeth, tongue against the roof of your mouth. Your eyes flicker sideways to check that Natasha is still sleeping.

The stitches are torturous, dipping in through your ragged skin and drawing the sides of the wound together as you pinch with one hand, your eyes watering and tears spilling onto your cheeks. Your stomach is a mess of blood and water that you’ve splashed on to clean yourself, your pants soaked with it. You swear into your top, damp with saliva. You feel filthy, your nails black with dirt, snot and blood welling in your nostrils. You finish the last knot and think desperately of a shower.

But you should wake Natasha, before she chokes on her own vomit in her sleep or something. You can’t leave her unconscious on your bathroom floor.

You strip your ruined shirt off and tie it around your face, trying to ignore the stink of blood in your nose. You don’t know why you bother to hide at this point, but something about the covering makes you feel safer, surer of yourself. You don’t bother with your hair.

You take Natasha by the shoulders and shake her, once, twice.

“Natasha,” you say, your voice slightly muffled by the shirt. “Natasha!” Louder. Nothing. You grab your phone from where you’ve discarded it on the edge of your bloodied sink and search for an alarm sound: the most annoying, repetitive ring on there. You press play. It rings. And rings.

Natasha’s eyebrows move, shift into a frown. Her eyes open into slits. You don’t turn the alarm off, not yet. The ringing becomes louder, more insistent, and she blinks twice, lips parting, tongue passing over them. Her eyes slide to you, a little unfocused.

“Asshole,” she says, her mouth barely moving.

“Huh?” you say, playing it up.

“Turn that the fuck off.”

“You’re welcome,” you reply sharply, and you cut the alarm off. Natasha says nothing for a few seconds. She licks her lips again, stares glassily up at the ceiling. You wait, ignoring your pounding, anxious, traitor heart.

“It’s bright,” she observes.

“Your knee is dislocated,” you say. “I would’ve put it back, but I didn’t think that would be a pleasant wake-up.” Her eyes shift back to you. You try to ignore them, how brilliantly green they are, how keen and observant even in their half-focused state. Impossible.

“Why are you still wearing that?” she asks. Her voice is rough. Your fingers touch the shirt over your face.

“Who was the kid?” you counter. Natasha sighs. She digs her elbows into the floor and shoves herself up into what looks like a painful sitting position. She notices the blood and water and stitches and bruises and perhaps the fact that she’s in her underwear.

“Oh,” she says. Her fingers drift across the line of stitches over her ribs. You might be imagining it, but you think you see her shudder.

“I have a paramedic certificate,” you say. “And like - a shit ton of experience. I go to a lot of protests as a medic.”

“You shouldn’t have done that while I was asleep,” she says.

“I don’t have any anaesthesia,” you reply, slightly irritated. A thank you would be nice. But Natasha doesn’t thank you. She rises fast, face clenched in pain, flips up your toilet lid and retches into it. Her spine curves, the vertebrae showing starkly under her pale skin. Muscles roll as she convulses again, but you don’t hear the splatter of vomit. She must be dry-heaving - by the look of the bruises on her stomach, that will hurt.

She stills eventually, panting into your toilet bowl. Her hair snakes down her back, the nape of her neck damp with sweat.

“Do you want some water?” you ask.

“No.”

“Okay.” You wipe your hands on your ruined bathmats. “Do you want a shower?”

“Leave me alone,” Natasha says. Her voice echoes in the toilet, but is somehow still incredibly small. You frown at her curved back, heat rushing to your face. How can she make you feel this stupid in your own home?

“Fine,” you say. The bathroom is far too small for two people. Too cramped, too bright, too hot. You get unsteadily to your feet and leave, shutting the door hard behind you. She slumps to the floor with a rustle, and you walk away before you can hear anymore.

You wash off in the sink, your ruined shirt discarded in the kitchen bin. The water lands cold on your feet and you don’t care, can’t bring yourself to care. The world is bright beyond your window, even this late at night, the glitter of street lamps and windows and billboards. Maybe even the orange glow of fire. This is where your effort to become a meaningful part of that world has landed you. Splashing yourself with cold water in the kitchen sink, banished from your own bathroom and bleeding like an idiot.

You turn the tap off and pat yourself dry with a tea towel that ends up in the bin as well, smeared with blood. You fetch a towel from your room, lay it over the couch and lower yourself gingerly onto it, rest your head back. The room is well lit, warm now. You won’t sleep. You want to, but you know it won’t come. You probably won’t sleep easy for the next week.

Inevitably, as you gaze out of the window from your seat, your thoughts return to the idiot woman hacking up blood and nothing in your bathroom. You can’t hear her, so she’s not showering, not throwing up. You have a sudden awful vision of her lying passed out on the blood-soaked bathmats, frothing red at the mouth, and you have to stop yourself from getting up to check on her.

You sit there as the sun comes up. Natasha doesn’t come out, even as the hours drip past, and eventually you make up your mind to talk to her. You pull your mask back on, grimacing at the dried blood and smell of sweat in it, and you walk to the bathroom door on unsteady legs.

“Natasha?” you say, tentatively. No answer.

Then, just as you’re about to call again; “Yeah,” she says, from within the bathroom. You hesitate, trawling for what to say next.

“You can have a shower if you want.”

“You can come in if you want,” she replies dryly. You take that as an invitation and open the door to find her sitting with her back to the wall, head tipped back. Her face is still ashen. You expect her to say something, an apology maybe, but instead she sits there with her damn wounded pride and stares you down.

