Chapter Text
WASHINGTON, D.C. | JANUARY 2015
It was well past one in the morning when Steve pulled his bike up to the side of his building, parked it in the alleyway, and made his way up to his 4th floor unit.
He couldn’t sleep. Hadn’t been able to in weeks, really, but at least most nights he’d get in a solid hour or two before he’d wake from the nightmares, sometimes screaming and falling into a raging panic attack that took quite a while to come down from.
He’d been having the same dreams almost every time he shut his eyes. Eight months of looking for Bucky had given them nothing but old memories that weren’t his and plenty to leave to the imagination. He saw Bucky almost every night now, whether it was being tortured in one of the old Hydra bases they’d uncovered, being frozen alive, falling from the train, beating Steve senseless until he fell from his grasp, or pulling him into too tight of a hug the night before he shipped out, the last time he saw him before the war got to him.
It was exhausting.
He and Sam returned to DC just over a month ago. They’d been back a few times since leaving for Ukraine last year, but never for more than a week or two at a time. Sam insisted he was okay with continuing their search, but Steve could tell he was tired.
Every single lead they’d followed ended up piling on more questions and uncertainties. When they happened to uncover an old abandoned Hydra base in Bucharest with an outdated cryostasis device and several filing cabinets covering years of notes on ‘The Asset,’ Steve finally decided to call it quits for a while. The realization that Bucky had been held here for probably months and years at a time, maybe even decades, shook him a little too much to continue. He was closer to losing his sanity than finding Bucky, and Tony had also hinted more than once that he and Maria needed his and Sam’s help dealing with the aftermath of SHIELD being destroyed.
So Sam went back to his job at the VA, and Steve returned to a nearly destroyed apartment. He’d found out after leaving the hospital that the STRIKE team had turned it upside down after declaring him a fugitive. He assumed their intent was to figure out where he might have gone and who he may have gotten in contact with, but it looked as if they’d enjoyed it enough to go a little overboard.
When he’d first come home to see the damage, he was still recovering from some of his more internal injuries and decided to just leave it. After that he’d put off going home for months, staying with Sam for a night or two when he wasn’t in New York. When they made the decision to put off their search indefinitely, he finally forced himself to go home and face the damage.
For the next few weeks, he’d kept himself busy and distracted with fixing it up. He’d needed to refinish the hardwood in a few places, re-plaster, and paint the entire unit. There were a few doors torn off their hinges, the kitchen cabinets torn apart, furniture destroyed, and of course the giant holes in the wall from where The Winter Soldier had shot Nick. His desk had been torn apart too, his nice pens and drawing pencils strewn all over the floor.
Maintaining SHIELD’s various property investments apparently wasn’t very high on Hydra’s list of priorities, and technically no one owned the building anymore. That had given Steve plenty of time while he was out of the country to deal with it, but if he wanted to sell the place and get the hell out of DC, it was in desperate need of some work.
And so he worked, pouring all his free time and energy into fixing the walls and the floors and the cabinets and everything else. Distracting himself from the fact that Bucky was still out there, that his entire life had been taken from him again, that he was unemployed, had no directives or orders, had no one else but Sam who had his own life and worked most days.
That Natasha, someone he hadn’t realized had become such a fixture in his life, had left him.
Steve hadn’t heard from her since that day in the cemetery. She’d disappeared and hadn’t bothered to contact him to let him know where she was or if she was okay. She’d apparently decided she would rather be alone after everything they’d gone through together than trust him to be there for her like he - as much as he hadn’t wanted to admit it - needed her to be there for him. She’d handed him Bucky’s file, kissed him on the cheek, and tried one more time to set him up with someone before walking away and never looking back.
For the first time, he’d taken her advice. Maybe it was spite, maybe it was pettiness, maybe it was loneliness…maybe it was a little bit of all three. He’d seen Sharon about a month after SHIELD fell, in the process of moving out of her apartment, while he and Sam had come home for a few days. He’d helped her load some boxes and furniture. She’d suggested getting dinner at a little diner down the street in return for his help.
