Chapter Text
It continues for the next weeks and months, the peace and tranquillity you and Natasha have fought for. She softens towards you again, and it makes you melt into her, for her, even more.
Movie nights find the two of you curled on the couch together, you are at each other’s side for every meal, she still trains you as hard as she has been, maybe more so, but there are more gentle corrections and soft touches. Clint comes to stay and train for a while and notices the two of you, notices Natasha and how she's changed.
Clint and Natasha appear back at the compound after their private lunch the second day, the first day in over a month the two of you haven’t eaten together, and everyone can tell what happened. Clint said something, Natasha punched him, and they fought a bit.
They come back, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing, with cuts and scrapes littered on either of them, and no one says a thing. Even as Natasha plops herself on the couch next to you, and Clint sits across from you two, raising an eyebrow, just a bit. Clint Barton is probably the only one who could walk away from angering the Black Widow, and they all know it.
(even if they all talk about it when the three of you are out of earshot)
Your favourite hours of the day though, are the ones at night or in the early morning. The ones when you can’t sleep and you drag yourself out of bed, shuffling down the halls, managing to run into Natasha no matter where she is. Her own dreams keeping her awake and tense, long after the others are sleeping peacefully.
The kitchen, the living room, the roof with the endless starry night sky, even the gym once.
You had woken up from a nightmare that night, one of those recurring ones that you thought you had managed to leave behind. Natasha was nowhere to be found, you walked the halls like a wraith for an hour before you crept down the hallways, down the stairs, towards the gym. She almost jumped when you appeared and you almost smiled at her surprise. You sat on the floor, against a wall and watched her train, fists hitting the bag in a rhythm that lulled you back to sleep.
You woke as she lifted you into her arms, smiling against her warm and slightly damp neck, and she called you “a freak for falling asleep to me hitting a punching bag. You might have as many issues as I do…”
She carried you to your room and managed a couple hours of sleep at your side.
That too, then, became routine: Natasha and you, talking together, or sitting in silence together, at night and then sleeping next to each other.
Neither of you talked about feelings; there were longing looks and soft touches, and you had heard Tony talking about a betting pool before he noticed you in a corner. But still. She slept better next to you, and even on the nights you still couldn’t sleep, you felt more rested with her in your arms, in your room, in your bed.
~~
You aren't surprised to see that it’s Natasha sitting there, when you finally come back up to the water's surface. It is, after all, two in the morning and everyone else will be sleeping. Natasha had probably had a nightmare and you are stuck awake, skin buzzing for no reason.
So no, you're not the least bit surprised to see the redhead sitting and reading a book as you emerge from the water. You glance at the giant clock on the wall, you had been down there for over an hour, thinking and drifting.
Sometimes you manage to fall asleep in the water, you always sleep soundly when that happens. The only problem is that every time you wake up in the water, you are completely terrified until you get your bearings and remember where you are. Natasha had seen that happen firsthand a few times, and teased you mercilessly.
Swimming over to Natasha you glance at her book, but seeing that the title is in Russian, you give up on the light snooping. She finishes her chapter as you wait patiently, treading water. She marks her place and sets the book down beside her. Then when she turns, facing your direction, you quickly assess the look in her eyes: tired and resigned. Sad, longing.
“Come on, let's race.” you suggest, throwing in, “no powers” since you know that will get her attention.
“Fine little fish, let’s see if you can beat me,” she says, slipping gracefully into the water beside you.
The two of you swim together for a bit, and soon you give up any pretence of beating Natasha without any added abilities. Simply giving yourself gills, you shrug in her direction when she sees.
The two of you continue swimming until your muscles are burning, Natasha has still managed to swim around two laps to your one, so she must’ve been at least a bit sore as well.
After the two of you stop, you get out of the pool and dry off in silence, heading back towards your rooms together. You linger behind Natasha for a moment as she makes her choice, and, turning to your side of the hall, the two of you enter your bedroom.
You are always a bit proud when she chooses your room over hers, even though it happens fairly consistently. You know it’s because she finds your space comforting and welcoming; the tapestries that cover most of the walls, and the soft fairy lights you use, all combine to make the space feel cosy and safe.
She puts on a movie as you take both of your swimsuits and rinse them off in the bathroom, leaving them to dry. Giving Helios a quick pat after you exit the bathroom, you go around to the other side of the bed, climbing in next to Natasha. Her eyes are already fluttering a bit as she tries to stay awake, though she turns towards you as you settle in next to her.
