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Baseball was one of Steve’s favorite things. A true Brooklyn boy, he’d grown up watching the Mets lose game after game after game and hey, it was a tradition! It wasn't about winning; it was about playing the game. Besides, he figured it took a lot of faith to keep rooting for a team that nearly always lost. They had so much more humility than the Yankees.
In any case, he went to games (not always Mets games) as often as he could and always found that he was eager to share this particular love with anyone who was willing, or seemed to be willing. At the moment, that person happened to be a girl named Tiffany. Steve had been ‘seeing’ her for about two weeks now and with baseball season finally upon them, he’d invited her to a game in the hopes that she might like it and he might be able to shake the feeling that despite their similar ages, she was just too immature for him.
Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly going the way he’d planned.
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and Steve picked Tiffany up wearing light blue jeans and a white t-shirt in an effort to combat the relatively warm weather. For her part, she hopped onto the back of his bike wearing white capri pants and a pink tank top, her hair tied back in a ponytail and her purse probably holding the very cell phone she had now been chatting on for thirty minutes straight.
Steve was about ready to tear the damn thing out of her hand, but he kept his cool. He wasn’t going to fight with her, but if anything- this was a sign that she wasn’t right for him. He’d even gone through the trouble of getting her a hot dog she hadn’t touched and a bottle of water that cost him more than he could have imagined, and this was how she was going to act? They’d barely spoken!
Could it get any worse? Apparently. At some point during the game, the ‘kiss cam’ was going around the stadium and targeting whatever couples it found… and it found them. Steve blinked up at the screen and nudged Tiffany, who waved him off. “Tiff—“ He tried. “Hey, they’re—“
Nothing. The stadium was now collectively booing her and Steve was getting more and more embarrassed because come on. Being rejected in public was not fun, it was only a peck on the lips, was he that unappealing?
Just as he’d opened his mouth to try again, a woman came out of nowhere and slipped right onto his lap, taking his face in both hands to kiss him full on the lips- much to the stadium’s amusement. They cheered like crazy, enveloping Steve and his mystery woman in a wall of noise while Tiffany finally figured out what was happening. When the woman pulled away, the cam settled on someone else now, Steve just gaped up at her.
“Nice to meet you too,” he laughed; unintentionally laying his hand on her thigh- she was seated on his lap, after all. Tiffany’s face was getting this awful pinched look, but he didn’t care. Why should he care?
“Excuse me,” she said, clearly annoyed. “We’re on a date, you know.”
The woman in his lap, who was extraordinarily beautiful in Steve’s humble opinion, smiled a bit and cupped his chin, tilting his head back so he was looking right at her. “I saw an opportunity,” she said easily. “And I took it. I don’t think anyone would blame me.”
Steve swallowed and nodded a little, offering up an amused smile. “I think we might wind up on Youtube,” he commented- and she laughed. God, that laugh was going to stay in his head for the rest of the day, if not longer.
“Give me a call sometime, handsome. I’d love to do that again.” With that, without even asking for his name, Natasha pulled a pen from her back pocket and wrote her name on the inside of his forearm, along with her phone number. He was so shocked by it that he hardly noticed her slipping away.
“Hey,” he called after her, standing up on a whim. “I’m Steve, by the way. Just… so you know.”
Natasha turned, curls bouncing, and gave him a teasing smile. “Nice to meet you, Steve,” she answered mischievously, giving him a good once over before turning to make her way down the steps- presumably to her own seat.
Oh, wow. She was really something.
Steve was so distracted (still standing up and smiling like an idiot) that he hardly noticed Tiffany standing up until she petulantly dumped her water over his head. “Jerk,” she told him, poking him in the center of his chest while he glared down at her. “You just lost the best thing that was ever going to happen to you.”
He doubted that. Steve held his hands up in surrender as she grabbed her things and left, no doubt to talk to whoever it was she always had on the other end of that phone until she stepped into her apartment- and maybe even after that! Despite the cheers around him, it was nice to have a little peace and quiet with her gone.
And it left Steve plenty of time to think about Natasha, about how warm and soft her lips were, about how good she’d felt sitting on his lap. Maybe he was a sap for it, but it felt like he’d fallen for her already and this would just be a great story they could tell their grandkids one day. Glancing down at the number on his arm only made him happier that he’d decided to attend the game that day.
But as fate would have it, the next week was a really bad one for Steve. There was drama at the elementary school he worked at, his bike had to go into the shop, Bucky was in an accident and had to spend two days in the hospital—Seriously, the fates were working against him and Steve was beginning to take it personally.
At least he’d saved Natasha’s number in his phone, her last name still a mystery. But a week later, when he finally had the courage and ten minutes to call her, he wondered whether or not he was still…welcome. Wasn’t it rude to call someone up a whole week after they’d spontaneously kissed you on camera in the middle of a baseball game?
The thing was that Steve really wanted to call her. He really wanted to call her and ask her out for a drink, maybe out for dinner or something. So, hey. Why not? The worst thing she could do was laugh at him and refuse, and then he’d probably never have to see her again… which would be quite the pity.
With Bucky’s voice in his head telling him to get on with it, Steve hit the button to call her and waited patiently for the sultry voice he remembered to pick up.
“Hello?”
