Work Text:
Steve would have called the first time a coincidence, or maybe a random happenstance, but he knew enough to know there were never any coincidences where Natasha was concerned. He might not ever know how she had known, but somehow she had known he would be there.
It was a muggy night in late July. The search for Bucky was not going what anyone would call well. Just a slew of dead ends that only ended in more guilt and helplessness. That ended in nights spent staring at the ceiling, every version of
“what if” there was running though his head, over and over and over.
He had to get away, and nothing made him feel better than the night air, than lying down and looking up at the stars, at pretending that the world was peaceful and all was well and that everything was not really as big a mess as it was.
His old apartment — the one he still had in name but never actually used anymore because it was the place where everything had begun to go wrong and also because he spent so much time at Sam’s he might as well move in — still had the best rooftop view he knew. It wasn’t the tallest or in the best location to see all the things one normally wants to see in D.C., but it gave him the best view of the stars while making him feel like he was the only one on earth.
Except on that night he wasn’t alone. He had barely sat down when she slid on to the ground next to him.
“Hi,” she said, like she had been expecting him.
He blinked at her for a second in surprise. “You’re back?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I’m here now.”
He could see that. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No,” she answered easily. “Did you?”
“No.”
She stretched out her legs and leaned back on her elbows. “Do you mind if I stay?”
He copied her position, stretching out right next to her. “Not at all.”
They were quiet after that, both of them staring up at the night sky. It was weird to be next to her again, after three months apart, but he had to admit it felt kind of nice. He closed his eyes, breathing in the night air. He might have dozed off a little, waking only when he felt movement beside him. He looked over to see Natasha strapping her guns back on to her waist (he hadn’t even seen her take them off).
She peered over at him, smirked, and then leaned over and pressed her lips to his. Not to his cheek, like she did when she said goodbye to them at Fury’s fake grave, but directly on his lips.
But before he could think to ask her what that was, she was gone.
•••
He went back a week later. If anyone had asked — of course no one asked, because no one knew to ask. He hadn’t even told Sam, which was odd, because he had gotten in the habit of telling Sam everything. But somehow it seemed like a precious secret — he would have told them it was just because he liked the view and needed the peace. It was definitely not because he was hoping she would be there.
She was there. Waiting for him this time, something in her hand. He frowned at what looked like a pitcher, then raised his eyebrow in a question.
“Sam’s lemonade,” she said, and held it out. “I brought glasses. Want some?”
He frowned again, his brows more furrowed this time.
“Sam?” he said. “As in my Sam?”
“Oh, he’s your Sam?” Natasha smirked.
“You know what I mean.” He shook his head. “Sam didn’t say anything to me.”
“I heard you didn’t say anything to him.”
He stared at her. “What are you two? I didn’t even know you talked to him.”
This time she laughed. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Rogers.” She gestured with her head to the left, and he looked over to see the two glasses she had previously mentioned sitting on the ground. “So do you want some?”
He took the lemonade and sat beside her on the roof. This time they let their legs hang over the edge.
“You and Sam are making lemonade behind my back,” he mused.
“No,” she said. “Sam is making lemonade, and we’re talking about you behind your back.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she said.
They finished the pitcher of lemonade long before the sun began to rise. She picked up the glasses, dropped them in the pitcher and handed it back to him.
“See that Sam gets these,” she said, and then she leaned over and kissed him again, this time a lot longer and lot harder than she had the first time.
When she drew back, there was an expression on her face he couldn’t quite read. Fondness? Amusement? Something else?
“Bye, Steve,” she said, and then she was gone.
•••
The next week when he showed up, she was waiting for him with a telescope set up next to her.
“It’s one the best,” she said, and he thought she looked a little proud.
“Do I want to ask you where you got it from?”
She grinned at him. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
He waited until they were sitting on the edge of the roof again, this time cross-legged, staring up at the sky, the telescope abandoned behind them, before asking her what he’d been wanting to ask her for a while.
“Do you miss it?”
He didn’t clarify what he meant, but he knew she knew. She raised a shoulder and let it fall.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she sounded thoughtful. She also sounded genuine. She turned to look at him, and her eyes were soft. Real. “I’ve never really known anything else.”
He nodded at that. “I miss it,” he said softly. “I thought I wanted out, until we couldn’t go back, and now I wish we could.” He paused. “Sometimes I’m not really sure who I am without it. … I guess SHIELD was more a part of me than I ever meant it to be.”
“Yeah,” Natasha said, then, “It was every part of me.”
He turned to look at her. “No, it wasn’t,” he said, careful not to sound too gentle. He knew the last thing she ever wanted was pity. “You’re so much more than that.”
She smiled, let out a small laugh. “No, I’m not,” she said. “But it’s nice that you think so.”
This time when she kissed him goodbye, she slid her hands up his arms, across his chest and then cupped his face. She nipped at his bottom lip a bit before pulling him in closer to her. He could feel her warm breath against his mouth as he held her to him, for just a few seconds longer than he thought was probably appropriate.
It felt a lot like he lost something when she slipped out of his arms and into the night.
•••
She was waiting for him, on that fourth meeting, a very hot Friday night in mid-August, sitting in the middle of a blanket she had laid out, clad only in a black bra and matching panties.
When he realized what she wasn’t wearing, he froze in place, just staring at her. She pretended not to notice, looking off into the distance.
He sat down next to her, but not close enough to touch her.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.
She turned to look at him, and she looked amused. “Do you want me to be telling you something?”
He tried to keep looking at her face, but it was hard. She was beautiful, and in the pale light of the moon, she almost seemed to be glowing. Did he want her? Of course he wanted her. He had probably wanted her for longer than even he knew.
