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Clint had been gone for a long time - months, in fact - on his mission. And when he finally returned to the tower, there were a shocking number of things that had changed in, for him, what had been the blink of an eye.
For one thing, the food was better. Stark must’ve brought in a chef. The room assignments had been shuffled around to accommodate for several newcomers. The entryway elevator was a constant revolving door of guests, a staunch difference from months earlier when rarely anyone save for a delivery person would be in and out throughout the day.
The most startling difference, though, he had to admit, was the fact that Natasha had taken to sneaking.
Sure, she had done before; it had always been in her nature. But, around him? No, she never tried to sneak around Clint. And it took only one evening for him to realize why. One evening of hearing sickening giggles (that at first he’d thought couldn’t possibly be Natasha; in all the years he’d known her he couldn’t remember once hearing her giggle) and he had his answer. H is intrigue had been piqued when he’d realized that the offending sounds were coming from Steve Rogers’ quarters.
The very next morning, Clint went on the attack, questions flying from the second he'd joined up with Natasha in the training room for an early-morning warm-up. Natasha had remained tight-lipped throughout the entire session. But Clint had never been one to relent that easily.
“Come on, Nat,” Clint whined as he followed her down the hallway and back up the elevator, from the gym to the kitchen. She hadn’t acknowledged him once since bringing up the topic, “I’m not asking for dirty details. I just want to know-”
“You’re not even going to let me have my coffee before you start in this morning, huh?” Natasha grumbled as she dug through the cabinets for the coffee beans and grinder.
He flopped back into a bar stool at the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest as he swiveled back and forth, “I saw you sneaking out of his room last night, Natasha. I personally think, as your best friend... ” he shrugged nonchalantly, “you owe me just a couple of details.”
“I wasn’t... sneaking, ” Natasha said, though her face flamed, “I’ve got just as much right as anybody else-”
“-to try your hand at the mountain of certified all-American, star-spangled man-meat that lives down the hall? I didn’t say you didn’t-”
“Oh my god, stop. ” She let out a huff, slamming the bag of coffee beans onto the counter before whipping to face Clint, “I mean it; there’s nothing worth discussing.”
“Oh so he’s just... really bad at it then, or…?”
Heat rushed to Natasha’s cheeks as she buried her head in her hands, leaning forward against the kitchen island, “ I wouldn’t know, okay? ” she admitted through gritted teeth.
She didn’t miss the clatter of Clint’s phone as it dropped from his hand to the counter top, “What do you mean you wouldn’t know? ”
“I mean we’re not...that’s not the sort of relationship we have.”
Clint’s eyebrows shot high in disbelief.
As if on cue, the door at the end of the hall opened and shut and the sound of feet padding nearer caused them to fall quiet. Steve sidled around the corner, hair mussed and eyes only half-seeing as he made his way toward the smell of the brewing coffee. “That for me?” Steve grumbled around a yawn as he let an arm loop around Natasha’s middle, and his chin came to rest on her shoulder.
“It can be,” she said, face flaming as he pressed a further kiss to her temple. Trying her best to appear unaffected as Clint shot her an are you absolutely fucking kidding me? look, Natasha poured out a mug for each of them, sliding one across the counter in his direction. Before turning on Clint, she handed off both remaining mugs to Steve and sent him on his way. “Why don’t you take those back to the room. I’m right behind you.”
“All right there, Mrs. Cleaver?” Clint snorted, clearly taking pleasure in Natasha’s immense discomfort.
Rocking back and forth on the heels of her hands, against the counter, Natasha scrambled for an explanation. “We, um...whoever’s up first does the coffee,” she rambled, “We have it in bed most mornings.”
“Hm,” he nodded thoughtfully, lounging back as he sank a spoonful of sugar into his coffee, “When were you going to let him know that that’s not the sort of relationship you two have?”
“You’re being unfair,” she whispered under her breath, listening in close for any sounds of movement from the floor’s other inhabitants. This was not a conversation he wanted anyone listening in on, “We are having a good time. That’s all there is to say about it.”
“A good time with no sex.”
It wasn’t a question. And it settled in the air around the air around them, stifling Natasha.
“Do you want it to stay that way?” Clint continued to press.
“I don’t know,” she threw up her hands, finally caving to the fact that nothing short of a full K.O. was going to shut Clint up. And it was too early in the morning for that, she reasoned. “I like him. A lot. I like having... his attention? I just don’t want sex. From Steve or anybody. I don’t want it and so far he hasn’t brought it up, so...I’ll worry about it when it comes to that.”
“ Natasha,” Clint grunted in disbelief, “fuck’s sake; it’s fine if you’re ace, but you don’t want to skirt around it until it becomes an issue.”
She blinked in confusion for a moment. There was something in there that she hadn’t heard before. “ Ace? ”
Realization dawned on Clint’s face and he sat forward with interest, “You know. Asexual.”
“No, I don’t,” she conceded, “I haven’t heard of that.” Natasha went rigid then, soon forcing herself to her feet. This wasn’t a discussion for today and certainly not a discussion to be having with her nosiest teammate. “Steve’s waiting. I should probably...”
And without so much as finishing her thought, she fled the kitchen.
“You alright?” Steve asked as she closed the bedroom door softly behind herself, “You look a little...off. Pale.”
“Hmm?” she grumbled, trying her best to sound indifferent as she slid back under the covers and curled into Steve’s side, “Oh, I’m fine,” she lied between her teeth, taking the mug of rapidly cooling coffee that he offered to her.