He hadn’t heard from her since. He liked her fine, but his heart just wasn’t in it.
For the first few weeks he’d been so concentrated on Bucky and nothing else that he was able to push Natasha to the back of his mind. She would be fine, he knew she would be. They both just needed time.
But then she’d showed up in his dreams one night. It hadn’t been anything dramatic, just a brief flash of vibrant red hair and bright green eyes and a laugh lingering on her lips. When he woke up he hadn’t remembered a single thing about the dream besides her.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her after that. He’d wonder where she might have gone and even entertained the idea of trying to find her once or twice. He’d pull out his phone and stare at her number even though he knew damn well it was disconnected. He finally broke down and called Clint, who just said she was fine and left it at that. Sam asked him about her once, just a simple, “Hey, you heard from Romanoff? How’s she doing?” But it had come out of nowhere and flustered him. Sam noticed and didn’t bring her up again.
The more time went on the regret he’d felt the last time he’d seen her began eating away at him, and it had only gotten worse since they returned home. Sure, repairing his apartment distracted him for a while. And he would hang out with Sam sometimes, usually heading over to his house on weekends or evenings when he wasn’t working to order takeout and watch whatever sports game was on TV.
He’d been to Manhattan a few times on Avengers business, but he and Stark weren’t the type of friends that hung out. Besides, when Tony wasn’t in New York he was either in Malibu or some other part of the world running his company. Bruce wasn’t around much. Thor hadn’t been back to Earth since the situation in London and had only visited New York briefly, filling them in on what happened. He then informed them that his mother had passed and that the nine realms needed his help to restore order after the convergence.
Steve supposed he could have called Sharon again - as far as he knew she was still living in the city, working for the CIA - but he could never bring himself to do so.
The longer he stayed in DC, the more isolated he felt. And when he was isolated he let his mind wander too much. When he let his mind wander too much, he allowed himself to miss Natasha.
So tonight, instead of lying in bed for hours, tossing and turning and inevitably seeing Bucky or Peggy or Natasha or his mother and waking up in a panic, he’d gotten dressed, hopped on his bike, and drove. He didn’t care what direction he went or what time it was or that he was completely and utterly exhausted.
He’d ended up somewhere outside of Richmond, Virginia. By then it had started lightly snowing, so he stopped at at a twenty-four hour gas station for a cup of coffee and headed back to DC.
His dark apartment greeted him, just as still and quiet as he’d left it. A light, cold breeze whistled through the window he’d left cracked open in the kitchen, hitting the back of his neck as he turned towards the coat rack installed on the wall to hook his keys to it. A car hummed by on the street below, and a distant siren pulsed over the creek of the floorboards underneath his feet.
He paused before unzipping his jacket. A new sound met his ears, so faint it was barely audible over the wind: the sound of cotton against cotton, the sensation of being watched prickling the hair at the nape of his neck. He stilled, straining his ears to hear the brief, almost silent exhale of a breath. He let out his own, relaxing a bit despite the sudden increased pounding of his heart, and continuing to unzip his jacket.
“You know,” he said finally, pulling it off and hanging it on a second hook, “I seem to remember asking you to knock.”
“I did. You didn’t answer.”
Steve rolled his eyes, but when he turned around to face her his breath hitched in his lungs and the words at the tip of his tongue disappeared completely. There she was, after nine very long months, standing in his kitchen. Her hair was longer than it was the last time he’d seen her, and it framed her face in the natural waves she’d been in the habit of straightening last year. She was watching him with wide, uncertain eyes that glittered bright green in the moonlight streaming in through the window.
“You’re home late,” she said after a few long, painfully silent seconds. Steve’s jaw tightened and he shifted uncomfortably, his arms crossing tightly over his chest.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he replied flatly, once he’d recovered his voice. “What are you doing here?”
