[Home] Steve

[fallaces_sunt]

Professionalism is a wonderful thing.

A flash of light and Natasha is standing in her office. She's wearing different than when she left, different shoes, different earrings; she's missing her gauntlets.

She's also missing a few hours.

Shit.

-- --

It's hours before she manages to get home. She calls Clint's phone first (and he's back, he's back, thank god, he's back), she calls Steve's phone (no answer, damn) she calls Fury and her SO, she rouses Dr Ishikawa. There are tests to be run.

She calls Clint, again, once she locks her front door. He sounds...strained. But he's in a different city, and tells her to go have a shower and stop being a mother hen. There's nothing she can do here, so she agrees, and then leaves another message on Steve's phone.

Then she has a shower.

(And if she ends up sitting in the tub, clutching her knees to her chest and just letting the hot water hit her back, well.

No one's watching.)

-- --

After, she tries to put herself back together. She pulls on comfort-clothes and carefully, deliberately straightens her hair like nothing is wrong. Dinner is a reheated soup pulled from her massive freezer (she leaves another message on Steve's phone while the microwave hums) and if she was sensible, this is where she'd put on some DVDs. A history on the English language, maybe. A ridiculous b-grade sci-fi show from the '90s which she could play on her laptop while she cooks, but she'd been on the Enterprise.

She finishes her soup. She puts the bowl in the sink to soak. Then she goes to her bedroom, lifts up the secret trap door at the bottom of her closet, unlocks the safe, and pulls out the only photograph she'd been able to find of her husband. Moving over to her couch, Natasha tucks her feet up underneath her, and traces the side of Alexei's face with her finger. She has other people and things that she uses almost as totems to help ground her, but they'd taken Alexei away from her once. If she can remember him, she's fine.

She's in her right mind.

She's fine.

(She'd thank Steve for the nostalgia trip, except their argument is too close at hand and he's not answering his phone and she was on the Enterprise, and she cannot quip about it, even in her head.)

Comments

[stark_spangled]

He nods almost as if to himself. He asked himself that question through the entire eval he just went through, time and again, Natasha's words echoing soon after. 'I'll help game pretty much any system you need. But not the psych evals. Not these tests. If you ever need help in trying to work out what is real, and what's a trick, then it helps not having gamed this.'

"Considering I don't even know if he's real?" he begins, eyebrows arched. "I already told them about our interactions -- you, me, Barton. I described the kinds of encounters I had. But no names. I want to see if this guy shows up, and I want to see if the Enterprise is really there. If it turns out that was all real, I think they're the only ones on this Earth who will have any idea what to do."

But for the time being? Steve still doesn't know who he can trust. He wants to believe in the system, but the way Fury operates tests his faith. One thing he knows for sure is he can't work as long as SHIELD has him locked in a box or monitored 24/7. If he starts talking about Director Carter and some pigeon without clearance flying missions with Steve, he knows exactly what will happen. "Right now, Natasha, you're the only one I trust with this."

[fallaces_sunt]

Natasha's advice would be: never trust the system, just work with it.

(But then, she's always maintained she's one of the worst people to show the ropes to.)

"Okay. If things turn up, I'm mentioning it. But until then..." She zips her mouth shut with her finger.

"So. Hit me with Stark and Carter, and then, my vote is for cupcakes and Get Smart. How does that sound?"

[stark_spangled]

He nods.

"I appreciate it," he says. He means it, too. The one thing Steve could always count on during the war was his team. No matter what happened, the trust between them was rock solid. Steve will back Natasha up, and it's good to know, even after how they left things, she'll do the same for him.

He chuckles, leaning back against the couch cushions in a much more comfortable position, head propped back so his line of sight is on the corner of her ceiling. "I'm thinking maybe cupcakes first, then Stark and Carter. And definitely Get Smart."

His metabolism may keep him from feeling the effects of alcohol, but chocolate is almost as good. He's quiet for a second, in part because it's some ungodly hour of the morning and he's exhausted, and in part because he's thinking about Peggy, and Bucky, and everything that's happened since Natasha vanished. He tilts his head to one shoulder, and arches an eyebrow at her.

"You think you baked enough for the both of us?" he says. The sarcasm in his voice makes it obvious it's not a real question.

[fallaces_sunt]

Natasha answers to higher authorities than Steve (namely, Fury), but there is no work, no partnership, no intelligence and no security operation without trust somewhere. You just have to choose that trust (and the degree of it) carefully.

By now, backing Steve up is as natural as backing up agents and friends she's worked with for years.

So, she grins at him.

"Let's go and see."

[stark_spangled]

He returns the smile, getting up without needing any further prompting and gathering both of their dirty dishes.