“Nice mask,” she says. You seriously consider kicking her out at that moment, but the feeling fades just as quickly as it comes on. Because her eyes drop almost shamefully and her fists curl in her lap. It’s not an apology, not a thank you, nowhere near to anything you’d accept for either of those things, but for some fucking reason you can read those movements like words on a page and it softens your resolve to be harsh with her.

“Shower,” you say shortly. “You stink.”

“You stink,” she fires back at you. You turn and leave again before you can snap at her.

You hear the shower switch on as you’re eating an apple and glaring aimlessly through the kitchen window. Natasha doesn’t shower for very long. You’re only halfway through your apple when you hear the water shut off again. You stay where you are, hear her climb out of the bathtub, feet squeaking on the ceramic.

She calls your name. You take a large bite of the apple and toss it into the trash can. You take your time walking to the bathroom, and when you open the door she’s wrapped herself in the shower curtain and is scowling up at you from her seat on the edge of the bathtub.

“What?” you say, your voice faltering from the anger you’d meant to inject. Her eyes are large and her lashes are wet and her bare, pale shoulders are scattered with freckles and small wounds and you rip your eyes away from her.

“I didn’t want to use your towel,” she says. She shifts, and the curtain rustles around her.

You roll your eyes and turn to leave. You pull a towel from the hall cupboard and throw it through the door at her: she catches it before it hits her face, with a wince.

She clutches it to her chest and you raise your eyebrows at her.

“Anything else, your majesty?”

“Why are you so angry with me?” Natasha asks, and that heat, that hatred with yourself that you’ve lain your thoughts out before her, rises again from your stomach.

“You-” you say, but your throat is thick with emotion now and you know you can’t explain it.

Natasha tilts her head at you. “I didn’t ask you to do any of this,” she says.

“What?” you exclaim. “Are you serious?!”

“I told you to leave,” she fires back. “It’s not my fault you’ve got a hero complex like all the rest of them-”

“Hero complex?” you spit. “You’re the one who ran alone into an explosion to save a baby! Let me have this, you said that! Hero complex my fucking ass.” Natasha opens her mouth again and you step back and slam the door on her, your heart trembling in your chest with rage.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

She doesn’t emerge from the bathroom after that until you swallow as much of your pride as you can and hand her sweats and a t-shirt without looking her in the eye. You feel like she’s trying to catch you off guard, constantly now, and you half expect her to drop her towel or something just to shock you, make fun of you. But she doesn’t. She takes the clothes and waits until you’ve left, and then she wanders out of the bathroom in her borrowed clothes, limping on her bad knee. You look over at her from the couch, where you’re spooning cereal into your mouth under your mask.

You frown. “Your knee,” you say before you can stop yourself. She looks surprised like she expects you to snap at her again.

“I put it back,” she replies, with a shrug. Like it’s nothing. You gape at her for a second, then pull yourself together when you realise she can’t see your expression.

Shower. Dress. You’re still practically half-naked and you’re cold now, and you suddenly don’t want to be the only one undressed. You set your cereal down and move past her to the bathroom.

“Ice in the freezer,” you say, and you shut the door behind you. You pull the mask off and wipe with relief at the condensation on your face.

The shower is glorious, warm, and the pressure harsh on your shoulders. It’s freezing at first, which makes you jump and curse - Natasha must have taken her shower cold. You spend as long as you dare under the spray, ever conscious of running up your water bill for no real reason. When you step out, you see that Natasha has left her towel folded on the window sill. Her ruined suit is nowhere to be seen until you pedal open the bin and you see the suit, the ruined bathmats and a length of bloodied bandage.

“Huh,” you say to yourself, quietly, without meaning to. You pull on a jumper that won’t rub your stitches and loose shorts, and you step out of the bathroom. The steam follows you out like a cloud. Natasha is slumped in your armchair with your frozen bag of peas on her knee, the early morning sunlight glowing across her face. Her eyes are closed.

You pull open your fridge and reach for a beer.

“I feel like it’s a bad idea to drink right now,” she says.

You look over. She still hasn’t opened her eyes. “Shut up,” you say. You flick the cap off on your counter and drink deeply.

Natasha shifts in her seat, to face you. That’s when you realise you forgot to put your mask back on. You freeze. Your stomach lurches.

Natasha stares at you for a second too long, her mouth moving like she’d been about to say something. Then her eyes flick away, almost guiltily. In the silence that follows, you both try hard not to acknowledge it. But your face feels cold and bare, under the stare that lingers even as Natasha sets her eyes firmly on the arm of the couch.

Your heart thunders like a drum.

“Thank you,” Natasha says, almost too quiet to hear.

“What?” you say, shock reflexes taking over even as the words register. Natasha looks at you again, eyes narrowed, like she thinks you’re messing with her. And sure. It would be easier to mess with her, draw it out of her again and again and revel in your victory but-

-you don’t want to. You don’t even know what she’s thanking you for: some idiot, pretentious part of you could imagine she’s thanking you for the honour of seeing your face - as if she ever would. Maybe the stitches, the clothes, the shower, maybe she’s thanking you for dragging her out of that hot, damp hell-hole on trembling legs.

“You’re welcome,” you say, and you take a long sip so you don’t have to see her face change.

More silence, thick as a wall between the two of you. You don’t want to think of her shaking and trembling against you, how determined you’d felt right then in the dark, but the images come anyway.

“What happened to you?” she asks, and she nods at your side, where the deep graze and the stitches are. You look down. You remember all the questions you have for her, that’s she’s so adamant not to answer.