He saw something...regret, maybe. Or discomfort. But as quickly as it had flashed through her eyes it was gone, and her features smoothed, completely emotionless.
“I…thought I’d check in. See how you were doing.”
“You have my number. You didn’t have to break into my apartment.”
Her eyes narrowed, only a little, and the corner of her lips ticked upwards.
Stop looking at her lips.
“But this is so much more fun.” She was uncomfortable. It was subtle, nothing but the slight rigidness of her voice giving it away. It wasn’t like her. She took a long breath and her expression softened. “I just...wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I can take care of myself,” he retorted. She frowned at him.
"You're mad at me.”
"I'm not mad."
“You’re also a shitty liar.”
Steve rolled his eyes, but still felt the guilt creeping up on him. He wasn’t sure why he was being so cold towards her. He’d wanted to see her for months, hadn’t he? He’d spent the last nine months thinking about her, about what he’d say when he saw her, what he’d do. And now that she was here, standing just a handful of feet away from him, his mind was completely blank.
She sighed and stood up from where she was leaning against the kitchen counter, taking a few hesitant steps towards him. He tensed at the thought of her getting any closer. She noticed.
“Steve-“
“You left, Natasha.”
She balked, her jaw tightening. But she didn’t look away. “I had to.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer. She just stared at him, a crease between her brow, her eyes that were usually devoid of emotions absolutely swimming with them, with hurt and regret and a sea of other things, all swirling around in a storm of green. They were watching him carefully, trying to read him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered finally, her voice shaking just enough for him to notice.
“Nat-“
She cut him off by closing the few feet between them, reaching up to cup his face in her hands and pulling him down to press her lips hard against his. He stumbled backwards a bit, thrown off by the suddenness of it, and her hand fell to grab his t-shirt, holding him steady. Once the initial shock wore off his hands found her hips and pulled her closer, to which she responded enthusiastically, pushing herself up on her toes and kissing him again.
Last time she’d kissed him had been entirely different. It was work, and even though it had confusingly turned into something more than he thought she’d intended, it wasn’t the same. She’d still been holding back, had kept him at arms length and took only what she needed until the danger was past.
But this? This was slower and more desperate, it made him dizzy and knocked the breath out of him until his lungs were burning.
And then she stopped and pushed herself away from him, her eyes wide with horror.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, I don’t...know why I...I have to go.”
“Natasha-“ She brushed past him, but headed farther into his apartment instead of down the hall towards the front door. “Where are you going?”
“Out your bedroom window to the fire escape.”
Steve didn’t have time to laugh at that. He hurried after her, catching her just outside his bedroom door. He reached for her, his fingers curling around her wrist.
“Nat, stop.” She did, but didn’t look up at him, dropping her eyes to the floor instead. “You can use the door, you know.”
“This seemed more dramatic,” she replied softly. Finally she lifted her gaze to meet his, a nervous smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry, I just-“
“It’s okay.”
She was close to him again, so close he could smell her generically scented shampoo. And she was watching him, her eyes wide, swirling with vulnerability and discomfort.
He hated this…the awkwardness, the thick tension creating this uncomfortable valley between them. It was nothing like it used to be, before SHIELD fell and she left. It seemed so easy then.
He’d never seen her like this, not even in those rare moments where she’d let him get little glimpses of her beyond the emotionless persona she put on for everyone else. Even in situations that made her vulnerable, she still held herself together incredibly well.
But now she was jittery and uncomfortable, enough for him to notice. She was nervous, something he’d never seen in her, not even when they were staring down an entire population of aliens or an Asgardian god or a terrorist organization threatening actual world domination.
He thought back to the last time he’d seen her, the careful way she’d handed off Bucky’s file, the practiced smoothness of her voice when she insisted he call Sharon. Did she know how he felt about her? Hell, he didn’t even really have a handle on that, but this was Natasha, and she knew everything. Maybe she knew more about him than he knew about himself, and saw something he hadn’t let himself see first. Maybe he made her uncomfortable, because she could tell how much he’d missed her and wished he wouldn’t have let her go all those months ago.
