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THIS FANFICTION IS HOSTED ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN, WHERE YOU CAN READ IT FOR FREE. IF YOU’RE READING THIS ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE, IT WAS POSTED THERE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT. There were few things in life that Natasha Stark truly hated.Unfortunately, today seemed to be introducing her to each and every one of them.“Stark, for the last time,” Maria Hill said in exasperation, “it’ll only take a few more hours. Just stay still. It’ll be over before you know it. Sleep, maybe. You look like shit.”“If you’d just let me help with the data processing, I’d be a lot more cooperative,” Natasha shot back, arms crossed.She was wearing her underarmour, which really needed more pockets. The fact that it could only hold two things now was a severe oversight. She should really talk to Natasha – the other one; Romanoff – to see how her uniform was designed. And then she should get herself another phone made specially for moments like this, when she was stuck in quarantine deep in the boroughs of SHIELD, with no way to communicate with the rest of her team, with Steve (who was also stuck in quarantine), and worse: nothing to do.“I fucking hate magic,” she muttered under her breath.The only good thing about this situation was that the sorcerer they’d been up against was incompetent enough that no one had been hurt, just scratches and bruises from having to dodge the occasional ball of fire. That is, unless that last spell that had descended upon her as she was swooping in to grab Steve as he leapt off a building had aftereffects. It had stunned her with pain, in each and every atom of her body, paralysing and debilitating. Her last thought had been to roll over and make sure Steve was atop the armour, before blackness had taken her.And they wouldn’t tell her anything except that Steve was fine.Natasha paced the two by four room they’d given her. It was incredibly dull; if she ever became the director, the first thing she’d do would be getting an interior decorator in here. There was a cot in one corner, screwed to the floor, metal frame and grey-white sheets (Natasha couldn’t tell if the sheets had originally been white, but she avoided the bed all the same). There was a small sink adjacent to the bed, and a toilet in the corner opposite to them. Everything was the same metal, and it was doing Natasha’s head in. She counted down the seconds. She did the stretches Steve kept bugging her about. But those had been designed and changed and re-changed by Steve to be done as fast but effectively as possible, and took her, by her count, five minutes and sixteen seconds.Natasha Stark didn’t do well with boredom.The fact that there was a growing headache behind her eyes didn’t help matters.Eyeing the bed with its questionable sheets, she chose instead to sit on the floor with her back against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes.They better let her out by the time she woke up.  There was something different about their brainwaves, the scientists at SHIELD told Steve. It was like they were broadcasting on a frequency unique to just him and Natasha. Steve couldn’t help the thought running through his mind, he and Natasha did always have a special connection. Or at least, he did. Steve didn’t know what it was like on her end. She probably acted the same around him as she did with all her other friends. It would wear off in about a month, from the looks of it, he was told by another SHIELD doctor. But the words “it’ll get worse before it gets better” didn’t exactly comfort him. They couldn’t even tell him what the effects were.But they finally let him out and he could go see Natasha, and that was enough for him. He hated it when he couldn’t check up on his team after a fight.“Steve, thank fuck,” came Natasha’s voice from inside another quarantine room, and something inside Steve eased. “Dying of boredom would be a terrible way to go.”Steve grinned at her, eyes tracing her body methodically, judging for himself how she’d fared. “I would’ve thought being taken out by magic would seem far worse.”Despite not having shown its face during the time he was in quarantine, what felt like post-battle giddiness was coursing through his veins. Or maybe it was just being in the same room as Natasha Stark.“You’re right,” Natasha conceded, frowning. “That’s definitely the worse option.”Fucking magic.Steve frowned. He hadn’t thought that. It’d just appeared in his head, in Natasha’s voice. Or maybe his crush had just grown enough that he was now anticipating what she would say.“What?” “Hmm?” Steve blinked at her.“You’re frowning. I didn’t even do anything this time.” There was a teasing smirk on her face, and she tilted her head at him, leaning against the wall. “What’re you brooding about now, Cap?”Steve shook his head. “Can’t wait to get out of here,” he said truthfully. It was probably the adrenaline, he reasoned. “I want a shower.”And besides, it wasn’t like this was the first time the voice in his head had sounded like Natasha.“You and me both,” Natasha said with a sigh. “I have a meeting tomorrow morning that Pepper’s been reminding me about every hour for a week, and I’d appreciate getting some sleep beforehand.” The last part of her sentence was said with an irritated shout in the general direction of the SHIELD scientists.It was another hour before Natasha was released – something about human bodies needing more time to monitor – and Steve had refused to leave without her. The sky was dark but clear as they stepped out.Steve felt a niggling in his stomach that he’d been ignoring for the last half hour and sighed inwardly. He’d need to fill up on calories before he could head to bed, but the tiredness weighing him down was becoming more and more insistent that he find his bed instead.