“Bullet,” you say. “Grazed me. Some idiot in a hood.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

“I was a little too preoccupied to ID them,” you reply, a bite in your voice. You’re not angry. You’re just thinking real hard about how heavy Natasha had felt against you. Like a corpse. You tilt your head at her. “They wanted to know where that baby was. You feel like filling me in?”

Her face closes off. “No,” she says.

“Right. So I got shot for nothing.”

“Did you blast them?” Natasha asks, ignoring your comment.

“They’re dead,” you reply, dully. You look at the floor. She’s fallen silent. “I didn’t mean to, I just-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

You can’t look at her. “Hawkeye will have found them by now.” She rustles the bag of peas, rearranges them. “What did they want with the kid, Natasha?” Now that she can hear you, is awake and looking you right in the eye, or attempting to, her name feels naked coming from your mouth. Raw and too personal.

“Doesn’t concern you,” she says.

“It does,” you say. You wait for anger, but your body’s too tired for it. “Please just tell me what’s going on.”

She shifts again, and pain materialises on her face with the movement, for just a second. You rest a hand on the countertop and wait it out.

“Fine,” she says eventually. “Sit down. You’re dead on your feet.” That irks you, for a reason you can’t decode.

“I’m fine.”

“Sit down.”

“Jesus Christ.” You move to the couch and throw yourself down, glaring at her. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” she says dryly. She molds the bag of peas to her knee and begins to explain.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

She falls asleep on the armchair to let you digest what the hell you’ve just heard, and the sun comes up through the window like a torchbeam. You call into work at eight, holding your nose closed, and tell your manager you have a shitty cold. He answers with a grunt and hangs up. Easy enough. You toss the phone onto the cushions beside you.

The silence coating your apartment seems to buffer the noise of the outside world, of car horns and voices. Natasha sleeps fitfully, half-woken every few minutes by the sunlight on her face, but you’re too exhausted to get up and close the curtains. You finish your bottle and set it down on the coffee table, where it sweats condensation.

You don’t know when you fall asleep, but you wake with your heart in your mouth and your hands fisted in the couch cushions. You suck in breaths through trembling jaws. Visions of tight tunnels and blood under your nails and Natasha’s ashen face fade as you blink them away.

The armchair is empty when you come to your senses. Something overcomes you: a wave of disappointment maybe, or regret - and then you hear the toilet flush and you feel monumentally stupid. You’d missed her for a second there. What right did you have to miss her? Why should she make you feel that way?

Natasha emerges from the bathroom, drying her hands. “It’s midday,” she tells you, and your heart lurches in shock. “You don’t sleep very well.” She leans a hip on the kitchen counter and pushes a hand through her hair, observing you through quarter-closed eyes.

“Neither do you,” you say. Her eyes narrow. “Can you get me a drink?”

She turns away, turns on the sink faucet and fills a glass with water. She rounds the edge of the counter and hands it to you.

“You know what I meant,” you say, but you take it anyway.

“You’ll get a beer belly,” she says, her voice flat. She must be tired if she’s too exhausted to tease you properly. You pull your sweatshirt up and poke at the muscle on your stomach.

“I think I’m okay,” you say. You raise your head to take a sip of water and Natasha’s eyes move from your stomach to your face. She looks awkward standing there: and that’s not a word you’d ever think to use to describe Black Widow. But she doesn’t look like Black Widow right now - she looks like a woman barely scraping five foot six in a t-shirt way too big for her, and the sun is turning her hair copper-gold through the window. She looks normal.

“Stop staring at me,” she says.

“You first.”

She breaks the eye contact.

“What are-” you don’t know what you intended to ask. You stare down at your water and collect your thoughts. “Do they know where you are?” you say eventually.

She raises one eyebrow at you. Your heart does awful, traitorous things in your chest and you hold her gaze for as long as you can. “You mean the Avengers? I don’t let them track me.”

“Okay,” you say. “You know, you can sit down if you want.” Your stomach growls. The corner of her mouth twitches up. “I’m hungry,” you say. “Sue me.”

“So eat.”

“Too tired.”

“God, you are pathetic.”

That should piss you off. It doesn’t. You give her a lazy grin and secretly wonder to yourself how the hell all this happened to you.

Natasha smooths down a loose thread on the seam of her (your) sweatpants. They’re rolled up twice at the waist. “Thank you,” she says. “For coming back for me.”

“Choose a better way to die next time,” you say, instead of something nice or gracious or meaningful.

Natasha sighs. “I don’t know why I bother with you,” she says, sinking onto the arm of the couch, above you.

“I’m irresistible.”

“You’re an idiot.”

You think about calling for pizza, a half-smile on your face. You wipe it off quickly, but not before she sees.

“I wouldn’t have left you there,” you say. Her eyes drift away. Makes you think about who else left her behind before. You don’t think promises mean much to her: they’re only words. Like threats. Blackmail. You don’t think words get under her skin as much as they do yours. “Swear.”

“I know.” She looks down at her hands. “I tried to stay awake. I thought you weren’t coming, in the end.”

You have this stupid, terrible urge to reach out and take her by the hand and tell her - what? What would you tell her that would mean anything?

It doesn’t subside. The moment passes. You slump into the couch.

“You know, you didn’t have to hide your face,” Natasha says. “When we got back.” She’s stumbling over words.

“Yeah, you already knew what I looked like,” you reply. You shrug. “It just felt better, having it on.”

“I didn’t know what you looked like. You know, you’re not too bad at the whole secret identity thing.”

You frown. “Then how did you find me the first time?”