He swallowed over the lump in his throat, fully aware that this felt like some weird sort of test. “Only if you want to be.”
She tilted her head. He shrugged. “Up to you, Natasha,” he told her. “You call the shots. I’m happy just sitting here next to you.”
“Rogers …”
He nodded. “I mean it.”
She sighed. Steve wasn’t sure what that meant, but she scooted over closer to him, leaned to the side until she was against his chest. He wrapped an arm around her, careful to only touch her back and her arm, not anywhere else. He still wasn’t sure what she was doing, but he figured if she wanted him to know, she’d tell him.
They sat there for a while, wrapped around each other, until finally she twisted in his arms.
“Okay,” she said, like he had asked her a question. Then she kissed him. As she did, she reached behind her, and a few seconds later she was tossing her bra across the roof.
He wrapped his arms around her and rolled them over, so she was under him. He reached up and pushed the hair off of her forehead, looked her deep in the eyes.
“Tell me you want this,” he told her quietly.
She actually laughed. “Rogers,” she said, “I’m lying under you almost naked. And you didn’t take any of my clothes off. I want this.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I want this too.”
•••
He was nervous the next Friday, nervous that she wouldn’t be there. They hadn’t said anything once they were finished, just a quick last kiss from her before she slipped her clothes back on and was gone. He thought she’d liked it — he had felt her tremble beneath him when she came and she had stayed in his arms for longer than was necessary once they were finished — but it wasn’t lost on him that he had never actually known why she had wanted to do that, and he wondered repeatedly if maybe it had been a bad idea.
He wanted her, but Natasha Romanoff was not a woman you could ever have, and he didn’t think one night was worth losing all of her for.
But when he arrived on the roof, an hour earlier than normal, when there was still traces of sunlight glowing red in the sky, she was already there, dressed this time but with what looked like a picnic spread out in front of her.
“I was hungry,” she said when she saw him examine the items. Somehow she’d managed to come up with a still steaming pizza, a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.
He took the spot right next to her on the blanket. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he’d admitted.
“Why?” she said. “Because we had sex?”
He felt himself flush. “Yes.”
“Don’t worry, Rogers.” She elbowed him in the side playfully. “I enjoyed it. I’d be okay if we did it again.”
“I bet you say that to all the men.”
She snorted. “Right,” she said. Then, more seriously, “It’s nice not always being alone.”
He had been reaching for a piece of pizza. He stopped short, hand in mid-air, then sat back, empty-handed. He studied her. “You’re not alone, Natasha.”
“I’ve always been alone.”
“No,” he said. Without thinking, he reached out, took her hand. She looked at him, surprise registering across her face, but she didn’t pull away. “You’re not.”
•••
The sun was beginning to rise. A cool breeze blew across the roof, ruffling the leaves of the trees he could see off in the distance. He tugged the blanket up further, even though the heat of their naked bodies was more than enough to keep them warm.
This was the latest they had ever stayed, like they both subconsciously knew it was the end of something special. They had been coming every Friday since that muggy night in July, and it had only gotten better from there.
Steve ran a hand through her red tendrils, the strands still a little damp after their lovemaking session. (Natasha would most definitely call it sex, but it had stopped feeling like that to Steve after the second week.)
“This is the last Friday before fall,” he said quietly. “Our summer nights are over.”
Natasha lifted her head from where she’d been lying with her head against his shoulder, shifting a little so she could put her chin on his chest. “They are,” she said.
“What happens now?”
She peered at him thoughtfully. “What do you want to happen?”
He’d had a feeling she would say that. It was something he had been thinking about a lot. “I want whatever you are willing to give me.”
“And if I’m not willing to give you anything?”
“Then we go back to being friends — or whatever you want to call it that we were before this — and this is a nice memory.”
“And you’d be okay with that?”
“I didn’t say that. I’d accept it. But I wouldn’t say I’d like it.”
“What would you like?”
“I think you already know,” he told her.
She shook her head, the ends of her hair tickling his chest. “I don’t know how to do relationships, Rogers.”
He laughed, and stroked his hand down her back, rubbing her a little. “And do I look like I do, Romanoff?”
She smiled at that. “I thought you told me I wasn’t your first?”
He slapped her playfully on the ass. “You aren’t — and stop smirking at me like that! — but I didn’t say I was actually dating any of them.”
“Ooooh, Steve, you scoundrel.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s how I roll these days.”
She laughed again, until the smile disappeared in a look of concern. “I don’t know what happens next,” she whispered. “I don’t even know who I am.”
“I don’t know that I do either.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Meet me next Friday,” he said. “Sam’s apartment. Six o’clock. I’ll take you to dinner.”
“Are you asking me out on a date, Rogers?”
“Maybe. Are you going to accept, Romanoff?”
“Maybe.”
He leaned up and kissed her. “I’ll see you at six.”
•••
At six oh one the following Friday, Natasha slipped through the open window in Sam’s living room. She had on heels and a cocktail dress.
Steve was waiting for her, hands on his hips.
“You’re late.”
“I know,” she answered. “I’m not easy to deal with.”
“No, you aren’t.” Steve shook his head, and let a smile form on his face. “But you’re worth it.”
She walked over to him, her stride full of confidence and pride, but her eyes looked more unsettled. “Am I?” she whispered.
He took her hands, pulled her in and kissed her hard on the mouth. She moaned softly against his lips.
“Let’s find out,” he told her, and kissed her again. “Okay?”
He let her come up for air. She smiled at him, her real smile, the one she gave just for him.
“Okay,” she said, and it was the most beautiful word he had ever heard. Summer was over, but they didn’t have to be.
She’d said okay.