“I’ll order take-out,” Natasha said from beside him.Steve almost jumped. Had he zoned out of a conversation? But no, surely he wasn’t that exhausted.“What?” he asked.“You’re hungry. I’ll order take-out. We’ll eat, see what’s on TV, then get some sleep,” Natasha told him.“Sounds good,” Steve said, stifling the questions rising in his mind. He’d deal with them tomorrow. Right now, he wanted to focus on his and Natasha’s—not a date, no…post-battle camaraderie.  When Natasha woke up, she was lying slumped on the couch beside Steve, who was fast asleep with his head leaning back against the headrest. She let her eyes linger on him for another minute, something she would never allow herself to do normally, before a buzzing at her side brought her back to the reason she had awoken.Squinting at the bright screen, she swallowed back a groan, reaching out to receive the call.“I’m up,” she said in lieu of a greeting. “You can quit pestering me now.”“You better be up, because Happy’s waiting outside the Mansion for you,” Pepper said in an even tone. Natasha knew better than to trust its calmness.“Um,” was all she could say, hoping it would buy her time as she stumbled towards her room.“Um?” Pepper’s voice sharpened. “Define that for me, please.”“What do you think I am, a dictionary?” She put the mic on mute as she rushed through the process of relieving herself, brushing her teeth, washing her face, and putting on the barest of makeup she could get away with.“I don’t give a shit whether you’re a dictionary or not, you’d better be the first image I see under ‘punctual’ when I flip to it.”Natasha didn’t reply; she was too busy rooting through her room trying to remember if she’d already set out an outfit for today or if that was one of the things she’d put off. She always ended up changing her mind on the morning, anyway, so there was always little point, except on occasions such as this.Then there was a sudden low ache at the back of her neck, going down her spine, almost as though she’d spent the night in an awkward position that her body decided it didn’t want to forgive her for. She cursed under her breath; she didn’t have time to deal with random pains.Rubbing the back of her neck, she grabbed the first blouse and suit combo she could find that didn’t immediately make her wince. Stripping in a rush, she threw it on, barely noticing the ache die down almost as soon as it’d appeared.
Where—meeting, probably.
Natasha froze. That was Steve’s voice in her head, which wasn’t unusual – Steve’s voice was her subconscious, her anchor, her rudder, everything rolled into one – but what was strange was that it didn’t seem to be lecturing her. It was almost as though— “Happy tells me you aren’t in the car yet. Why aren’t you in the car yet?”Natasha started to respond to Pepper when she realised that she’d never switched the mic back on. Stuffing her arms into the coat, she strode back into the bathroom to grab her phone. “I’m heading down right now, okay?” she said. “Christ, Pep, lay off, will you? There was a battle last night, and then shit happened with SHIELD…”“I know, Tasha,” Pepper’s voice softened, “but I also know that you promised you’d be able to handle two full time jobs together. And until you realise you should delegate more, I’m gonna keep pushing you to do the bare minimum.”“Here, coffee,” a voice said just as Natasha was racing out the door.She turned in surprise. Steve stood there with her coffee flask in hand. From the looks of it, he’d only just woken up and…what, decided to make her coffee? Instead of going out on his run, or even to change?Natasha felt a warm glow emerge in the centre of her chest where the arc reactor was, and she took it, wrapping her free hand around the warmth. “Thanks, Steve.” she said. “Sorry to run—”“You have a meeting. I know.” He waved a hand in the air. “Go do your thing.”
…goes with her eyes…
Natasha sent a quick smile in his direction before rushing outside to where Happy was waiting.  Steve had a funny feeling he knew exactly what that magician had done. He was on his run, which had gotten pushed back a few hours, and normally he’d forgo it and spend more time in the gym, maybe in the sparring ring, but today he needed to clear his head.As it turned out, that was probably an impossible task, seeing how Natasha was in his head. Literally.It was slightly embarrassing how long it’d taken him to pick up on it. He’d attributed the occasional remarks his mind made in Natasha’s voice to the fact that…well, he was in love with her. She was in his head always. He’d been hearing her voice in his head, making sarcastic and inappropriate comments, for years now. His head had been the one safe place he had where he could feel whatever he wanted, but now… Natasha was very loudly projecting a rant into his head. Steve could feel himself smile as he ran. It’d been like this all day, beginning with a complaint about how “the only competent fucks are the ones you want to throttle to death”, and now something about how the traffic in the city was never slow when you wanted it to be.Since he’d realised they had a sort of telepathic connection, Steve had been playing song after song in his head. It was the only thing he could think of that might hide his thoughts. So far, he hadn't yet had a single stray thought question the lyrics he was practically chanting - either Natasha was used to having songs stuck in her head, or she couldn't hear him. Maybe it was a side effect of the serum.
