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They were standing in Natasha’s room, and Natasha was sitting with her legs criss-cross applesauce on her bed. Her back was pressed against two foam pillows, and she was fidgeting idly with her navy blue sheets. A couple feet in front of her, Maria sat on the black leather footstool which occupied the space at the edge of her friend’s bed. She looked so much smaller than usual, and ten times more nervous than she would dare allow herself to look in front of her SHIELD colleagues.
Maria, as it turns out, had fairly reasonable grounds to be nervous. Natasha has just finished venting about her past, nothing Maria hadn’t heard before (but nothing she minded listening to again, of course.) Natasha talked about the red room, about hating how much she still remembered. She talked about how she hated, equally, those memories that seemed to have disappeared or turned foggy, even if that was her brain’s way of coping with the trauma. She didn’t like it, didn’t like feeling out of control in her own head. Maria listened, and she felt a deep sorrow in her chest, just like always. Nobody enjoys hearing about their loved ones being hurt, especially when you’re Maria Hill and you can’t help thinking, however irrationally, that you should have prevented all of this, somehow.
Except, things took a bit of a turn when Natasha spiraled into some kind of self deprecating tornado. She went from being angry and disgusted with her tormentors, to directing all of that outrage towards herself. Maria didn’t really know where it was coming from, but she knew she hated it. She knew she hated it, and she knew that, in this moment, caution was up against passion in the boxing ring inside her head, and she knew it was a losing battle. She could not be held legally responsible for whatever was about to come out of her mouth, Maria thought, almost with a giggle, and then things got ... real.
“Not to sound gag-inducingly sappy or anything,” Maria ceded, “but you’re literally the bravest, kindest, most selfless person I know. I’ve pretty much been in love with you since the day we met. So I’m not exactly buying into all this ‘I’m unlovable,’ nonsense, Natasha.”
She had declared everything with an air of nonchalance, had even finished off her sentiments with an eye roll. But her words weren’t sarcastic, or bitter. It was more like, Here I am, stating the obvious, I can’t believe I have to do this.
Natasha didn’t process the compliment, the reassurance, at least not right away. She heard the sounds falling from Maria’s lips, sure, but what exactly did those sounds mean all put together like that? It didn’t immediately sink in. And when the words did begin to register, really register, Natasha felt like the entire ocean was rushing in her ears. Felt like pacific waves were rendering her speechless, because she was just so, so wildly confused and—and, honored? and ... excited? She had too many questions and not nearly enough brain power, at the moment, to deal with them all. Did Maria mean it, like that? Was she serious, about loving her—or, actually, being in love with her? Natasha didn’t understand. They had been close for a long time now, and they had said “I love you,” as well as every other variation of the phrase, thousands of times. But not like this. Never like this.
After what felt—to Maria, in particular—like an eternity, Natasha finally spoke. “You mean it?”
Maria looked like she could’ve laughed. She didn’t, but the reflexive instinct to do so was clearly discernible on her face. “What do you mean, do I mean it?” she asked instead, the tiniest hint of frustration in her voice. “Of course I mean it.”
A momentary pause fell over the room. And then, the frustration was gone, and replaced with something a little more heartbreaking. Maria sounded so broken, like she might crumple into a hundred little pieces if she said anything else. Her voice began to shake—the tremor only slight, but enough to make her face start blushing red—and then she continued, “I don’t ever not mean things when it comes to you, Tasha, you know that.”
Natasha felt a pang of guilt, at the very bottom of her stomach. She did know. Maybe she knew all along, about everything, and she just didn’t know what to do. She had all these insecurities and regrets and she couldn’t work through everything and also fall in love at the same time; it was too much. Now, it seems, she had lost the luxury of a choice. Time had snuck up on her, which, honestly? was a little embarrassing. She was a highly skilled, crime fighting spy, after all. And Natasha didn’t enjoy being bested.
“Natasha,” Maria said in a sing-song voice. “Uh hello? Are you okay? You’re doing that thing where your brain is firing a million thoughts a minute but you aren’t telling me anything. What’s going on up there? Hm?”
Natasha regained control of the furious storm that her mind had become, if only for the moment. “I’m sorry, lyubimaya, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I let this happen.”
Maria scrunched up her face, narrowing her eyes in bewilderment, frowning. She shook her head, trying to make sense of what the other woman was saying, as if she could jumble some things around up there and suddenly she would be hit with an epiphany. And when this, to Maria’s great disappointment, did not work, she decided to just get it all over with, to get to the bottom of whatever Natasha was feeling.
“You’re sorry? What on earth are you sorry for, Tasha?” she asked. And before Natasha could answer, she interjected with one more thing. “I think you forgot that I don’t speak Russian?” she half stated, half questioned. “But um, I’ll just go ahead and assume that you called me something sweet and not like, ‘I’m sorry, dumbass,’ or something.”
That made Natasha smile, which in turn made Maria smile, and suddenly the tension lifted like the curtain before a big show and they were just two people, grinning like idiots and trying to figure out what happens now.
Maria broke the silence. “Natasha, hey, I’m serious. You don’t have anything to be sorry for. And I’m not just saying that to spare your feelings or be gentle or whatever, I mean like, not even remotely do you have a reason in the world to be telling me you’re sorry.”