A few minutes passed in an amiable quiet. The morning news droned from the small television across from the bed. Natasha’s focus remained on the TV while Steve’s bounced between the morning newscast and his morning paper. A ding drew Natasha’s attention then and she sat up to grab her phone from the nightstand. One text after another came flooding in. All from Clint. All links to different resources, each headed with a different message from their curator. Welcome to the Club and Recommended Reading stood out among others .
For a brief moment, Natasha considered deleting the messages - throwing her phone back onto the bedside table and moving on with life. But her curiosity got the better of her; so after a quick glance in Steve’s direction to ensure he was engrossed in his paper and wouldn’t be sneaking any glances, she opened the first link and began to read.
Her heart sank lower, but its pace took an uptick as she began to put the pieces together in her mind. Frankly, she’d always thought her lack of sexual attraction had been something that had been beaten into her - or out of her, rather - in order to make her more efficient. She’d assumed that it was simply one of the remnants that remained to remind her of who she’d been in her past life, because there was truly no escaping it, but no.
There was a sense of relief that came with seeing her feelings, everything she felt written in blakc and white. Even if she didn’t know any of them, it was a comfort to know that there were others... like her... that were out there.
Asexual.
It sounded right. Fitting. Huh.
“You sure you’re alright?” Steve asked, pulling Natasha from her reverie and forcing her headfirst back into reality.
She almost dodged his question, very nearly threw out some off-handed comment about paperwork that she wasn’t looking forward to doing or something of the like. But this was her opportunity, she realized. She’d have to bring it up sooner or later so it may as well be-
“Clint had a thought.”
The words had spilled out before she could stop them and she’d wanted nothing more than for the floor to open up and swallow her down the second they’d escaped. Eloquent, she chided herself.
“Huh,” Steve huffed, setting his paper off on his nightstand and shifting clumsily until he was sprawled out across her, head in Natasha’s lap, “That’s never good news.”
Natasha couldn’t help the nervous laugh that came then and she hiked her knees a bit higher, dragging him closer to her. She had to keep going. If she stopped now, she’d never be able to build up the courage to lapse the topic again. “No. This, uh, I think he was on the right track with this one.”
“You wanna tell me about it?”
Of course she did. She wanted to talk through the whole thing, be analytical and logical and work through it with him in real time. But she also didn’t. What if he didn’t understand? She could barely wrap her own mind around it.
“Yeah,” she finally said, nodding and pushing herself up further, resting her back against her mountain of pillows, “Clint sent me some links and I was reading through them. And...I’m ace. At least, these articles point to that being the case.”
“I don’t think I know that-”
“I didn’t either,” she sighed, hoisting Steve up alongside her until they were sat shoulder to shoulder, “I’ve still got some reading to do. Maybe you could join me.”
He nodded in silent agreement and so it went. Huddled over top of Natasha’s small phone screen, Steve would give her a nod whenever he’d finished reading a page so that she could scroll to the next. The silence was only broken by small hmm s and the intermittent question from one to the other. It was slow going; they’d ended up going down a rabbit hole, from one article to the next, jumping around to different listicles and webpages as they went, but eventually they got to the end of Clint’s seemingly endless list of links.
“Huh,” they both seemed to murmur in tandem as Natasha set her phone off to the side once more.
“How about that,” Steve murmured, his eyes lingering on hers for a moment before he settled back onto his side of the bed.
Natasha waited patiently for a reaction. Something. Anything. And curse her mouth, because she hadn’t been able to keep it in check at all that morning, it seemed.
“That’s it?” she asked, her voice pitched higher than she’d anticipated, causing her cheeks to flame once more.
“Was - did you want me to add something?” he asked, his hand pausing midair, where it had clearly been in pursuit of the morning paper once again.
“No, I - not exactly, but - I figured we should talk about where this leaves us,” she urged, her lips pursed as she pulled her feet up underneath of herself and crossed her arms over her chest.
Steve’s hand fell back to the bed, paper forgotten, as his eyebrows knit together in confusion, “What - what do you mean?”
“You know. I thought you might want to - I don’t know - reconsider our trajectory,” Natasha shrugged, her eyes darting from the comforter to Steve and back in rapid succession.
“Why would I want that?”
“Because...I’m telling you...it doesn’t matter how deep into this we get...sex is off the table. I don’t...it isn’t something I want. In any capacity.”
“But that’s got nothing to do with you and me. You don’t want those things from anybody; it’s not just me.” Again. Not a question, but a statement.
“That’s right.”
“Okay then.”
She paused. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he nodded, the corners of his mouth ticking upward, “Unless you’ve got some further thinking you’d like to do; where we’re at now is good enough for me. I just want you. All that other stuff is just stuff. ”
And that was that.
Steve leaned back against the headboard, holding an arm out so that she could tuck herself into his side. Moments like these were her favorite; face to face, inches apart while he held her tight and she fiddled absently with the cropped hair at the nape of his neck. This could go on forever.
Natasha knew logically it shouldn’t have had this sort of effect on her - his utter acceptance of what she’d anticipated to be a bombshell. But nevertheless, a lump welled in her throat and tears pricked behind her eyes. Steve leaned forward, entirely nonplussed as he left chaste kisses over her temples, eyelids, cheeks, and the very tip of her nose.
She let herself bask in the moment, of the release of tension that came with sharing her short-lived secret. Before she knew it, though, her alarm was sounding and she was letting out a sigh. Natasha attempted to sit up, only to be clutched in place by Steve’s strong grasp.
“Training time, Rogers. We’ve got new guys who need whipped into shape,” she reasoned as she tried, though only half-heartedly, to free herself from his grasp once again.
“They can warm up on their own. One more minute,” he urged.
And who was Natasha to say no to that? Melting back into his hold, she let out a contented sigh.
Training could wait.