“I followed you,” Natasha says casually. “You were bleeding everywhere. You weren’t moving very fast. I guessed which apartment was yours.”

“You guessed?” you echo. You imagine Natasha turning up in Nadia Henstridge’s apartment next door: the woman is verging on ninety - seeing Natasha in her boots and leather jacket sitting in the dark would probably send her headfirst into a heart attack.

Natasha grins. “I’m a very good guesser.”

“Sure,” you say. More silence: you hate the silence. You don’t want to hear your own heartbeat, or Natasha’s breathing. “The mask made me feel safer,” you say. I didn’t want you to be disappointed, you don’t say.

Natasha looks down at you. She reaches out and touches your cheek, softly with the pads of her fingers. You stare at her, your heart in your ears, drowning out everything. “You look better without it,” she says.

You want to kiss her. You realise that, what that stupid, burning heat in your chest is. Once you’ve found that urge, you can’t stop thinking about it, even as she withdraws her hand and looks away.

Do something, you scream at yourself. All this inward thinking is driving you insane. Say something.

You reach for her hand, and you intend to tug her round to look at you, but you pull too hard and she overbalances, sliding off the arm of the couch and onto the seat beside you with a surprised yelp.

“What the hell?” Natasha exclaims. Her bright green eyes are narrowed, cheeks flushed - God, she looks incredible.

“Um,” you say. You can’t do it. You can’t do it.

“Um,” Natasha says, mocking you, and she slides a hand into your hair and pulls you in to kiss her.

It’s easier than you’d thought it would be. Her face fits right to yours. Her lips are warm. You can feel where it’s split, taste the blood. You kiss her back, one hand wrapped around hers, one settled on her knee. Your chest tightens, loosens, excitement firing like sparks in your brain.

She pulls away from you. You take a second to open your eyes.

“Idiot,” she says. You frown at her. “I’m gonna kiss you again,” she says. You make an agreeable noise and she pulls you in, hand on the back of your neck. She steals your breath. She kisses your bottom lip, the corner of your mouth, and your fist curls in the fabric of your sweatpants.

The two of you surface, still centimetres apart, and you suck in a breath. “Thank you for coming back for me,” she says, against your mouth. Her hand loosens in yours.

“Always,” you say.

“You have really nice abs.”

You laugh, a crazed little giggle. She grins at you. You kiss her again, mouths half-open, smiles half-formed.

The next time you pull apart, she runs her thumb down the column of your throat.

“I’m still hungry,” you say, to distract yourself from the feel of her skin on yours.

“I’ll buy you pizza,” Natasha says.

“To thank me for saving your life.”

“No, this is to thank you for saving my life.” She tilts her head sideways and kisses your neck, and a gasp of surprise falls from your open mouth. She laughs, sending vibrations through your skin, into your bones.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

She orders pepperoni. You accuse her of playing it safe and she swats you with a pillow, and the two of you eat out on the fire escape and watch the day roll past. You rest your head on her shoulder.

“This is fucking good,” Natasha mumbles around a mouthful. She wipes her fingers on the pizza box and reaches for another slice. She crams half of it into her mouth at once.

“You eat a lot for such a small person,” you observe. Natasha throws you a playful look of disgust.

“You’re like, an inch taller than me.”

“An inch can make all the difference,” you joke. She slaps your shoulder halfheartedly. A truck horn goes off in the distance. There are three wisps of cloud in the sky, and the metal of the fire escape is warm beneath you. Natasha’s clean hand winds its way into yours.

“I like you a lot,” she admits, quiet. Your heart swells instantly.

“I like you too,” you say. You squeeze her hand. Silence, once again. You know what you’re both thinking. Natasha words it first.

“They’ll be looking for me,” she says.

“I know. You should go.”

She sighs, and her breath ruffles your hair. “I will. I don’t want them coming after you.”

“I thought you said you don’t let them track you,” you say. A little, helpless worm of fear squirms into your words. You try to squash it.

“Hawkeye can find me,” Natasha says. “If he tries really hard.” She snorts to herself.

“Where will you go?” you ask. “I’ll give you some shoes.”

“Manhattan,” Natasha says, almost dismally. “I’ll come back, though.” She looks at you. She presses her face to your hair. “Promise.” You smile at the sun, eyes half-shut. You hope she catches it.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

You lend her sneakers and help her into a coat and you swallow jealousy when you open the door for her. They have her all the time, see her smile and hear her talk: why don’t you get a little more time?

You kiss her hard, so she’ll remember, so she will come back, even though you know she will. Her hands curl into your shirt, and she grins against your mouth. When you separate, she licks her lips.

“I wanted a good one,” you say. She tugs on a lock of your hair.

“I’ll come back for you,” she says, in earnest.

“I believe you.”

And you watch her walk away, until she’s all the way out of sight down the corridor.

requests | masterlist

notes: PLEASE REBLOG IM REALLY PROUD OF THIS ONE. pt 4? idk what I would write though

#natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natfic!#fic!#fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #tptf

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

i have a request! you should do an x reader thing where nat and r are both in the red room and it’s a forbidden love thing obv idk about specific plot lines or scenarios but i feel like that’s something you could write really well. do what you want with that, or dont :) also i’m gonna start using a thing to mark my anon notes cause i keep coming back lmao

- :)

thank you so much for this!

| natasha x reader |

warnings: brainwashing, blood, child abuse, ANGST because come on. y’all know me by now

a/n: I was considering doing an OPF prequel thingy but this can be read as OPF or not, whichever you want. ALSO it's a little messed up. They're all insane. anyway enjoy :)

You all watch the armour-clad soldiers bear the girls in on stretchers. A little blonde one with child-thick fingers, and Natalia. They disappear around a corner, Natalia's knuckles brushing the ground.