…tonight maybe…with Steve…
Any hope he had of ignoring Natasha’s stream of consciousness was gone every time she mentioned his name, which happened more frequently than he would’ve thought. And every time it happened, his heart would skyrocket, a light filling up his chest.Right now she was planning to be back from the office in time to catch either dinner and a movie, or just a movie, with him. Which meant that of course he would wait to eat until she got there.A car honked at him as he ran across the road, having spotted a flower shop. They were dotted around all over the place, and Steve liked to buy flowers on the run back to the Mansion. “The red ones, please,” he said, breathing slightly heavily. “And the daffodils, too.” The man behind the counter smiled. “Going for the Iron Woman?” he asked, carefully placing flowers together. Steve blinked. “The what?” “The Iron Woman arrangement. We have a bunch of superhero and pop culture themed flower arrangements here, but Iron Woman’s one of the most popular,” he explained. Leaning in conspiringly, he continued, “I find it’s usually married men who buy them after some sort of fight with their wife. Gotta play to her likes, if you know what I mean,” finishing with a wink. Steve had only a vague idea about what he meant. “Thanks,” he said. “For the flowers.” He’d be sure to tell Natasha that hers was the most popular flower arrangement when he brought the bouquet to her home office.  “Steve!”“Natasha?”“Listen, this is important.”“Is something wrong? Are you okay? I'm almost home.”“No, I’m fine. I just—I need to ask you something. Answer me with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, understand?”“Okay…”“Did you go flower shopping today?”“Yes? Tasha—”“Only ‘yes’ or ‘no’! They had superhero themed flower arrangements?”“Yes.”“And their Iron Woman arrangement is the most popular?”“Yes.”“Shit.”“You figured it out, too, huh.”  “You didn’t think to tell me?” was the first thing out of Natasha’s mouth the second she entered the communal kitchen and saw Steve standing by the stove, absentmindedly stirring something. “You didn’t think, hey, maybe Natasha wants to control her thoughts now that they’re being read!”Steve turned to face her, hands raised in the classical ‘surrender’ pose. “I wasn’t trying to read them, if I makes you feel any better. You were just so…loud,” he said, trying to make light of the whole thing.Natasha ran an agitated hand through her already-messy hair, shorter strands that had once been a fringe now coming out of her ponytail. Even if Steve had wanted to read her mind – which he would never do; he wouldn’t breach anyone’s privacy like that – he wouldn’t’ve been able to: she was religiously playing heavy metal songs in her mind, like he’d been doing. It was sometimes shocking to see how alike their minds worked.After a moment of waiting for Natasha to say something, Steve spoke up. “It’s not like either of us have anything to hide, Shellhead,” he said gently, reminding Natasha that had this happened a few years ago, her secret identity would’ve been screwed.Natasha chewed on her lip and looked away for a moment before focusing back on Steve. “That’s not true,” she said with a rueful smile. “How else will I get away with working long hours?”Steve had known Natasha long enough to be sure of when she was lying, and this was one of those cases. He just wasn’t sure why. Of course she had secrets, but after the Iron Woman reveal, he’d assumed none were as big.And Natasha didn’t seem to be the type of person to be ashamed of much, either. She blatantly owned up to everything she had ever done, for better or worse. Her sex tapes were all over the internet; she was definitely not ashamed of her body— Natasha’s eyes widened slightly. Oh, hell, Steve thought. Telepathy’s a bitch, isn’t it, came a tentative yet loud thought, as though they were on comms. You think of my sex tapes often, Captain? Steve opened his mouth to answer, feeling redness spread from his neck to his ears. “I—” He had no idea how one went about justifying their thoughts.“Kidding, Steve,” Natasha said, with a genuine smile this time. “You’re far from the first person to do so.” Her gaze was teasing as it rested on him.