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It has become an unspoken thing of theirs ever since Steve’s birthday. Steve decided to take a break from searching Bucky because it was being fruitless and only tires him mentally and physically. He didn’t give up but Natasha knocked some sense into him and told him that he would come when he was ready.
Steve wakes up an hour earlier before his morning run to prepare breakfast, not just for him but also for Natasha. A day after his birthday, he found out that she almost doesn’t sleep at night, afraid of the demons that will plague her dreams. So one morning, when he was preparing to go for his morning run, he saw her in the kitchen, drinking milk straight from the carton.
Natasha had heard Steve’s footsteps and he was surprised to see her eyes: so dull and so unfocused. Steve moved to the kitchen quietly and made her pancakes with smiles (designed using syrup). Natasha fought the urge to smile but he saw some of the clouds cleared up from her eyes and her lips quirk up to one side, nonetheless.
And now, he was heading for Natasha’s floor to call her up for their breakfast. He knows she’s awake and just waiting for his call. He knocked on her door but she didn’t answer. He felt that the door wasn’t locked and so – despite every fiber of his body telling him no – he twisted the knob and went into her room.
He felt panic rise within him when he didn’t see her anywhere in her room, but he swallow it down and was about to open his mouth to ask JARVIS of her whereabouts when his enhanced hearings picked up something down the hall.
Something soft and melodic.
He chose to follow it and it brought him a vision he never thought existed.
He was blessed with the sight of Natasha, dressed in a black ballet tutu. So feminine and so soft, yet still lethal and deadly at the same time. She was so graceful it was as if her feet never landed on the ground. She seemed to be floating on air, gliding and so… free. Serene. Peaceful.
He didn’t realize until the song was gradually peaking towards its crescendo that he’d stopped breathing. Natasha, again, took his breathe away. With her beauty, with her personality, with her soul. It was one of the few moments where Steve was immensely grateful for the serum. If it hadn’t been for it, he wouldn’t have been able to hear the sound coming from this room. And if it wasn’t for it, he wouldn’t have been able to hold his breathe, as if he was very afraid that if he exhaled a little too loudly, Natasha will hear him.
His body didn’t obey him at all. He’d wanted to leave immediately when he realized that Natasha must have wanted to keep this a secret and that he was, indeed, invading her privacy. His eyes however remained glued to the perfection that was Natasha Romanoff. His blue eyes tracing every features of her somber face, every curves of her exquisite body and every muscles that move as she follows the rhythm of the song.
He never thought he would ever be thankful that he wasn’t seeing Natasha’s emerald orbs right now, or else he wouldn’t be able to imprint this in his eidetic memory and store it in the very back of his brain, where no one can touch it and take it away from him.
He knew nothing about ballet, but he thinks that Natasha’s all he needs to watch to know everything about it.
Femininity. Softness. Gracefulness.
She twists. She turns. She spins. She floats and lands on her feet, graceful as ever.
It took every ounce of his willpower not to grab her slender waist and kiss her luscious lips, right there and then, where he likes to believe that she wouldn’t be able to incapacitate him. Though he highly doubts it, Steve knew that even when Natasha is looking this soft, she would still be able to take him down in a blink of an eye.
The thought broke Steve out of his reverie. Everybody fears the Black Widow for a reason. But he sometimes likes to think that Natasha Romanoff is way scarier than the infamous assassin when she wants to be. It made Steve take a step back as he realized that he might as well have committed a crime when he watched her at a time where she brought her walls down and wouldn’t appreciate anyone seeing her right now.
Steve decided to get out of there before the song completely ends. He would very much prefer to die protecting his country or fighting Hydra than being caught by Natasha Romanoff when she was dancing ballet, thank you very much.
The fear still wasn’t enough to pop Steve’s bubble, though. Because no matter how far he got away from that room and no matter how near he was to his, he couldn’t stop the smile that danced upon his lips when the memories from that room full of mirrors automatically danced smoothly (not as smooth as he saw Natasha did) in his mind.
He plopped down in his bed and laid down for a while, still with that dreamy look on his face and a sparkle in his eyes. From a bystander he must have looked insane, he mused. But from someone that knows him quite well, he might as well look like a high school teenager who got to take his long-time crush to prom. Or just someone… in love.
God, that thought again. It haunted his dreams ever since his birthday. He tries his damnedest to forget it; but no matter how hard he tries, it keeps on popping up in his head as if a huge neon sign that demands to be read. It was a stubborn thought, never leaving his head completely, but instead just lurking around the corner and deciding to sneak up on him every single time he thinks about her.
It frustrates him to no end.
So, he grabbed his sketchbook from his drawer and set his mind to transferring the exquisite image he’d witnessed and preserved earlier, through his charcoal pencil and into his sketchpad.
Breakfast was forgotten and he likes to think until now that Natasha never saw him watching her.