Kira rests her head on your shoulder, her fingers still threaded in your hair, the braid half done.

When Natalia returns, they have shorn her blue hair off, down to a fuzz of red across her scalp. She makes no eye contact, her blank stare firmly and stubbornly on the ground.

She assembles rifles with small hands as steady as ever. She always was the best. She dances like no one else, with the grace of hot glass.

They pit you against each other on the hard ground outside, in the snow, the hot sun, the rain barefoot.

Natalia will size you up with one glance. She will see the end of the fight before you've even raised your fists. And when, inevitably, you're flat on your back in the dirt or the snow or a puddle, you'll think of how her eyes dulled when she struck first.

Natalia was always different to the rest. Stronger, faster, meaner, sure. But sometimes you'd hear in the middle of the night, an animated clank of a chain, and you'd look up from the hard pillow, eyes heavy with sleep, and you'd see her sitting up at the head of her bed. Profiled in the dark. Her buzzed-off hair grown out an inch, brushing the tips of her ears.

When Kira's neck snapped in the crook of your arm, and you were thirteen and unnaturally strong, Natalia found your gaze and held it. You didn't cry, and Kira's blood oozed out of her ear to smear across your skin.

They never praised you, but you're sure you saw a cruel gleam of triumph in the eye of the trainer. It didn't matter to you, not with the blank, methodical way your brain operated then.

Something mattered, though.

Natalia was impressed: you could see it as she displayed it plainly on her face. She never had before, and everyone begged to be the one to impress her, to be just as good, to put a knee in her back and hear her tap out. (There was no way they'd let anyone kill Natalia.) But no one ever could.

Until you.

You measured when you lost: every flick of her eyes, every twitch of muscle, the twist in her mouth the instant before the final punch landed. And you weighed these measurements out into ounces and pounds and when you stood across from her for the last time and the trainer ordered her to kill, you did not back down.

Natalia ended up on her stomach in the dust, foaming at the mouth, her hands twisted behind her back. The trainer’s face was blank as ever, as slate, but you were not looking at him. You were looking at Natalia.

And she was laughing. Spitting it out like teeth into the dirt.

From then on, you were never apart: and you never wanted to be. Before long, Natalia’s pistol by your side was like an extra limb, your flashing fists an extension of her body. They sent you to kill a man in an ill-fitting suit - Natalia sat on his lap and drew her hair behind her ear and you thrust a blade through his throat from behind, spattering her with cartilage and blood. She sighed, a puff of calm boredom, as he choked to death in her face.

Now you are thirteen and she is fourteen and the world has plunged into a freezing winter, bitter enough to bite your skin off. Natalia steals privacy in slips of moments, the two of you with your backs to a tree trunk, the two of you playing stupid games in the frozen dirt, the two of you shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee in a shed with the wind whistling through the gaps in the boards. And she grips you by the back of the neck, the fur on her gloves tickling your skin, and she kisses you gently. Then you sit there in shy silence, hands linked.

Now you are eighteen and she is nineteen and there is blood under your fingernails. Always there, no matter the process you go through to clean up. She pushes you into a wall by the neck. “You idiot,” she spits at you. “You weren’t supposed to kill her.”

The woman had been aiming for the crown of Natalia’s skull, a bullet aimed to blast apart bone. “She was going to kill you,” you say. You revel in the feel of her hand around your throat. It’s been so long since you’ve fought her.

Natalia laughs, high and bordering on hysterical. “I am unkillable,” she replies. She pushes away from you. Her eyes are bright.

You reach out, grab her by the collar and pull her in to kiss her, and she comes willingly, her hands grasping at your suit, digging in past the buckles. She grips you so hard you feel the bruises forming. “I know,” you say, when you’ve broken apart, both clawing for air. “I know and I killed her anyway. I’ll kill anyone for you.”

Natalia smiles at you, all her white teeth on display like a wolf pulling back her lips. “Yes,” she says. “You will.”

When you’re done, when objectives have been completed and weapons cleaned and you’re waiting for a plane to land or an unmarked car to draw up outside, Natalia will find a room, closed off to the outside world: a hotel or a hovel, doesn’t matter.

The two of you will clean each other methodically in the shower: you know every part of her, every scar and dip of skin. She is perfection, molded from white marble.

Sometimes, she’ll drag you to a sufficiently large area of floor and drive you to the ground, stripping you and kissing you and touching you without giving either of you the chance to clean up. Blood, yours and hers and someone else’s, mingles on both your skin, dirt, grease, gunshot residue: neither of you care. In these moments, you know only her. It is all you want.

And when she leaves, they take advantage of it. They take your desire for her and the hairline crack in your heart and they twist it to hunger, they wipe your mind clean and they push the muzzle of your pistol to follow her, wherever she goes. You endure this willingly, always willingly. For her, for them, no difference. Except your love for the Red Room is artificial, pumped in through a needle. Your love for Natalia is crimson and volatile and constant.