But again…this was Natasha. She didn’t allow others to make her uncomfortable. She would never let anyone, especially a man, put her in that position without knowing exactly what she was doing. And besides, she was the one who broke into his apartment, who came to him first.
She was the one who had just kissed him.
He didn’t want her to go. He hesitated, knowing there was a good chance this was the wrong thing to say, but saying it anyway.
“You don’t have to leave.”
“Steve…”
He let go of her wrist and used that hand to push her hair back. It was just as soft as he remembered, and while he tucked a loose piece of it behind her ear, he thought about how much he liked it; she was always beautiful, but something about how long and curly and unkept it was seemed so much more her than the smooth, perfectly straightened style he’d gotten used to. That Natasha always had to keep up some kind of cover, always had to be the perfect agent, always had to keep her mask on.
She hadn’t moved. If she knew what he wanted to do, how much he wanted to kiss her again, she wasn’t stopping him. So he did, softly at first, just a brush of his lips against hers, giving her a chance to back out if she wanted to. She kissed him back instead, sliding her hands up to clasp behind his neck and pull him farther down, allowing him to back her gently into the doorframe.
“You’ve been practicing,” she breathed finally, her lips moving against his when he let her come up for air. She smirked at the look her gave her.
“You don’t need practice,” he muttered back. Just to prove his point, and before she could argue, he kissed her again. Deeper this time, pouring everything he had into it: how much he’d missed her, every ounce of whatever complicated feelings he had for her, making up for every single time he’d wanted to kiss her before but had held back.
Satisfied with the little noise of surprise it earned him, he slid his arms down and easily lifted her up so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. She snaked her arms up to rest on his shoulders, her hair falling down over his face, not protesting when he turned into the room. It wasn’t until he’d crossed it and laid her down on the bed that she finally broke away.
“Are you sure about this?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. It was dark, but the moonlight streaming in from the window made her eyes sparkle and her hair glow bright red against the stark white of his pillowcase. She reached up and pushed his hair back, then slid her hand down to rest on the side of his face.
“Yeah,” he breathed, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, overwhelmed by how absolutely beautiful she looked, staring up at him with wide eyes and a nervous, crooked little smile on her lips. “You?”
She responded by pulling him down to press her lips against his again, softer this time, but it didn’t last long. She stopped suddenly, and when he pulled back enough to meet her eyes, she was frowning up at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, I just…” She trailed off, pulling her bottom lip under her teeth. “This isn’t…I mean, you’ve…done this before...right?”
Steve groaned. “Jesus, Nat-“
“It’s a valid question!” she replied defensively, but still with her lips curved up into a grin.
“Just because I’m ninety-six doesn’t mean-“
She pulled him towards her again, his words getting lost in the back of his throat as she cut him off.
Natasha had run for nine months straight. Away from SHIELD (well, Hydra, technically), away from Nick trying to track her down, away from Clint’s incessant attempts at getting her to come back, away from her own past that was constantly trying to catch up to her, and away from Steve.
Mostly from Steve.
She’d given him that bullshit line about needing to create more covers for herself (everyone knew who she was now, there weren’t going to be any more covers) and practically sprinted in the opposite direction, anything to save herself from spiraling even more out of control than she already had.
She’d ended up in Romania first, flying into Vienna via three different carefully chosen flights that took her in a circle around Europe, before stealing a car and driving for almost a full day on back highways through Slovakia, Sokovia, and Hungary. Then, satisfied with the roundabout way she’d traveled and certain that no one had followed her, she headed south for another half-day to Bucharest.
That’s where she’d started looking for James.