“I don’t usually!” Steve defended weakly. While it was true he didn’t, he hated that Natasha had had to catch him thinking about them at all. He didn’t want her to think he were the type of man to be lusting over another based on a second-hand experience of their sexual exploits, and he didn’t want Natasha think he would judge her based on them, either.Something soft spread throughout his body, and it took him a moment to realise the emotion wasn’t coming from him. He blinked in surprise at her.I know that, Winghead, she projected with the same soft warmth. “We should run some tests,” she said aloud. “I don’t trust SHIELD scientists as far as I could throw them – without the armour, that is. We should’ve done this as soon as we got back, but I got distracted and we weren't dead…”She continued to ramble under her breath as she walked, leaving Steve to follow. The interesting thing about this whole experience, Steve mused, was that nothing that was coming out of Natasha’s mouth was running through her mind.  “So SHIELD was surprisingly right about our brains being on the same wavelength,” Natasha concluded, spinning around in her wheelie chair with her head leaning up towards the ceiling. It helped her think better, debatably, but focusing on the dizziness also let her ward off any projecting thoughts she might have. “We’re transmitting directly to each other rather than the brain waves being contained within ourselves. The spell has slow release. The synaptic transmission to the other brain will increase the more contact it gets with the other brain. We’re at one end of the hill at this point – we can “read each other’s minds” to some degree, and by that, I mean our surface thoughts, and we can project them too. I’m assuming that when it peaks, it’ll be everything, from physical sensations to memories.”She tried not to grimace as she said this, but she knew exactly when Steve picked up on it.“Don’t worry,” he said as reassuringly as he could. “Even if we can’t control it better by then, there are psychics who can help us. Maybe they can put some sort of block in our heads…?” She was shaking her head even as he continued to speak, having come to a half. The slight nausea running through her was making Steve feel sick; she could feel it through the bond, and thinking about the feedback loop was doing wonders to her concentration.“Yeah, you feel that?” she asked quietly. “That’s because we’ve been together for a day or so. We’re already coming to the physical sensations. Soon we’ll probably be able to use each other’s senses and other sci-fi shit. And I think a block will just freeze the stage where it’s at. I’ll call the X-Men, see if I can get a hold of Strange.”Steve gave a sharp nod in response. “I’m going to head to the gym,” he said. Need to clear my head. The thought came clearly, and she was unsure if it’d been projected intentionally or not.Natasha almost offered to join him – she normally might’ve, if not for his sake, then for hers – but in the end, before the thought could completely form itself in her head, she smothered it with the guitar riff of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man.  “Hawkeye! Behind you!” Tasha called out.In battle, it was surprisingly useful. He and Natasha had always been able to anticipate each other’s moves with eerie accuracy, but being able to visualise where Iron Woman was going to be boosted their synchronisation to an all new high.It helped to know when she’d be pulling risky manoeuvres, too. This was their fifth battle in the week – “do none of these villains have normal nine-to-five jobs?” Spider Man had groaned after the previous day’s fight – and so far, Steve had had to talk Natasha away from three stupid and unnecessary ‘saves’ that would have (yes, he could admit it) finished the battle off in a fraction of the time needed, but also had over a seventy percent risk factor that Steve couldn’t justify. Not when the villains they were facing were the likes of the Wrecking Crew and Mole Man.“Sit-rep!” Steve called, the adrenaline coursing through his veins as he swung his shield at another dinosaur.“We’re trying to put out the fire in that ice cream place until emergency services get here,” Natasha said. “The fire breather’s with us.”“I had the other one but then it disappeared,” Spider-Man said. “Heading to you now, Cap.”“What do you mean, it disappeared?” Steve asked as he ducked and rolled under the third dinosaur to avoid its teeth.“Yeah, how exactly do you lose a ten-foot rampaging hunk of metal?” Iron Woman added.
Picking you up, Cap.