Somewhere in the deep, blank recesses of your mind, you know she’s better than you. You know she’ll outrun you and outsmart you. You know there will always be a twitch of hesitation in your trigger finger, blasting apart the plaster next to her head instead of the bone between her bright, bright eyes that you know so well.

requests | masterlist

notes: it’s a bit shorter than I wanted it to be and probably than you were hoping for, but I hope you liked it! <3

taglist: @when-wolves-howl @fayhar @maggieromanov @transbi-spidey @romanoffscottage @blackxwidowsxwife @lizlil @screechcat @maddess @mellxa @haeva @diaryoflife @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @strangegardentaco @phantomvael @lorsstar1st @rysnwilder @ima-gi–na-tion @paryl @picnicmic @smallestavenger @lainjupi @d1s0nym @simpforflorencepugh1 @the-v01d @kqmui @s1ut4nat @btay3115 @natblackwidow2 @lokisjuicyass @mmmmokdok @thorya22

#:) anon #anon cuties #requests #written fic for anon #only pretty faces #natasha romanov x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natfic!#fic!#black widow!reader

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mr-m-murdock · 2 years

Note

Hi! I absolutely loved OPF. Your writing is just immaculate 🤌🏽 i love the way you can find all the right words to describe someones feeling, i just find it so beautiful. Thank you so much for that. 🥺

SO i saw u were taking requests so if u are okay with it, i would really love to see how Nat would be to r showing her new things, introducing her to the other avengers, maybe taking her on a date, doing groceries together idk

I’m just a sucker for domestic Nat 😫❤️

YES, THIS IS AMAZING!! HI! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

| natasha x fem!reader | only pretty faces |

warnings: mentions of blood, swearing, hurt AND COMFORT. also unedited lol

i was gonna do a bunch of headcanons for this, but then i had thoughts, so here.

"You need to get more milk," you say, squinting into the depths of the fridge.

"What do you want milk for?" Natalia calls. You stick your head around the side of the fridge door and frown at her.

"Tea," you say.

"Oh. Obviously." She smirks down at her phone like you can't see it. You shut the fridge door with force, the shelves clattering within.

"You also can't eat cereal without milk," you say pointedly. Natalia pauses, with one hand inside the cereal box.

"I can't?"

"No. That's not how people eat cereal."

"Isn't it?"

"Hm," you say, frustrated. "Well, fine. Eat your dry cereal. You're free to do as you please." You walk around the counter and past the table, eyes narrowed against the early light streaming in from the window.

"That I am," Natalia says. She snags your wrist before you can get too far past, and yanks you back around. You glare down at her, and she grins up at you. You relent before too long and melt your expression down to nothing.

"What?" you ask haughtily.

"Let's go shopping," she says. "Grocery shopping." You work your hand free, feeling your heart pick up in your chest, your face turn hot. You can’t tell if it’s apprehension or panic, but just the thought of a grocery store, in broad daylight, turns your stomach

"You go shopping," you say. Natalia's hand falls to your hip and pulls you closer: well, she knows you won't resist now.

"Yeah. With you. Seeing as you're so down about not having any milk-"

"I'm not down," you protest. "You're eating cereal out of the box." You raise your eyebrows at her illustratively. "You needed an intervention." Inexplicably, she laughs, lips drawing back over her teeth.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, you can intervene if you come with me.” She knows you too well: she can see right through your pallid refusals. Her eyes drop, and she leans her face forward against your stomach, kisses your navel over your shirt. “Please,” she says. You raise your hand to touch her hair, copper-gold in the morning sunlight, but you pause before you can. You hover an inch away.

“Fine,” you say. You feel her smile against your stomach.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Natalia makes you push the cart down the grocery store aisle, under those bright white lights. She sticks close to you in the freezer section, and lets you hang around the fruit boxes for almost ten minutes as you admire their brilliant colours. You dump steak and salmon and chicken breast into the cart, piling it up until Natalia laughs and drags you away. There’s a bakery at the back of the store and it smells like warm pastry, powdered sugar, chocolate, cranberries: you let it fill your senses. The world never seemed this vibrant before.

“Milk,” Natalia says at one point, like she’s forgotten. She puts her hands over yours and turns the cart a right angle, down the dairy aisle. You walk slowly, passing huge plastic cartons of milk with different coloured tops. “Go on,” Natalia says, waving at the vast selection.

“What-” you say. “They’re all the same.”

“Full fat, semi-skimmed, skimmed, almond, oat-”

“Oh,” you say. “Yeah. I remember.” You grab two cartons of blue-lidded milk and hand them to her. Natalia looks at you quizzically, then places them in your overflowing cart.

“You’re weird,” she says.

“I’m allowed to be weird, I’ve been brainwashed,” you tell her, your hands descending back on the cart handle. Natalia, instead of answering, grabs you from behind, arms wrapped around your waist. She hooks her chin over your shoulder. “What are you doing?” you ask. You touch her hands, her knuckles.

“Hugging you.”

“From behind?”

“I wanted to touch that glorious ass,” she says, and she palms your ass with one hand. You laugh, a surprised sound that jerks from your throat like a hook from a mackerel’s mouth. Natalia lets out a little snort against your collar.

“Hate you,” you say.

“Mhm.” Into your neck.

Someone brushes past you in the narrow aisle. Instantly, you move, twist, push Natalia behind you, every movement triggered by an instinct. Your hands are halfway into your coat for a knife before Natalia grabs you by the elbows and pulls you into her. You struggle for a second, but her hold is like a straitjacket. The stranger stares at you both.

“Sorry,” Natalia says sweetly in Greek. You know how wild you look, because the stranger is backing away, hands in front of them. Once they’re gone, Natalia kisses your shoulder, just a press of her face into your jacket. “It’s okay,” she says into your ear. Her voice is low enough to make you shiver, to relax your tense spine. She releases your arms and you don’t move. Her hands come up to squeeze your shoulders. “Hey. You’re okay. You’re safe.” You release a breath in a long shudder that threatens to break you apart: it would if she wasn’t holding you. You’d just shatter.