She felt awful for sending Steve and Sam to Kiev. They wouldn’t leave Ukraine empty-handed, of course. The Red Room was inactive - she’d taken it down with her bare hands over a decade ago, with help from Clint and Nick - but they were still everywhere in the form of underground bases and abandoned labs and paperwork, if you knew where to look. She given them just enough to get them started in the wrong direction. By her guess, she had about two weeks to find James first before they got themselves on the right track.
She wasn’t sure where he would go first, only that he wouldn’t have stayed in the US for long. He was too smart for that, regardless of how much of the programming he had or hadn’t broken through. SHIELD had a headquarters in Bucharest, and based on the intel she’d dug up from the files she’d released, he’d been kept there for a period of time in the late eighties, before they’d met. Besides DC - it seemed as if Pierce had moved him there at some point in the last decade - it was the most recent known long-term holding location for the Winter Soldier.
She happened to know that James spoke Romanian flawlessly, and that he’d always liked Bucharest, so it was the most logical place to begin her search. He’d want to be somewhere familiar and comfortable, but she knew he wouldn’t dare go back to Russia, Hungary, or Germany looking for answers. Not yet, anyway.
She was right. Twelve days into her two-week window of finding him, she’d caught him following her on her way back to her hostel. It took three hours for him to finally knock on the door, and another thirty minutes before he actually spoke.
“Stop following me,” he’d muttered in Russian, his voice low and quiet.
“You followed me,” she’d replied, offering him a hesitant smirk when he glared at her in response.
He stayed there that night, trusting her to keep watch while he slept - really slept, well into the next afternoon, probably the first time he had in god only knew how long - but not understanding why he trusted her. She’d filled him in with vague details, enough for him to start remembering things on his own but not too much to overwhelm him. That they knew each other, he’d trained her, but not the nature of their relationship. It wasn’t until after he woke up the next day that he’d asked about Steve.
He told her he’d gone to the museum in DC before leaving the country. He knew his own name, that he was apparently James Buchanan Barnes, that he’d been called Bucky, and that he was supposed to have died in 1945. He knew Steve had been his best friend but didn’t remember him, didn’t remember any of it.
And then he told her that he didn’t want Steve to find him.
She’d agreed to help him. James wasn’t ready to face Steve again, and Steve definitely wasn’t as prepared to deal with James as he thought he was. And Natasha wasn’t ready to go back home. She’d given him a few fake passports that she’d had made for him when she’d gotten her own, a wad of cash, a list of every known Red Room location in Europe and Asia, and a pre-paid burner phone. He’d snuck out that night while she pretended to sleep.
She didn’t see him again, but she’d put every ounce of energy she had into sending Steve in the wrong direction. She stayed one step ahead of them, placing false leads in their way. It was exhausting, but kept her busy. Gave her a mission. A purpose.
After eight months of searching they’d given up, but Natasha still wasn’t ready to follow them back. Even when she’d finally let Clint contact her and he told her Laura was pregnant, she couldn’t bring herself to go back. She promised she’d visit for Christmas like she always did, but headed to Russia instead.
She wasn’t sure why she ended up in Volgograd until she was there, walking through a cemetery in the middle of the Russian winter on New Years Eve, staring down at two tiny gravestones next to a chain-link fence. Forgotten and half covered in snow, one of them was etched with the name Alian Romanov, 1945-1966. She’d assumed it was her father, though it didn’t give her much more information than she’d already known. The other grave was not her mother’s, as she’d expected. It was smaller, dated nineteen sixty-eight: Natalya Alianovna Romanov, aged four.
Discovering she’d been legally dead for forty-six years was enough to finally convince her to go home.
But she didn’t go to Clint’s. She didn’t go back to her apartment in Manhattan. She didn’t go to Stark Tower. She ended up standing on the street in the snow staring up at Steve’s apartment.
She should have left before she even entered the building. Should have left when she knocked and he didn’t answer. Should have left when he walked through the front door. Shouldn’t have fucking kissed him like that. Shouldn’t have let herself wind up curled next to him in his bed, her back against his chest and his arms wrapped loosely around her as he started to fall asleep.
