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Maria’s not sure if it ’ s the hugging that started it, or maybe the kissing, or the sleeping together, but the way Pepper ’ s looking at her right now makes her think that a HR relationship declaration will be on her desk the next morning. Again.
She doesn't even need to poke Natasha, the redhead is so spread out on top of her she senses the tensing and sighs
‘Relax, Masha’
Maybe its the pet names too
‘I am relaxed’
‘Relax more then, you’ve had a long day’ Natasha turns to the side and kisses her shoulder absently ‘sleep, if you like’
Thats the kissing she meant, not-
Its very thoughtless, starting with Maria leaning down to peck her forehead one early, early morning page and now its just a thing. Its a friends thing. Its an I’ve-been-blown-up-twice-with-you thing.
‘Like you could carry me to bed’ she teases and Natasha snorts
‘We could just sleep here’
The sleeping togethers not what it sounds like either. Its just sleeping. Maria remembers a time she never felt like she slept, rested sometimes, got knocked out sometimes, but sleep? Without nightmares and sweating and screaming and visions… that seemed as far gone as her childhood. Turns out Natasha felt the same. Turned out Natasha was also the little spoon.
And now Maria knows what it feels like to sleep.
The boys are looking at them, as they usually do when the women merge like this.
Noone can quite pinpoint when Hardass Hill and the Black Widow became Natasha and Maria - Tony tried once, when he was drunk, and just had to get a lot drunker. Clint thinks its the childhood trauma, Bruce thinks its their gender, Tony thinks its their steely personalities and Steve’s just confused.
Maria just knows that Natasha’s pointe shoes are hanging on her living room wall and that is enough.
She knows Natasha likes mint choc chip ice cream, old dubbed movies, jazz vinyls, but only the cheap fuzzy kind that crackles when they play and has every scar on her body mapped out and memorised.
She thinks, in a deep dark way, buried 6 feet under in her own mind, that the pinpoint was somewhere around the time Natasha became sacred to her. Maria’s not unused to religion; to the act of devotion and faith, growing up in a matchbox town will do that to you but she spent more time on her knees for the priest’s daughter than she did praying and only returned to the dollsized church to bury her father and sign away her own, marked plot.
(She wants to be burned, please )
Yet Natasha, who’s hair glows like a halo in the light of an explosion, who can laugh in 15 languages and swear in 10 more, who cries when she sleeps, and laughs when she sings is something she’s likely to worship for her whole life.
Natasha likes not being able to breathe, she feels a romance in drowning, in the phrase “wrapping your car around a tree” and drawing out a musical score to accompany the stave carved into her forearms.
It's with Maria that this eases, surrenders itself to warmth and light and mistranslated films Maria pretends to hate. Natasha knows that she is a weapon and a villain and a monstrosity, but when Maria holds her so tightly she feels like water every demonic thing starts to evaporate so Natasha can look into those blue eyes and feel, momentarily, human.
Maria is more of a feeling to Natasha.
It's a feeling when there's ringing in her ears from an explosion and she can't hear the sweet nothings Maria’s whispering in her ear. It's a feeling when she's woken, biting her tongue from screaming until she’s spitting blood, and she can't taste sweet tea Maria soothes her with. It's a feeling when she squeezes her eyes so tight, stars dance, because stars are better than the demons in her mind, and she can't see Maria tracing back her hair to place gentle kisses on her forehead.
Maria is a feeling.
In the end its Natasha who falls asleep; to the promise of cold pizza for breakfast and a double dutch braid before her next mission. Maria just laughs and says
‘I'd give you the universe if you asked Natalia’ and Nat laughs and Maria laughs and Steve chokes on his drink
So now shes carrying Natasha up to their floor while Pepper eyes them aggressively
‘Its no-’ she tries, then rolls her eyes as Nat shifts to wrap her arms around her neck ‘we’re not dating, we’re not having sex, we’re not-.... We’re not.’
‘Not?’