Steve didn’t even need to glance up to know exactly where Natasha would be. He ran forward and sprung himself into the air, the knowledge that she would be in the exact position to catch him clear in his mind.“One second it was there, the next it was gone! What do you want me to say?” Spider Man’s voice squeaked. It was times like this when Steve truly wondered how old he was.Drop me here, Steve told Natasha, and she released him on top of the dinosaur. “We want you to say, ‘I have Dino Number Two in my sights’, but we do not always get what we want, it seems,” Thor said.The dinosaurs had appeared in the middle of 73rd Street out of what appeared to be nowhere, and every hit with Mjolnir had made them increase in size, and apparently in aggressiveness too. There were three: the first one breathed fire, and had set a buildings and two trees alight; the second one seemed to breathe ice – they even occasionally came out in cubes, much to the scientific curiosity of Natasha – and had thus far frozen a handful of ducks attempting to get away; but the third one was the problem – it had yet to release anything from its body.Another key feature: they were robotic.Steve could hear Natasha’s mind running through the possibilities, narrowing down the options. If they hadn’t been in the middle of a battle, he would’ve stopped to revel in now possessing the answer to a question he’d asked himself too often over the years; what’s Natasha thinking?“What pisses me off is why are they like five different types mashed together?” Hawkeye muttered.Natasha Romanoff snorted. “Don’t tell me you had a dinosaur phase as a kid.”“You kiddin' me? My dinosaur phase was epic!” “Everyone had a dinosaur phase, Nat,” Tasha said sagely. “I made myself a mechanical pterodactyl suit for Halloween one year. I wanted to make it fly, but the wingspan would’ve been too big to deal with, so I made two.”“Did it?” Steve couldn’t help asking.“Nope,” Tasha replied, popping the ‘P’. “Got bashed up before I could get it to work.”In his mind, Steve could see a hazy image of a metal frame for wings. One side was half finished, with parts on the concrete floor, but the other half must’ve been the length of a car. And then he saw a man walk in, looming, shadow falling over the piece and stinking of alcohol— The memory was closed off abruptly, and Steve jolted into the present, almost losing his balance.Sorry, he heard from Natasha. Even her mental voice, which was usually more open and genuine, was closed off and distant. He didn’t know if she was apologising for distracting him with the memory, or for not being able to prevent it from transmitting across to his mind. “Don’t worry about it. We’re both probably going to see things we weren’t expecting.” He tried not to let his anger at him, at Howard, go through, and he didn’t know if he succeeded because Natasha said nothing else.“Ambiguous Breath is in front of the bakery on 74th!” Thor said over the comms.“There should be a chest piece! Try aiming for that instead of the head!” Natasha called. With no need to switch to a private line, she added to Steve, you distract, I’ll destroy.Got it. Steve swung his shield, smacking it in the head and generating an outraged roar. The dinosaur’s head spun around in a hundred-and-eighty-degree circle, staring directly into Steve’s eyes as it opened its mouth. Steve hefted his shield in front of him, crouching behind it as a wave of ice flew into it. The force almost made him lose his balance on the curved back, the Stegosaur spikes being the only thing he could hold onto – the pterodactyl wings hadn’t increased in proportion to suit the body of a larger creature.Bit longer, Steve. Think I got it… came Natasha’s muttered words.Take your time. I’m in no rush, he replied grimly as another icy breath hit the shield. This time, tiny flakes fell into his hair, and he shivered as they trickled down the back of his neck.But then there was warmth, coming from his mind where he envisioned the tie to Natasha was – however scientifically improbable – and spreading down his back and into his chest. Whatever reminder he had of another cold, icy day vanished as his body filled with a radiant glow, and he was almost too choked up to say thanks.
Got it!
The dinosaur slumped, no longer able to balance on the two Tyrannosaurus Rex legs. Steve neatly leapt off, landing beside Iron Woman. She had her visor up and was crouched beside a gaping hole in the torso of the creature, squinting into it.“Find anything?” Steve asked. There was still a summery tingle under his skin, and he relished in its heat.“I’ll have to take it back to my lab,” she said slowly. “I’m thinking AIM.”
…skin made from an organic fibre maybe…unless it’s grown…
“Figured,” Spider Man said. “Who else could make something as horribly inaccurate as this?”“Don’t tell me,” Black Widow said. “You had a dinosaur phase too?”“Hey, dinosaurs are great! Just not any of the ones I’ve met.”
We should possibly go check out the Savage Land to make sure AIM isn’t camping out there making more of these…
“Next movie night we’re watching a dino documentary,” Clint said. “You need to be exposed to dinosaurs that aren’t made by AIM or from the Savage Land.” “I have defeated the mighty fire breather!” Thor roared. There was a pause, and then he added, “She got that on camera, right?” 
…fuck AIM…switching the fucking colours and making this twice as convoluted…
Spider Man sighed. “Thor, dude. At this point people definitely know you’re trolling them.”…damn, that’s a waste of energy, going into that loop… “Nope, they really don’t,” Iron Woman said. “They still think Thor can’t speak modern English.” “Wha—how?” Steve asked, flabbergasted.
We should have Avengers Megazords.
Natasha shrugged, movements largely hidden by the armour. “Beats me. People’ll believe what they want to believe. He sounds dreamier like that, apparently.”
Maybe I should start speaking in old English.
Natasha snorted slightly, lips curling upwards slightly. Don't worry, Cap. Your Brooklyn accent does the trick just fine.If Steve could visualise his steam of consciousness at that exact moment, it would be a page chock-full of exclamation points with a light scattering of question marks. Instead, he asked, what’s a Megazord?Natasha glanced up at him. They’re these fighting weapon-y transportation thing from Power Rangers called Zords. They all have one, and then when they need to fight the boss villain after it's enlarged by weird rain, it comes together to make huge Megazord.That cleared up nothing.
I’ll show you once we get home. Trust me, my memories don’t do it justice.