It’s the hum of the fridge units and the gentle pressure of Natalia’s hands on your upper arms that brings you down to earth. She says your name in your ear, so gentle that it threatens to bring you to tears.

“I’m fine,” you say, your voice a few tones higher than it should be. You turn in her grip to face her, twist your hands into the front of her shirt.

“You good?” she asks.

“Good,” you say. You rest your forehead against her collarbone and breathe in, so deep and fast you almost choke. “I’m good.”

Natalia’s hand settles on your spine. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go home.”

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

One day, a man turns up at the apartment.

You’re in the kitchen, crouched on your chair eating noodles with chopsticks so fast you’re practically inhaling them. Natalia has been gone for hours, leaving you bored and restless, so when there’s a crack on the front door like the break of thunder, you’re alert before you’ve even realised it.

You slide off your chair, keeping well away from the window. It’s sunny today, like always, the sun painting the walls with great bright patches of light. You slink up to the door, straining to listen through the hum of traffic outside and the chatter of neighbours through the walls.

The knock comes again, loud and insistent, and you jerk back.

“Nat!” someone yells, from the other side of the door. A man. He gasps for breath, then knocks again, lighter this time. Like he’s losing energy.

You step to the side, and yank the door open. The man falls forwards and crumples to a heap on the wooden floor. Startled, you move backwards, but he doesn’t stir after he hits the floorboards, his face squished comically against the wood.

You pull yourself together and grab him by the back of his jacket, and heave him into the apartment. You kick the door closed and roll him onto his back. His eyes are rolled up into his head, his blond hair going every direction. There’s blood in his hairline, and crusted under his nose, soaked into his shirt. For a second, you panic: Natalia isn’t here, this could be anyone, he could be an enemy, he could be an assassin.

There’s a large bruise forming around his left eye. Purple hearing aids visible under the curve of his ears.

Eventually, you make the decision to tie him to a chair, brutally tight. He’s heavy and cumbersome, but eventually you have him in a reasonable position. You turn him to face the sunlight from the kitchen window: it will surely wake him sooner. Natalia has a gun in her dresser, behind a false drawer - she thinks you don’t know about it. You fetch it and then you return to the kitchen and seat yourself on the table, your toes skimming the floor. You point the gun at the man’s head.

He wakes before long, eyes slitting open, wet with tears from the sun. He registers the light, then your silhouette, and then he sees the gun. With an incomprehensible curse, he startles so much that he almost tips over onto the floor, struggling harsh against his bonds before he realises that he’s tied down.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he swears in English. He tugs at one wrist, then the other, squinting at you. “What the hell? Who are you? Where’s Nat?”

“She is out,” you say. You cock the gun just to see him panic more.

“Fuck,” he says. “Okay. Okay. Please put that down.”

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Why the hell am I tied to a chair? Did you learn that from her?”

“What,” you growl, jabbing the gun at him, “do you want?”

“I came to see Nat,” he says. He’s blinking rapidly against the sunlight. “My name’s Clint, I’m sorry I passed out on your doormat, I-”

“Why do you want to see Natalia?” you ask. And then almost instantly, his features soften. His fear vanishes. He ceases struggling.

“Oh,” he says. He tilts his head. “You’re her.” You frown at him.

“Who?”

And he says your name - as if he has that right. Natalia gave you back your name: why should he get to throw it at you like that?

You snarl at him, finger tightening on the trigger.

“Wait, wait,” he says, his fear surfacing visibly again. “I’m not here to hurt her, I swear. I’m- we’re friends.”

“We’l see,” you snap. You settle down, unaware of when exactly you became so tense. Clint’s eyes return to the gun. He licks blood away from his upper lip.

Natalia returns almost an hour later, when your ass is numb and your arms are locked with the effort of keeping the gun trained on Clint’s forehead. The door clicks open and she pauses in the action of it. You don’t look over at her.

“Uh,” she says. “Clint?”

“Yuh-huh,” Clint says. You narrow your eyes at him. “Please can you untie me?” Natalia closes the door carefully behind her, and sets her bag down on the floor.

She says your name gently, as if she’s talking to a frightened animal. “Put the gun down,” she says. “It’s okay. He’s a friend.”

Slowly, you obey. You uncock it. Natalia crosses the small stretch of floor and takes it from you, one hand cool on your wrist: you allow her to, reluctantly, your eyes still trained on Clint.

“Look at me,” she says. Your eyes flicker to meet hers, almost of their own accord. “Relax,” she says. That magic word: your shoulders lose their stiffnes, your lungs sucking in more air, your hands loosening under hers. You’re at your best, your safest, when you’re enclosed in her warmth, so close to her you could almost become one. Close enough that you know she’s real, and tangible, and Natalia who won’t hurt you.

“I was scared,” you whisper. “I- didn’t-”

Natalia reaches for your face, traces the bridge of your nose with one finger. You close your eyes and lean into her touch. “I know,” she says. “It’s okay. I can take care of myself.”

Clint clears his throat illustratively. Natalia closes her eyes for a brief second, then throws him a glare over her shoulder. “Can I please be untied?” he asks plaintively. “This is really sweet and all, two psychopath assassins in love-”

“Shut up,” the two of you say in unison. Yours is more of a snarl.

“Okay,” Clint says, sounding unimpressed. Natalia turns back to you.

“You good?” she asks.