“Thanks,” she whispers as she falls asleep, knowing that you will be there to wake her if her nightmares come back.
“Thank you, for trusting me” you say as she sleeps by your side.
~~
With all of that going on, the others are going a bit crazy. Wanda and Yelena have more patience than everyone else, despite the fact that they have known about your feelings for each other for far longer.
Still, the fact that the two of you are now ‘sleeping together’ without anything else happening, is driving everyone crazy.
And one night, game night, after the two of you beat the others at monopoly, Tony has apparently had enough.
He flips the board and Wanda calmly catches everything with her magic; you meet Bucky’s eyes across the table as the two of you start laughing, and Steve is now choking on the sip of beer he was taking when it all happened.
“I am not playing this game with you two ever again” he says, seething.
“That's what you said last time, and it’s why we played teams tonight,” Bruce reminds Tony.
“Yeah, well, big help you were, science boy. And you!” he says, rounding on Vision and Wanda, “one of you is an all knowing machine and the other can read minds! How did we lose to them?”
“We don’t cheat” is all Wanda says.
Yelena is laughing while all of this happens, though she shuts her mouth, the picture of innocence, as Tony rounds on her and Thor.
“Super spy and a god?! And nothing?”
“Eh, we gave up,” she says, and Thor is nodding next to her.
And it’s true, if they had kept at it, they might have won, or at least given you a bigger challenge. You like to think you still would have beaten them.
“Ya know,” Tony says, sitting down again, suspiciously calm now and facing everyone, but eyeing you and Natasha, “maybe if you two spent less time playing games, you’d be able to have some real fun.”
You blush and Natasha stands, “really Stark?” she says, the hint of a looming fight in her face; Tony stands and the two look to be around one second away from demolishing anything in their path to destroy each other.
“And that's that, goodnight everyone. Dismissed. Go cool off,” Steve says as he stands and inches closer to Tony, looking every bit the captain, “both of you,” the last part is firm and unforgiving as he stares down Natasha.
Throwing caution to the wind, you grab her hand in front of them all, and drag her out of the room and then outside, hoping a walk will distract her.
You hear the others behind you, getting up, chatting, saying goodnight. Tony starts to yell something after the two of you, but you just pause time, walking further away from the building with Natasha before restarting it, far enough by now to not have to hear him.
And when you go to drop her hand, she holds on, gentle but firm and the two of you stop walking.
Her eyes are stormy and agonised and you know that she can’t say it first, and that's fine. It’s the first time in your life that you feel like you can make that leap, jump and know without a doubt that someone will be there to catch you.
“I hate when Tony’s right,” you say as you lean towards her, whispering against her lips: “don't you?”
And when your lips meet, its lighting and Thor has nothing on the two of you, its power, stronger than Wanda will ever yield, strength that Bruce will never carry. Safety that Natasha has never known.
Love.
~~
And you two break apart eventually, walk and talk and kiss. Natasha tells you that she loves you as you reach the shore of the lake, she says it with her back to you, a few steps ahead where she's walked, trying to protect herself using the training that has been ingrained into her even as she fights against it.
It’s a stupid move; you launch yourself at her, she turns and catches you just in time and then you're telling her that you love her even as the two of you are falling into the water, laughing, wrapped in each other, hair dripping, and lips connecting again.
~~
The lights are mostly off, dimmed in the halls, when you two return to the compound together. And Natasha takes your hand and leads you, for the first time, into her bedroom.
You briefly think about relocating Helios to Yelena’s room in the future, and then your lips connect with Natasha’s, and she's pressing you against the door, and all coherent thoughts leave your brain until the next day.
~~
Money changes hands the next morning in the kitchen when the two of you are caught kissing in front of the coffee maker. Wanda pulls you, squealing, out of the room for details even as Yelena begins questioning Natasha in rapid fire Russian.
The two of you return, Yelena and Natasha speaking in English, the latter answering Steve’s question, and Tony has the beginnings of a black eye. Natasha also seems to be counting quite a lot of money as she turns and winks at you.
You laugh as you walk up to her, smiling as she pulls you onto her lap, Bucky whistling and throwing you a wink. You hear Natasha grind her teeth and press a kiss to her cheek, smiling and happy, wishing this would last forever, looking into her eyes and thinking that it just might.