“Uh, dudes? A little help here?”“What’s up, Hawkeye?” Steve snapped back to attention, berating himself for getting distracted in the middle of a fight. It’d almost slipped his mind that there was still the third dinosaur to take down.“Ambiguous Breath is after me.”“We’re on our way.” Before he’d even finished speaking, Natasha had grabbed him around the waist and shot up into the sky. Steve felt the exhilarating rush as they flew. There, he said to her telepathically. From the air – not even a great distance up – he could see the amusing visual of Hawkeye running, out of arrows, as the ten-foot dinosaur stomped behind him. In Steve’s peripheral vision, he could see Spider Man swinging towards the scene, intent on grabbing Hawkeye.And then it opened its mouth, motors whirring as the jaws expanded.Iron Woman sped up. Steve readied himself to land atop the dinosaur, but before he could, he felt himself being released atop a two-story shop Iron Woman flew at the open mouth.“Natasha!” he yelled, his mind adding on the addition what the fuck are you doing that he couldn’t vocalise as emphatically. He leapt from the roof of the building onto the next in an attempt to find the best vantage point.The dinosaur let out a tiny squeak, voice not at all matching its body, and Steve let himself think, for a moment, that this was the least harmful of the three.Iron Woman fired her repulsors into the mechanical beast’s open mouth. “Hopefully that’ll fry everything on the inside,” she said confidently.Spider Man swooped in to land beside her just as a Steve jumped onto the dinosaur’s back, and then onto the ground. The creature had stopped making squeaks and was now standing there with its mouth gaping open, the stench of burning flesh coming out.“Is it dead, do you think?” Spider Man asked, cocking his head to the side.“Most of the wiring’s in its chest, so I’m hoping the repulsor melted the important ones at least.” Natasha peered into the open mouth, and Steve could, for a second, see the scans the armour was running.And then she climbed inside.
Can’t be fire…definitely not ice…
Steve sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Can you do your investigating when it’s off the streets and in your lab?” he asked.“Yup, just one sec, Cap.” Natasha’s mind was barely on him, intent on digging through to the back of the head, where she’d found the source of previous ‘venoms’. “Hold this for me?”Steve automatically reached out and caught the object Natasha tossed at him – her gauntlet. He let out an exasperated sigh. “You don’t know what could be in there, Tasha,” he said. “Lab safety rules apply here, too.” “Did we miss anything?” Black Widow asked as she and Thor walked up to them.“Dad was sighing at Mum again,” Hawkeye informed her in his version of a stage whisper. “I think this telepathic thing’s making them worse. And here I was hoping it would keep the weird married-with-UST contained.”Steve ignored them, trying to look at what Natasha was doing through her eyes. There was a large black lump where the other two had a big box, and she reached out with her left armoured hand to poke it. The blob didn’t react, and her scans were still running in an attempt to identify the substance. “Cap? Cap!” A hand slapped him on the shoulder, and Steve blinked back into his own head.“Yes, Spider Man?” “They wanna know what we’re gonna do about the burnt buildings.”“Tell them the Maria Stark Foundation is on it,” Steve said, and Natasha murmured her agreement in his head.Spider Man nodded, moved on to talk to the police officers.
Fuck.
What’s wrong? Steve was immediately on high alert.“Get back!” Natasha yelled over the comms. “Shit, shit, shit…” They moved away, Steve lifting his shield up in front of the whole group in anticipation for anything as he held his breath.Natasha practically fell out of the mouth, landing in an undignified sprawl. There was a black gooey liquid covering the front of her armour and her left gauntlet, which was evidently stopping her from firing repulsors.Steve didn’t hesitate. Catch! He threw the right repulsor even as he ran forward to cover Natasha.She caught it with her right hand clumsily, and it reconstructed around her. Steve ducked his head as he hid the majority of their bodies behind the shield, Natasha firing over it at the dinosaur’s chest.Hawkeye, having acquired arrows from somewhere, shot one directly at the centre, and there was a tiny anticlimactic explosion.Then the dinosaur collapsed, falling almost on top of Steve and Natasha. As its head lay sideways on the street, more of the black substance spilled out.“You okay?” Steve asked, turning to her. He scanned her body with both his mind and his eyes, but the lyrics were back, at a faster pace this time. The black goo seemed to be stuck in place, almost, but it was as though it was melding into the armour… The visor opened, and Steve’s heart started racing at the paleness of Natasha’s face. “I think it’s acidic,” she managed to get out.“Get out of the armour,” Steve barked. “Is there any on your hand?”Natasha shook her head, then gave him a forced smile. “It’s eating into the arc reactor,” she said simply.Steve stared at her for a moment, feeling his heart pound away in his chest like a cruel mockery, before he was shoved to the side by a strong shoulder.