“But I-“ Natasha tried to interrupt, and then Maria just looked at her with her eyebrows raised, as if to say You aren’t going to let me finish? So, Natasha yielded; she did want to see where this was going, she supposed.
“I knew that you knew. It’s okay, yeah? I didn’t expect anything. It’s not your fault. I was, I am—I am perfectly happy to just keep loving you and for that to be it. I’m lucky just to know you, you know. You don’t owe me anything. Everything is okay, I promise.” Maria was looking down, at her hands, but she looked up on that last word, gave Natasha a soft smile. Natasha was looking right at her, had been the whole time, a little teary-eyed. “If anything, I’m sorry,” Maria emphasized, “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just hate when you say those crazy things about yourself. I just wanted you to know, I needed you to know, I guess.”
Natasha had practically been hanging on every word, so desperate to understand, and longing, even more so, to make Maria understand. “Hill. Look at me,” Natasha said, and the words were certainly serious, but she wasn’t being demanding, or snappy. She just wanted to be looking at Maria, really looking at her, if she was going to tell her the truth.
Maria lifted her head up to look Natasha in the eyes, a faint smirk on her face. “I’m looking,” she retorted, a teasing tone in her voice.
Natasha chuckled at that, for a moment, and then she began, “‘Darling.’ That’s what it means.”
When it didn’t seem like Maria grasped what she was referencing, Natasha continued. “‘Lyubimaya.’ the name I called you. It means ‘darling,’” she clarified. “It doesn’t mean ‘dumbass,’ or anything close, I swear! You can look it up yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” Maria said, half-laughing. “I’ve heard you swear at plenty of people in Russian, and none of it ever sounded like that.”
Natasha laughed with her, and blushed just a little bit, which Maria found wildly endearing—odd, but endearing nonetheless.
“What I’m really trying to say in all this is,” Natasha started, “I ... well I don’t know if I can say it. The ‘L word,’ that is, at this exact moment. But I’m not, not? feeling that way, if that makes sense? I don’t know if that’s enough, or if it’s what you wanted to hear, and I really, really don’t want to hurt you, ever. It’s just, these things that I thought I put behind me are suddenly right in front of me, plain as day, and so, well, that’s been taking a toll, I guess. The job is just a lot, sometimes, and I mean, I know you know that, so I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this like it’s new information.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I want you to know that I care about you just as much as you care about me, if not more, and I don’t want you moping around ever again thinking anything else.”
Maria had been looking like she was holding her breath for the entirety of that confession, and when Natasha stopped talking, there was a long pause. It wasn’t uncomfortable; Maria just needed a second to digest everything, and Natasha knew that, so she didn’t pester her or unload another batch of revelatory thoughts on her. She let her breathe.
“Just to be clear, I do not ‘mope.’” Maria insisted. The lighthearted inflection in her voice allowed Natasha to finally let her guard down. She unclenched her jaw, relaxed her shoulders—all things she hadn’t even really noticed she’d been doing—as Maria arrived at her next point. “And listen, I didn’t want to hear anything, remember? I don’t want you to think that I expected, or felt entitled to, anything. What you’re saying is enough, everything you say is always enough. And, if I’m being honest, I’m having a hard time believing that you actually said what you just said, and that this isn’t like, a dream or something. All this time I thought I was kidding myself, you know? Like you said, I do know all that, about the job, about you. I didn’t want to pile on. I wanted to be a safe place, not another weight on your shoulders.”
At this point, Natasha moved her body forward from where she had been leaning against the pillows, so she could be close enough to Maria to touch her. She laid her right hand over Maria’s hands, which were clasped together in her lap. “Hey, you’re not weighing me down at all, Maria, you’re not. You’re the safest place I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning if it weren’t for you. You do realize that, hm?”
Maria just stared at her. She started to open her mouth to say no, but Natasha wasn’t having any of that. She leaned in and kissed Maria, as gentle as soft sheets on cool skin, and when she pulled away, she brought her hand up from Maria’s lap to brush her cheek ever so lightly with the pad of her thumb.
“Um ... do you realize it now?” Natasha was looking at Maria, who was thinking that Natasha looked so modest and unassuming in that moment, more so than Maria has ever seen her look. Even the way she asked, it was so fragile, like a seventh grade girl taking a chance with a crush and being absolutely terrified of the rejection that could follow.
Maria couldn’t bear the thought of Natasha even so much as thinking, for a split second, that she would be rejected. “Yeah, I do,” she answered. “I’m realizing a lot of things, in fact.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. like, I just realized that Fury’s gonna have an absolute field day when he finds out about this. He always seemed to know what was going on, with us I mean.”
“I’m not surprised; a rock with a face painted on it probably could’ve figured this out before us, Maria.”
“Hey!” Maria exclaimed, her voice suddenly high-pitched. “We did a perfectly fine job here, with all this. Now, kiss me and tell me I’m right, or I’m telling Fury how you completely brushed off his prediction skills.”
“So that’s how things are gonna work now, isn’t it?” Natasha said, grinning. Maria hummed in agreement, and Natasha wasted no time fulfilling Maria’s request.