‘Not.’ Maria walks out of the lift
‘Not What?’ nat stirs and Maira puts her feet down on the threshold
‘Not carrying you anymore, come on, bed’
‘Yes ma’am’ Natasha salutes lazily and traipses into the bedroom. Maria makes her tea and then leaves it to get cold on the nightstand as she curls in next to her
‘Natasha?’
‘Maria?’
‘What will we do when we… when we date?’
‘Date? We do see people’
‘I mean more than one night stands. We have safehouses for that. I mean if it gets more than that, if you got a… a partner, would you move out of the flat?’
‘The flat?’
‘The flat. This flat. Our flat. Your underwear is under the couch and your hoodie is on the back of the door and i have used your toothbrush too many times because the green one was on sale when you went to the shops and now we both have green ones. Its ours’
‘Out flat’ Natasha agrees gently and pauses, waiting for Maria to poke her to carry on
‘fine. I guess, whoever moves out just moves out. You or me, person left alone gets our flat’
‘Huh. it's a good flat.’
‘High ceilings, hard wood floors, world famous neighbors’ Natasha shrugs against Maria's back ‘not bad. I’ll try to stay’
‘Hey! tony did design it for me - ‘
‘Well you better not date anyone’
‘Fine then’
‘Fine’
‘I’m happy’
‘Me too’
‘Hey, Nat left her hoodie’ Bruce remarks casually, peeling back the blanket and holding up the navy jumper
Tony narrows his eyes ‘Nah, thats Hills’
‘Hill was wearing one when she left’ Clint adds helpfully and Tony snorts
‘Of fucking course’
‘What?’
‘Its Hills, but Natasha was wearing it’ Tony pulls the jumper out of their hans and holds it up, so the boys can read the surname printed on the back
‘Not very superspy of them’ Pepper takes the jumper and places it on Maria’s desk, alongside a relationship declaration form (one of the stack of 15 she printed out in preparation after Maria threw the first 7 away)
It takes 7 years, 5 months and 18 days before something changes. 7 years, 5 months and 18 days of mixed up toothbrushes and unsolicited Pepper glares (304 forms) and nights falling asleep to those jazz albums.
It takes a bomb and a flatline and Clint literally physically intervening with a quick shove and run before Natasha trips forward and lands on Maria’s bed, bracing herself into her body
‘If you wanted to touch by boobs you could just ask’ Maria remarks casually, helping the redhead up but still holding her close
‘You nearly died Marianna’
‘Oh god full name’ Maria sighs
‘You nearly died’ Natasha punches her arm and Maria winces
‘Could still die’ she reminds her and Natashas glares at her
‘Dead. Dead, Maria’ Natasha repeats, tears filling her eyes ‘dead as in dead, no more you, ever. In this universe. In my universe’
‘Your universe’ Maria raises her eyebrow and Natasha pokes her angrily
‘Yes Maria. This is about me, because obviously you dont care about you. And i know you care about me. Last week you put a blanket over me when I fell asleep and took away my paperwork, corrected it all, submitted it, stitched up my eyebrow and set out two mugs for coffee in the morning. Just like you do almost every fortnight’ Natashas trailing off by the end, for once her eyes cant meet Maria’s
‘You know about that?’ Maria asks quietly
‘My eyebrow doesn't fix itself’ Natasha jokes ‘and I still don't know the difference between effect and affect’
‘True’ Maria laughs ‘your universe will remain intact. I will remain intact’
‘Pinky promise?’ Natasha asks
Maria rolls her eyes just joins their fingers together ‘Pinky promise.’
‘Promise me another thing-’ Nat cuts herself off quickly
‘Nat?’
‘You said you’d promise me the universe once’
Maria smiles softly ‘Fine, I give you the universe, what else?’
