Natasha Romanoff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fallaces_sunt) wrote2014-10-26 11:36 pm
fallaces_sunt) wrote2014-10-26 11:36 pm
Entry tags:
[Home] Steve
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.)
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.)
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.