The least he can do is help.

"I'm still not used to chocolate not being rationed," he remarks offhandedly, setting their dirty dishes in the sink and running water over them. He towels off his hands and turns to face her, clearly looking for something to do. "Which reminds me, if we get back to the Enterprise you might want to keep some rations in your room. Q made the replicators produce nothing but candy for three days during Halloween. I can't quite bring myself to trust them since then."

[fallaces_sunt]

While he gathers the dishes, Natasha takes her photograph and vanishes into her bedroom. She has a copy - she has a few copies - but even still, it's the only photograph of Alexei Andreyevitch she has. It goes back in the safe.

She comes back quickly enough, after some thumps as she moves things around her room, and then arches her eyebrows at him.

"I always do," she says. With some people, there'd be a trace of embarrassment there, some hint that she's frustrated she can't shake off the effect of food deprivation.

But, Steve?

Depression, war - he'd understand.

"You're okay, though?"

[stark_spangled]

He nods once. It's a good answer, and she won't find an ounce of judgement from him.

"Yeah, I always seem to bounce back," he says, lips twitching. He can't say the experience was a pleasant one, but once the replicators were fixed and he got some real food in him, all of the ill-effects were reversed with a little time and healing. "There isn't always a lot taxing my reserves when the ship is in motion, so I can get more rest than I do here."

And Natasha knows how much Steve loves sitting back and doing nothing.

[fallaces_sunt]

"Now that's a state that just won't do. We gotta have you something to do."

Or someone.

(She wonders if Sam's cute.)

"I wonder, if we go back, if we'll find a job or something. I hate sitting around."

[stark_spangled]

Steve is watching you flatly, Natasha.

He's a quick guy, and he's known you long enough to guess at what you're thinking.

"At least I managed to cross some things off my list," he says, referencing the little notebook he carries with him. That started about 15 minutes after a mission in Tibet that had Natasha quoting somebody called Buzz Lightyear ("Years of academy training," she opined. "Wasted!"); he walked into a bodega in full uniform, hands still black with soot, and paid cash for a pocket notebook which he immediately filled with the words: TOY STORY - CHARIOTS OF FIRE - MEN WITHOUT HATS - PUNKY BREWSTER. Back to the present, he half-shrugs and continues. "And then I added more than I started with back to it."

He ponders what she says for a moment, reaching for one of the Tupperware filled with cupcakes. "It could happen. I think as long as Q is bothering the ship, they're going to need people like us. People who are good with emergencies."

[fallaces_sunt]

This is the grin of a geek who is finally, finally, getting her friend to embrace the wonderful world in which she lives.

It's a triumphant grin.

(And she's always felt a special kinship with Buzz Lightyear.)

"Good in emergencies. That's us. I wonder if they'll let me have a phaser," she muses, dipping into the container Steve is moving and pulling out a cupcake.

"We're also good at landing on our feet," she adds. "We'll work it out." She lifts her cupcake as if in a toast.

Here's to us.

[stark_spangled]

Don't get too ahead of yourself, Nat. He just didn't have anything else to distract himself with.

But OK, Popism: The Warhol Sixties was a really good book, she was right.

"If they let you have a phaser, I'm getting off the ship," Steve fires back, carrying the container of cupcakes back out to the living room. This should last them about an hour.

It's her last remark -- we're also good at landing on our feet -- that makes him pause before he settles back into the couch, smiling faintly, crookedly, looking at Natasha with eyes full of respect, kinship, and yeah, maybe a touch of mocking disbelief. She's missed a lot. But nothing Stark or Q can throw at them will knock them down. It's untangling all of his complicated relationships he's really concerned about. "Yeah. We'll work it out."

He lifts his own cupcake out of the Tupperware, and slings his arm across the back of the couch after he's pulled back the wrapper and started to eat it. This is Steve at his most comfortable in months, the cares of the universe gone in favor of one night with his partner.

"I think we were up to Stakeout on Blue Mist Mountain, right? And no hints. If you elbow me during the season finale, I'm moving to the chair."

[fallaces_sunt]

She gasps in mock-disbelief.

"I would never. It was just once, okay, I didn't want you to miss anything."

Honestly, some people.

She bites her cupcake, then sets it down. She bustles around: grabbing remotes, turning on machines, putting the DVD in. Then she flops back down on her couch, and rests her head back on his arm.

They need to talk about Stark, about Carter; she needs to ask him if he managed to secure her stuff when she vanished. They should discuss plans of what to do if the Enterprise turns up again and if it never does.

But for now, all of that of that can wait. They have a Get Smart marathon to get through, and that's all the mission objectives Natasha feels like dealing with.