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The first time, it was three months after New York. He was settled nicely in the new place in Washington. The walls were freshly painted, and he even had a few decorations. It was simple. Quiet. A fresh start in a new place. Then, a noise in the kitchen. He had been lying in bed, dozing off over a sketch, when the sound of glass clinking brought him to full awareness. He was on his feet in moments, creeping down the hall and listening for any other sounds. A slight shuffle, leather on stone, and he was around the corner; he had the intruder in a full Nelson, and one leg hooked around theirs to take them down to the floor in another ten seconds. There was a familiar waft of fruity, musky perfume, and the tiny frame in his arms heaved a sigh. “Christ, Rogers, practically kill a girl for raiding your fridge.”
Steve dropped the hold, and Natasha rolled her head on her neck, and shook out her arms. “What are you doing here, Natasha?”
“Checking on you. And I was hungry.”
He raised an eyebrow. She raised one of hers in response, and then opened the cupboards. “Seriously, no junk food? What’s with all this—oh my God, do you have kale?”
“It’s good for you!”
“I am buying you potato chips. No, I am buying you all of the weird potato chips. Ketchup flavored. None of this kale crap. You’re Captain America, for God’s sake, act like it.”
“I don’t want potato chips—wait a minute, Natasha, how did you get into my apartment?” Steve demanded.
She grinned at him. “Get better locks.”
Two days later, he opened the cupboard above his sink to find it stuffed with Pringles of all flavors. She never said a word about it. He never told her that the pizza ones were his favorites.
*~*
A few weeks later, he was called away on a SHIELD mission. They didn’t use him in the field as much as he would like them to, but when the call came, it came hard and fast. He spent almost a month in Cambodia, a week of which he spent up to his teeth in the mud thanks to a typhoon. When the job was wrapped, all he wanted was a debriefing, a hot shower, and his own bed. He’d let SHIELD cover the bill for laundry.
When he unlocked the door and went in, he dropped his duffel in the entryway and kicked off his shoes. He was too tired to care about neatness at the moment. He barely remembered to lock the door behind him before he turned to go to the bathroom and promptly fell over the couch—which he quite clearly remembered had not been ten steps from the doorway when he’d left a few weeks ago. “I am not coherent enough to handle this,” he said aloud, his face half-buried in the cushion.
There was no answer. He wasn’t sure if he had actually been expecting one.
The bathroom was still in place. Steve managed to hold off on not passing out until he reached his bed—which was now turned ninety degrees and shifted five feet to the left of its previous position. He even managed to get a full eight hours of sleep before waking up to the scent of pancakes. Someone was singing down the hall. His head swam. Opening his eyes hurt; the sun was a cheerful slap in the face. Steve groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. This was like a hangover multiplied at least three times. “I thought that serum was supposed to get rid of all this bullshit…” he mumbled.
“By all accounts, you overdid it,” Natasha’s voice was low, and so he did not hate her for speaking when his head felt like it was being battered with rocks from the inside. “Even heroes get to have an off day.”
“You’re in my apartment again.”
“I made you pancakes. And a wheatgrass smoothie. Because even though it is disgusting, you seem to enjoy it, and I am a good person and you need to remember that.”
Steve propped himself up on one arm, groping for the smoothie glass with the other. “And why do I need to remember it? What did you do?”
“Remember it in a general sense. I’m building up good karma, so when you get mad for some reason later you remember ‘Oh right, Natasha is actually the best, never mind’,” she said, her voice teasing as she handed him the glass.
Steve chugged the smoothie, and flopped back down on the bed. “Jesus...”
“I prefer ‘Nat’, but it’s up to you.”
“At least wait until I’m fully awake before we start a battle of wits.”
“You’re not fun in the morning. Grumpy, even.”
“Why are you in my apartment, again?”
“Pancakes. Moral support. Charming personality. You didn’t replace your locks.”
Steve got up slowly, almost like a cat stretching, rising up to sit on his knees with a sigh. “Everything hurts.”
Natasha smiled, and punched him in the shoulder. “Pancakes. You’ll feel better.”
“Ow,” he feebly protested before getting up and following her to the kitchen. “And why is my furniture rearranged?”
“Your feng shui was horrible.”
“My what was what?”
*~*
It almost became a running joke, to see how often and how creative she could get to enter his apartment, and how long it would take him to notice she was there or did something. Sometime around Christmas he asked her straight out if she’d like to have his spare key, but she just smiled and patted his shoulder. Around Easter he had a digital door lock installed, mostly because it was safer but also to see how long it would take Natasha to crack the code.
A week later there was a note on his coffee table that read “Should probably change your password.”
Once, he came home to find his freezer full of microwave dinners and a scavenger hunt map hung on the fridge with ABC magnets. Two days later, found his real food in a cold locker in Alexandria. They would pass each other in the halls at SHIELD and she would ask him about how his neighbors were, if Mrs. Wellington had scheduled her hip replacement or if Bob Stiles had shaved his beard yet. If it were anyone else, he would be concerned about her behavior, but it was her job to get information. Breaking and entering was kind of her thing. There was another time when he was just sitting on the couch watching a Dodgers game when she slid through the window. “Don’t you ever have anywhere else to be?” He asked.
“Some days, yes. Right now, no,” Natasha said, and took one of his beers. “Who’s winning?”
As much as he put on a front about how much this weird game of hers annoyed him, it was also kind of nice. He also didn’t realize how much he had come to expect it when she was assigned a long cove-ops mission. Four months passed and his apartment was left in peace.
It was almost depressing.
Then, as he was looking over his reports to Fury one night, he heard the bleeps of the door lock. It buzzed in error only once, and on the second attempt, she was there. She stalked into the room, slamming the door behind her. “You’re getting sloppy,” she said curtly.
“I’ve been out of practice,” Steve called as she went into the kitchen.
She came back with a six-pack and a bag of store-bought popcorn. “Tell me there’s something mindless and entertaining on pay-per-view,” Natasha said, dropping the food on the coffee table and picking up the remote.
He glanced at her as she turned on the TV and went hunting for her fix. She was in an oversized hooded jacket; the hood was up, the sleeves half covering her hands. She would have looked comedically childlike if it weren’t for the bags under her eyes that betrayed long, sleepless nights and a failure to completely hide the haunted look in her eyes. There was a slight tremor in her arm.
The public thought of Black Widow as an insurmountable force to be reckoned with. And she was. But Natasha Romanoff had her limits. Occasionally she hit them. Those moments were rare, but they did happen. And whatever had happened was bad. She would talk about it if she wanted to. He’d seen her like this only a few times before, but he knew what to do.
She picked an animated movie, and then settled back on the couch with a beer and the bag of popcorn. Steve went back to finishing his reports. He closed the laptop and set it aside about twenty minutes later, when her head lightly fell against his shoulder. “Thanks…” Natasha mumbled.
“I missed you,” he said.
“Don’t get mushy on me, Rogers.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Romanoff,” he replied, and moved his arm up around her shoulders.