“You aren’t helping,” Black Widow explained sharply. “Move. I got this.”Steve moved out of the way as Black Widow undid the emergency clasps on the armour with an efficiency that spoke of hours of practise. She turned to Natasha. “Where are the replacements?”Natasha swallowed hard, and the music came even more rapidly, as though someone was fast forwarding through a tape. “Workshop. FRIDAY will know.”Steve gave a decisive nod. This, he could do. He forced down whatever emotions he felt and cleared his head. “Spider Man,” he called, getting his attention. “You’re our fastest. Go to Tasha’s lab and ask FRIDAY for the arc reactor. Thor! Fly her there.”Spider Man saluted him before swinging off. Thor moved closer, ready to grab Natasha the minute the chestplate and gauntlet were removed.Steve turned back to Natasha. She was pale and her breathing was coming more shallowly. You’re going to be fine, you understand? We’re going to get you back in time.He needed to call a medic to the Mansion.Natasha didn’t reply, possibly not even receiving his words through the haze of angry instrumental she was playing in her head on loop.Running over to where the nearest ambulance was, he marched over to where an EMT stood. “I need you to go to Avengers Mansion,” he said. “There’ll be a patient there with heart problems and possible acid burns.”“Sir—”“Go!”Black Widow was leaning over Natasha, a question in her eyes.“Do it, Nat,” Tasha hissed out. And now, finally, Steve could feel the sharp, constricting sensation in his chest. He resisted the urge to rub at the area, knowing full well it wouldn’t help. Instead, he tried to do what Natasha had done for him, and spread a calmness through himself as outwardly as he could, hoping she’d feel it too. Natasha Romanoff reached down with her glove-covered hands and undid the arc reactor, sliding it out of its casing and onto the street. “Go, Thor,” she said.Thor reached under Natasha and picked her up, a hand holding her against his side around the waist while the other spun Mjolnir around as the two of them lifted.
Steve…you should know…
Tasha? Steve gave a jolt as he heard his name from her mind. No dying words, alright? You aren’t dying.The equivalent of a laugh sounded. I’m trying not to.Try harder, he told her furiously a lump in his throat.“Steve?” a voice said. Steve opened his eyes – and when had he closed them? – to see Natasha looking at him with a note of concern. “She’s going to be fine.”“I know.” He ran a hand over his head, removing the cowl. “We need to get these back to the Mansion. Tasha would kill us if we let SHIELD grab them.”He strode over to where the pieces of the armour lay, and began to pick them up.“Here,” a bag was thrust into his face, “it’s one of those biohazard bags. Put the armour in it.”Steve looked up to see Clint. “Thanks,” he said.He checked in with Natasha more often than he probably needed to as he worked clean-up, probing his mind in that same little spot that he associated with her presence.“The three robo-saurs have been sent to the Mansion,” Black Widow announced, walking up to him. “Spider-Man said he’ll take care of them from there.”Steve nodded. “Thanks, Nat.”Walking over to the police officer standing by, obviously waiting to speak with him, he said, “Hi, officer.”“Captain,” the officer greeted with a nod of his head.“Any casualties?” he asked, despite knowing there were none. He was itching to be done here, to go back to the Mansion and see Natasha in person.“None, and no injuries, either. It’s a damn miracle, with the amount of property damage.”So that was what he was after.Steve sighed. “The Maria Stark Foundation will cover it,” he said.The officer nodded knowingly. “Thanks for your work here, son. Any idea where these came from?”“We’re looking into it,” Steve said, unwilling to let out any suspicions that would tip their hand. There was a growing number of reporters suddenly milling around him, and he resisted the urge to sigh. “We’ve taken back the machines and Natasha’s going to examine them—”“Speaking of Natasha Stark,” one of the reporters spoke, “was she injured during the fight? Is Iron Woman down?”“No, Iron Woman is definitely not down,” Steve said firmly. And before anyone else could say anything, he added, “I need to be going now. Thank you.”To their credit, or maybe it was the inflection in his voice, no one chased after him. He walked over to where his motorbike was parked, when suddenly there was a jolt in his chest. He sucked in a breath, bowing his head, trying to ride out the wave of pain. He grabbed the handle of his bike, trying to use it to tether himself to his body. It’d be all too easy to lose himself in Natasha’s pain.And then it stopped.Steve, for a moment, was too busy feeling the relief from the lack of pain, that it took him far too long to realise that he couldn’t feel Natasha on the other side at all. Panic gripped him, and he swung his leg over the bike, starting it up. He was on the road to the Mansion within seconds, breaking at least five traffic laws on the way.  Natasha woke up to a groggy feeling that was reminiscent of being hungover. And the second that comparison crossed her mind, she was twice as awake, eyes jolting open to take in her surroundings, because there was no way she’d been drinking, not after so many months of sobriety—
You weren’t drinking. You just had anaesthesia. I’m sorry, I know you don’t like drugs. But they said you were moving around too much for them to properly fit the reactor in. 
