Work Text:
“Fuck,” Natasha Romanova muttered under her breath when she saw who her opposing counsel would be on the upcoming Flannigan trial. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
“That’s a lot of fucks, Nat,” her fellow ADA, Matt Murdock, smirked from across their office.
“Flannigan got Stark,” she ground out.
“Fuck,” he replied.
Nat had been an assistant district attorney for the great state of Maine for all eight years since she finished law school. She loved working for the people, loved being their representative as she fought for justice. There were a lot of things she was proud of in her life - not the least of which was finishing top of her class in law school while managing to give birth during her 3rd year - but being the people’s voice was high on the list.
Andrea Flannigan was a con artist and Nat knew it. The woman knows exactly who killed her child and Nat knows she can prove that Andrea paid her boyfriend to kidnap and murder Andrea’s fourteen month old special needs daughter. She had everything but the proverbial smoking gun - a record of the direct ask - to prove it. Juries were ruthlessly unsympathetic to women they perceive to be bad mothers and Nat had woken up that morning confident that she’d go to trial the following month with no barriers.
And then… like so many other things in her life… Tony Stark fucked that all up. The issue was that Stark had a reputation in town for not taking cases he didn’t 100% believe in. He was flagrantly wealthy, after all, and didn’t need to work - being one of the Mayflower Starks that has more New England blue blood running through their veins than all the Vanderbilts put together. He went to law school at 20 and had hung a shingle as a defense lawyer for the under-resourced shortly thereafter.
As a citizen of the world, she admired Stark. As someone who sometimes had to tango with him in court, she loathed how good he was at his job.
And now he was defending Andrea Fucking Flannigan.
So there were two options. One, Nat was missing something and ooooohhhh how deeply she hated missing something. Two, Tony Stark was wrong.
She began to giggle and Matt looked up at her quizzically. So she explained the two options to him, and Matt started laughing.
“So we work for one and pray for two,” Matt concluded. Nat’s phone buzzed before she could answer.
“Oh, that’s Allison,” Nat replied, seeing her au pair’s number come up on the screen. Matt waved her off as Nat quickly headed to a private phone pod to take the call.
“Nat?”
“What’s up, Allison?”
“The school just called and Max got in a fight again. Do you want to go over or should I call -”
Nat pinched the bridge of her nose. She quickly opened the family calendar app and saw that her schedule was more flexible than her husband’s that day. “I’ll go. Thanks, A.”
“No problem, Nat. I’ll call Steve and see if he can just bring Rosie home from karate.”
“That would be amazing,” Nat replied and said her goodbyes. She opened her messaging app and grinned at the messages waiting for her in the thread with her husband.
WhatsApp: TeamSR
Hubs: I know you changed our names in the phones just to piss me off.
Hubs: You know I hate this term.
Hubs: You know I hate calling you ‘wifey’
Hubs: We’re not on HGTV trying to buy an island getaway home or whatever the fuck.
Nat grinned. They’d been together for over a decade and she still delighted in calling him every schmoopy nickname she could think of, just to piss him off. Sure, some women bought lingerie. She used spite.
Wifey: Serious moment. Max again.
She knew he wasn’t going to respond - the calendar was color coded to his ‘not answering the phone unless a child was dead’ color - so she typed out what she knew and the plan.
Wifey: So all that to say, we are going to have to have a serious conversation about a behavioral intervention and I know you don’t want him to see someone but I’m close to demanding it.
Wifey: Our little boy can’t stop hitting people, babe. And I know we joke that it’s from his Uncle Steve, but… Can we please talk about it?
Wifey: Let me put it this way. We talk about it or we talk about how you took the Flannigan case, Anthony.
About two hours later, once she had collected Max, controlled her temper, and gotten both of them settled back at the house, her phone pinged.
Hubs: I’ll definitely choose door number 1.
Hubs: If you think she’s worth breaking Rule Seven over, then I’m open to hearing why.
Hubs: I just got stopped at the store and asked why Max broke some kid’s jaw. I’m hoping that didn’t actually happen?
Wifey: No. No broken bones, minor scrapes, and a torn sweater.
Hubs: I’ll go get Rosie from Steve and Buck’s, then we’ll parent and then we’ll marriage because I had a shit day and I need to hold my wife.
Wifey: I’m still pissed at you.
Hubs: You’ve been pissed at me perpetually since our first date. I like to think it’s how we keep our spark alive.
She rolled her eyes, but a fond smile dusted her face.
Wifey: I love you, Tony.
Hubs: I love you, Nat.
User ‘Hubs’ updated chat
Tony: I can’t anymore.
Nat: It was fun while it lasted.
Tony: Was it?