‘Promise me I’ll die first’
‘Nat-’
‘I can't live in the flat on my own’ Natasha says quietly ‘I can't wake up without you, or sleep without you, or breathe without you’
‘Nat-’ Maria tries
‘I cant say I love you Maria, I need you-’ Natasha’s eyes are filling with tears, reaching out to grasp Maria’s hands ‘I need you more than I need oxygen, more than I need war and purpose and - you. You could be my purpose. Please-’
Maria squeezes her hand ‘Nat-’
‘And I know-’ Natasha continues without stoppings, but Maria stops her
‘Shut up. Just shut up!’ she bursts out ‘I need you too, I need you too; like everything, like gunpowder and a treadmill and a bow. But I also love you. I love you like you love drowning and I love Russian horror movies, in an insatiable way that makes me mad. Mad. Stir-Fucking-Crazy. I've been stir crazy and instantiable and in love since the moment-’
Natasha slams one hand over her mouth, the other wiping her tears
‘Masha, you cant - you shouldn’t’
Maira pulls her hand away and holds it tightly over her heart ‘When have either of us done what we should have done?’
‘Never’ Natasha whispers
‘Is now a good time to start?’
‘Of course not’
Nothing changes.
Or, almost nothing.
Maria still acts like Natasha’s own weighted blanket when she has a panic attack in a quinjet, lying on top of her until her breathing regulates and Nat finally starts hugging her back.
Natasha still brings Maria coffee every morning an exact hour after she arrives at Shield and lies on the couch in the corner, listening to music while filling out paperwork she knows Maria will correct, singing vaguely under her breath.
They still do the hugging, the kissing, the sleeping together, but now they also do kissing and sleeping together.
Natasha finds more romance in Maria than in drowning these days. Don't get me wrong, holding herself under in the bathtub until her lungs seize is fun and all, but Maria dragging her back up only to steal her breath again is a whole lot more exciting. Maria remains to be a feeling to her, something indescribable lodged somewhere between her third and fourth rib she tries to describe to Clint one time and he just laughs. Maria’s a feeling when she wakes up, sweating and screaming and all she needs is a hand to flop over her waist to remind her its not real. Maria’s a feeling when shes pressed up against the door of the bathroom, swearing softly in Russian. Maria’s a feeling when she’s fighting, when theres bullets flying and all she can think is that she’d better get home in one piece.
Natasha holds Maria, late at night when she admits to wanting to be burned in a quiet voice. Maria admits a lot of things, mostly in the dark, sometimes acutely drunk, if not on the vodka in the freezer she still can’t handle (marrying a Russian does not make you Russian, she’s found the hard way) on the taste of Natasha. Its the little things that count, the things that Natasha knows , because Natasha can read her like a book, but saying them, softly into red hair makes it finally leave her head or her heart, wherever that curious weight was.
Maria finally returns, once again, to her hometown. Sits on the rusting swing set and holds Natasha’s hand across the gap and points out the alleyway she got beat up for the first time. Maria visits her mothers grave and leaves flowers, moves two steps to the right to visit her fathers grave and leaves flowers, then stops two more steps to the right and stares at the empty patch. Natasha leaves their last bunch of flowers in the middle of the untouched grass and Maria thinks of the last time she’d been there, lying in the middle of her plot an hour before her bus to basic, staring at the grey september sky, practising. Natasha squeezes her hand, and drives her all the way home.
They never do complete their relationship declaration form in the end, they have, as Clint would put it ‘hella boundaries’ to the extent that nobody outside of the tower even knows they are together. They like it that way, though. It’s quiet, peaceful, even. They can sit in their apartment, with their family spread across the other sofas, with Natasha’s pointe shoes on the wall and two green toothbrushes in the bathroom and know that they are home.
They die as Maria would prefer, old and senile, as Natasha would put it. Each with a pair of glasses they claim not to need and newly found appreciation for heated blankets. Natasha goes to sleep one night, ever the little spoon and does not wake up. Maria likes to think that she was dreaming when she passed. (Natasha was dreaming of her, of course).
Maria lives for 4 months without the love of her life, then Clint visits their home one day to find her dead at the kitchen table, head resting on a photo album, face pressed against Natasha’s grinning picture. Heart attack, the doctor says, out of the blue it’s most likely to be broken-heart syndrome. Has she lost anyone recently?
They are remembered in textbooks and news articles and Lila Barton’s books.