Oh, God. “Um. Hi,” he answered, rubbing at the back of his neck like she could see him over the phone. “I don’t know if you remember me, but, uh… My name is S—“
“Steve,” she finished. “From the baseball game. I was thinking you’d forgotten all about me.”
She remembered him. One little kiss, one ten second conversation, and she remembered him. It was a sign, damnit! Maybe she was thinking about him too. Maybe she’d spent the whole week wondering where he was or when he was going to call or—
“Steve?”
Fuck.
“Sorry!” He said quickly. “Sorry, I was just… thinking.” And now he probably sounded like a lunatic. Nice. “Uh, I’ve had a bad week. Meant to call you the next day, but everything was a mess and…”
And she probably didn’t want to hear excuses or Steve rambling on about his problems that week. “Anyway,” he mumbled, cutting himself off and pretending he didn’t hear her chuckling on the other end of the line. “I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get a drink sometime. Or we could get coffee, or dinner… Whatever works for you is fine with me.”
Natasha paused for just long enough to make Steve nervously check his phone to make sure she hadn’t hung up on him. “How about you meet me tonight?” She suggested. “Around quarter after nine? There’s a diner on that serves the best pancakes after dark.”
She wanted him to meet her for breakfast at nine o’clock at night? “Um, okay,” Steve answered, nodding along. This woman was getting more and more interesting as time went on. “I’ll be there.”
Steve could have sworn he could feel her smiling. “Great,” she said easily. “See you then.”
With that, the call was ended and Steve slowly turned his eyes to the clock. It was only six thirty, which meant that he had plenty of time to panic before he actually got ready. At nine on the dot, a freshly showered and shaved Steve Rogers was waiting outside what he assumed was the right diner, casually leaning against the wall and fidgeting every three seconds or so while he waited for Natasha.
When she did show herself, Steve pushed himself off the wall and found himself entirely disarmed at the sight of her. Natasha’s hair was pulled back in a haphazard bun with what looked like a heavy bag resting over her shoulder. She was wearing jeans and flats, along with a black tank top and a sweater to match. Casual, and she still looked like she ought to be walking a runway somewhere.
“Hey,” he greeted warmly. “It’s good to see you.”
She surprised him with a kiss on the cheek and he grinned when he realized she had to stand on her toes to reach him before she returned the sentiment and led him inside. They selected a booth in the nearly empty restaurant and Steve decided that he had to break the ice.
“So, I have to ask,” he said teasingly, setting his menu down for a moment. “What made you do it? Are you just some kind of superhero who kisses people when they’re getting publicly rejected in front of hundreds and hundreds of people?”
Natasha laughed and he had to smile, ducking his head a little because he found her so charming at the moment that he was sure she could tell. “What would my name be, if I was a superhero like that?”
Steve thought for a moment. “Mistress Kiss,” he blurted out, his ears turning bright red when she laughed again, nodding along a second later.
“I love it,” she said firmly. “And I’ll wear all black except for my lips. They’ll obviously have to be red.”
Shaking his head in amusement, Steve smiled widely. “Now this is an idea I can get behind,” he chuckled, grabbing a pencil out of the bag he’d had slung over his chest and unfolding his napkin to get to work on a crude drawing. Eventually, he slid it over to Natasha to show her a cartoon of herself wearing a superhero’s costume, cape included, her lips just a bit larger than expected, hands on her hips. “Mistress Kiss,” he reiterated. “It’s perfect.”
Natasha picked up the napkin and stared down at it for a moment. “You can draw,” she observed. “I’m impressed, Steve. I’m impressed.”
That had him grinning again, shrugging a little because praise was always kind of awkward to accept. “Thanks,” he said anyway. “But you totally avoided my question. Don’t think I forgot. Why did you do it?”
Meeting his eyes, Natasha smirked and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was passing by and I saw your little friend ignoring you,” she explained. “Once was okay, but twice? Three times? I took one look at you and decided that lips like yours deserved a kiss on merit alone.”
Steve flushed a deep pink, but he couldn’t help the smile that came with Natasha’s words. “For the record, that kiss earned me a bottle of water in my face,” he countered. “But as I haven’t stopped thinking about you since then, I’m guessing it was worth it.”
As it turned out, getting a bottle of water to the face was definitely worth what Steve got out of it. They spent four hours getting to know one another that night and Natasha leaned up on her toes to kiss Steve good night before getting into the cab he’d hailed for her.
They got together again the next night, then again a few nights later, then again for lunch on the weekend. Steve began texting her when funny things happened at work or when he found himself looking at something that reminded him of her. He even introduced Natasha to Bucky, and she introduced Steve to her best friend, who told Steve in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t hurt Natasha if he wanted to keep his dick. Eventually, Natasha was presented with a drawer at Steve’s place, then half of his closet, then half of the bathroom cabinet. She left little pieces of herself everywhere; her favorite tea in the kitchen, her shoes near the door, her books piled up near the couch.
It was the kind of whirlwind romance that people warned against, but it felt real and to Steve, how it felt was more important than how it looked to everyone else.
When baseball season came around again, Steve took Natasha to the first Mets game of the season and proposed right there where they’d met- seats he’d had to beg and borrow and steal for, to be honest. Rolling her eyes at him, she accepted and happily reenacted their kiss for the camera, the ring on her finger glinting in the sun.