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‘Miss Romanoff, if you had to choose anyone at the table to sleep with, who do you pick?’ Tony asks, leaning back in his seat and smirking.
‘Why do I have to sleep with any of you idiots?’ Natasha raises an eyebrow, sceptically, staring Tony down.
‘It’s hypothetical. He’s been talking about this for a while. Humour him. Maybe he’ll stop talking’ Bruce says diplomatically.
‘Hypothetically?’ she asks, looking at each man around the table except the person she answers, ‘Steve’.
That’s about the time the noise kicks up.
Steve watches Tony begrudgingly hand over money - which looks like a $50 bill - to Bruce.
He doesn’t want to think too hard about that.
‘Natalie…’ Tony whines, ignoring the glare Natasha sends him, ‘Come on, really? I thought Clint was your go-to boy. Don’t you two have history?’ Tony presses.
‘I’m not sure which of us should be more offended by that’ Steve says to Clint who gives him a strange look and then nods. Tony is still commenting and arguing his case, involving Bruce and Clint in the matter. Steve isn’t entirely sure when they became middle-schoolers so he sips his coffee, and sits there faintly wide eyed. ‘I think you just started a civil war’ Steve says lowly to Natasha who narrows her eyes at Tony.
‘Good. I’m going to end it’ she mutters, and that sounds vaguely threatening, and it’s the only warning Steve receives. He puts down his coffee cup and suddenly there’s a hand in his shirt and Natasha plants one on him.
It’s chaste. A press of lips on lips, designed to make a point and nothing more. Steve’s dimly aware of how the room silences around them. A beat, then another, until it’s no longer familiar, a shift of intent made manifest by the careful movement of Natasha’s mouth against his. Her tongue flickers over his bottom lip, he can taste the orange marmalade from her toast, and Steve’s entire world narrows down to the slick touch of the kiss. There and all too quickly gone – and they’re apart. Steve takes in the slow lift of Natasha’s lashes.
‘Well, that certainly seals that’ Bruce semi-awkwardly says. ‘Hey Clint, pass the syrup’
Steve’s thankful for the switch in subject and the normality everything goes back to.
They’re in battle, later that very day, and the whole debacle is horribly close to a Disney film gone wrong.
Natasha saves his ass from a – well it looked like big bear, that corners him, so, yeah.
‘Thanks’
‘Saving you from a big scary bear, you’re welcome Princess’ she says, mockingly and Steve scowls at her for a brief second.
‘Princess? I don’t really have the figure for one’ he motions to himself, hips cocked to one side.
‘Hmm’ Natasha considers him, ‘What do I get as thanks?’ she’s re-adjusting her cuffs; the neon blue showing the charge of her lasers, flash bangs and widow’s bite.
Steve steps forward, taking her hand in what you could call ‘knightly fashion’ (their analogy is falling apart rapidly at the seams) and drops a kiss on the back of her leather gloved hand, between the two blue points.
‘How’s that?’
Natasha regards him, then, as he lets her hand fall, she steps into his space and pats his cheek. She licks her lips and Steve tracks the action.
‘Uh, Cap, we got incoming. From the river’ his comm link chimes.
‘Got it. Thanks, Hawkeye’ Steve says, ‘Movement, re-enforcements, from the river. Race you?’ he asks.
Natasha doesn’t respond, just turns around and sprints off. Steve sets off at a run after her.