Nine months of running from him and she ended up spiraling even further than where she’d started.
“You okay?” Natasha ignored him, keeping her body completely still and her breaths even. Hoping he’d think she was asleep. “I know you’re awake.”
Damn.
“I’m fine,” she replied softly. Steve ducked his head a bit and pressed a kiss against the back of her neck.
“I missed you,” he muttered, lips moving against her skin. All of the regret brewing in the back of her mind temporarily dissolved, and she rolled onto her back so she could offer him a soft smile in return.
“I missed you too.” He reached over to brush her hair away from her face, and she settled against him again, closing her eyes. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. I have a reputation.”
Steve huffed out a laugh, his breath tickling her nose, and twirled the ends of her hair in his fingers. “I won’t. I promise.”
They fell back into an easy silence, Steve idly playing with her hair. If she wasn’t attempting to stay awake, it would have been enough to lull her to sleep.
“You’re going to be gone in the morning, aren’t you?”
It was like he could read her mind. Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced over at him.
“Steve-“
“I’m not naive enough to think this can…go anywhere.” He averted his gaze, concentrating instead on the piece of hair between his fingertips. “I just wanna be prepared for you to leave again.”
“I’m not leaving,” she promised, her heart swelling when his lips curved up into a soft smile. ”Not like that.” She reached up and slid her hand over his. He dropped her hair and let her slip her fingers between his.
“Good.” He paused, swallowing thickly. “I mean, we can use you. Tony and Clint and me. Helping Fury with Hydra.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, then before he knew what was happening, she twisted herself towards him and pushed him over so he was on his back and she was leaning over him.
“Is that right?”
“Yea-“ She cut him off with a kiss, mostly for the grunt of surprise he let out when she did so.
“I think you just like having me around,” she muttered against his lips, and she felt them curve up into a smile despite the blush creeping up his ears.
“You’re not wrong.” She just grinned at him, satisfied with that answer, then settled down on top of him, her head tucked under his chin. He wrapped his arm around her waist and placed a kiss on the top of her head. “Stay for a little while, at least.”
“Okay.”
It was all so domestic, curled up with her head on his chest like this, wearing the t-shirt she’d taken off of him earlier, his warm fingers underneath it tracing patterns along her hip. It was something she could get used to, if she let herself think about it.
She wondered what would happen if she stayed, really stayed. She’d wake up in the morning with him wrapped around her, probably keep him in bed for another couple hours before they got hungry and he made her breakfast. Pancakes, inevitably, one of the only things he could actually cook. He’d put chocolate chips in them just for her, and make her tea since he knew she preferred it to coffee. They could lounge around all day, turning on a movie or television show but not actually paying attention. He’d protest, ask why they’d argued over what they were going to watch if she had no intention of actually watching it, but give in easily and let her distract him anyway. They’d order takeout for dinner, probably from the Chinese place down the block that she knew he loved, and end up back here, in his warm bed with her wrapped tightly in his arms, his face buried in her hair, her snuggled up to him wearing one of his t-shirts that she had no intention of returning. It would be so easy.
Too easy. And that scared the shit out of her.
She couldn’t stay, couldn’t drag him down with her like that. She’d had this argument with herself too many times over the last year to let herself just give in like that. It couldn’t happen.
Steve fell asleep quickly. She wished he would have taken longer, given her more time wrapped up in his arms like she was. Allowed her to enjoy this a little bit longer before everything went to shit again.
Once she was certain he wasn’t going to wake up she started moving, carefully and slowly. He was a light sleeper, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do if he woke up and caught her.
Luckily she was able to slide away without waking him, and when she climbed off the bed he just let out a loud, sleepy breath and rolled over, his back to her. She dressed quickly, pulling on her jeans and boots, but keeping his t-shirt on, wadding up her own shirt and leather jacket in her arms before sneaking silently out of the bedroom.
She didn’t look back, because she knew if she did, she wouldn’t be able to leave.