“Yeah,” you say. She raises an eyebrow. “Good,” you add, hurried. You eye Clint over her shoulder. He’s staring around the kitchen with a bored look on his face. “Who is he?” you ask. Natalia sets the gun down carefully on the table and rests her hands on your knees.

“Old friend,” she says. “My partner, when I worked for SHIELD.”

“Clint Barton,” you say, without thinking: it rolls to the tip of your tongue. Archer. Circus freak. Assassin.

“Yeah,” Natalia says. She turns to Clint and draws her knife to cut him out of the chair. Once freed, Clint rubs his wrists in relief, standing on wobbly legs.

“Hey,” he says to you. Your attention snaps from Natalia to him. He’s holding out a hand in front of you. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Clint.”

Tentatively, you take his hand and shake, wondering why he’s introducing himself again. You say your own name and he smiles bracingly at you.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. He turns to Natalia. “We have a problem.”

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

A week after Clint’s problems are dealt with and gone, Natalia offers you a proposal. In the early morning, when you can hear the birds wheedling away in the eaves, and the windowsills are cool and everything is quiet.

“You wanna go on a date?” she asks, quite casually, around a mouthful of cereal.

You drop your toast onto your plate. Your heart thunders in your ears. “What?” you say, barely hearing yourself.

“A date,” Natalia says. She gulps down another spoonful of cereal. “Like, with me.”

“Why?” you ask, and she finally looks up at you.

“Because I like you,” she says, very simply. “That’s why I let you sleep in my bed. And that’s why I kiss you all the time. And also that’s why we had sex last night-”

“But why?” you ask, waving away her teasing impatiently. She looks at you for a long time.

“That’s what people who like each other do,” she says quietly.

“I know that,” you say. People who like each other go on dates. You go on dates to poison people, or sleep with them, or lure them into a nice big open space so that Oksana or Yelena or Kasia can get a clear shot to blast their brains out of the thin wall of their skull-

You stare at Natalia with panic rising like bile in your throat. Maybe it is bile. Maybe you do want to be sick. You haven’t thrown up in so long-

“Okay,” Natalia says. “Hey, okay. Relax. I’m not- I’m-” she trails off with an uncharactersitic stammer, her eyebrows pinched together, bottom lip between her teeth. She says your name softly.

“Hm-m,” you say. You’re unwilling to open your mouth, lest all those horrible things come crawling out like locusts.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she says weakly. She says your name again, and sets her spoon down in her bowl with a delicate clink.

“I’m good,” you say, all in a rush.

“I don’t think you are,” Natalia says. She seems like she’s trying to be shrewd and smooth, but you can hear the concern.

You breathe in through your nose. The nausea vanishes. “Okay,” you say. Natalia raises an eyebrow at you.

“Excuse me?”

“Okay. Date,” you say. She rests her elbows on the table and looks at you.

“Don’t agree with me just because-”

“I want to go,” you say, frustrated with her concern. “I like you.” It sounds a lot like I hate you, but she smiles anyway. You make a sound of disgust in the back of your throat.

“Are you sure?” she asks. An epiphany, a small one, bursts in your mind.

“I’d have to be persuaded,” you say. Natalia grins at you, like she already knows exactly what’s happening in your head.

“Oh yeah? What’ll it take?”

“Kiss,” you say, as elegantly as you can. Her smile widens even more. She gets up with her hands planted flat on the table, and she circles the table until she’s standing right over you. She reaches for your face and strokes your jaw with her thumb. She stares down at you, that smile still painted faintly over her lips, the sun in her eyes, turning them hollow and deep.

Impatient, you seize her by the waist and pull her into your lap. She goes willingly, and weaves a hand into your hair, then pulls you close to kiss you. When she pulls away, she licks her lips. “How about that?” she asks. “Enough?”

“More,” you say, shaking your head.

“Okay,” she agrees. She kisses your cheek, your jaw, your neck. “We can go somewhere quiet,” she murmurs, against your pulse. Your hands slip to her hips. She kisses your collarbone. “What about now?” she asks. She bites, a sudden little pain against your skin, and your breath hitches. You hold her tighter, closer.

“Little bit more,” you breathe. It almost sounds like a question.

Natalia laughs and tilts your head back to get at your neck, to kiss you there. You wish she’d bite down again. She murmurs something incomprehensible into your skin and you pretend not to hear.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Natalia takes you to a field.

You get out of the car and stare around, utterly confused, for a very long moment. Natalia shuts the door loudly and you look over at her.

“A field,” you say.

“Yeah,” Natalia replies. She grins at you and holds up a bag. “I brought food.”

“You took me to a field,” you say. She’s already walking away from you, through the long grass. It’s hot, even under the reddened evening sky. You dart after her, suddenly afraid of being left behind. “Natalia!” you call, and she turns, halts so you can catch up to her. “Where are we goi- oh.” You’ve turned your attention ahead of you, and there laid out like a glittering map, is Athens. It’s colourful and bright under the heavy sky.

Natalia drops to the ground and crosses her legs. After a moment, she grabs your shirt and tugs you down beside her: you fall gracelessly and hit the ground with your hands and knees. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she says. You rearrange yourself, pulling grass out of your hair.

“Hate you,” you say.

“Yeah, sure you do,” she replies. She leans in to kiss you, brushes kernels of pollen off your shoulders. “Still hate me?” She rests her hands on your collarbones and looks you right in the eyes.

“Only a little bit,” you say. She smiles.

“Incurable romantic, aren’t you?”

“I do like you,” you say, and you kiss her again before she can get all smug about it.

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