Natasha glanced up. Steve was sitting in a chair beside her bed, that comfy armchair that usually sat by the window whose sole purpose was to hold discarded clothing. Said clothing was probably the neatly folded pile on the coffee table.Steve flushed slightly. “You were asleep for a while, so I figured I’d clean up.” He glanced around the room. The things my mother would say about your wardrobe if she were here, he projected to her in a lighter tone.Your mother would probably have a heart attack if she saw my lingerie drawer, Natasha told him. This telepathy was very useful for moments like this, when her mouth didn’t agree to talk.Steve hummed in agreement, thumb rubbing over the top of her hand, and with a jolt of surprise, Natasha realised he was holding her hand.No, it’s fine, she said quickly when she felt him begin to retract it. He hesitated, then returned his hand to its previous position. It felt oddly right to have it there, a thought which Natasha tried to bury under a wall of song, but was probably unsuccessful.She tried to sit up, reluctantly accepting Steve’s help. It felt as though a boulder had been left on her torso. “What happened?” she said. Her throat was—Before she’d even finished thinking her sentence, a glass of water was handed to her.“You went into the dinosaur to investigate and got a mouthful of acid on yourself, including the reactor. Thor flew you back here, and Spider-Man got the replacement reactor from your lab. You didn’t get much on your uncovered hand, which is a goddamn miracle,” his voice was tightly controlled, “so the bandages over that are mostly to be safe.”Natasha nodded, processing his words with the slowness that the drugs had reduced her to. “Alright then. Guess the armour was due for an upgrade anyway.” She sighed, turning to get out of bed. “Okay, where’d you put it?”Steve stared at her. “You have to be kidding.”Natasha tilted her head in question, sending him a mental question mark. She obviously hadn’t been taking advantage of this whole telepathy if this was the first time she’d thought of sending emojis.“You just woke up. From the ordeal of having the thing that keeps you alive being eaten up by acid. You—” He turned away, a hand running over his face.It didn’t stop his mind from running down a stream of racing thought streams, a wave of emotions crashing over Natasha as she struggled to distinguish single strands from the jumble.—disappeared for the entire time you were asleep—couldn’t feel you in my head—it was like you were gone—I thought you were dead—Natasha breathed in slowly. Had he meant for her to hear that? Just as she opened her mouth – to say what, she didn’t know – Steve spoke.“Just stay for a little while. Please? For me?” He looked at her beseechingly, with what she and Clint had long ago dubbed as his ‘puppy heart eyes’.   “Fine,” she said. “For you.”His returning smile was worth everything.   Natasha tinkered around with schematics absentmindedly. She wasn’t even actively engaged in what she was doing; it was erasing and re-drawing of lines the exact same as they’d been before, fixing up a few notes here and there, adding ideas that traipsed across her mind from time to time.She was— She wasn’t spying on Steve. She was merely listening to what came through on her side of their telepathic bond, tuning into it in a way she’d forced herself not to do. It’d been difficult, because of how in tune she was with Steve; it was cliché, and very Bella Swan of her to think so, but Steve was her sun.The part of her mind that was linked to Steve’s was turning colder and colder, and a shiver went down her spine as she fought to keep from shoving it away. Instead, she peered in, as much as she could (this would probably constitute as spying, she reflected). Steve was asleep upstairs, she knew. He’d left her in her room after a strict lecture on the benefits of sleep, concluded with a passive aggressive threat that he’d know if she went down to the workshop he’d know.She knew Steve didn’t have too much aversion to throwing her in a fireman’s hold and carrying her out of there.She’d waited until he’d fallen asleep to come down to the workshop, lying awake thinking of a more efficient way to boost the speed of the Quinjet. Steve, from what she could feel of him in the corner of her mind, had sleepily listened to snatches of the mental processing. There’d been this overwhelming fondness somewhere in the middle, what she now considered to be No Man’s Land of their bond: what was in there could be either of theirs - she hadn’t yet found a way of deciphering the distinction. That fondness, though? That was most definitely not Steve, because affection to that level meant love. And that was all her.It’d been a few hours before she felt a sense of anxiety creeping in, most definitely not her own.A nightmare.She didn’t know if she could wake him up, or if she should even do that. This was definitely the ice he was dreaming of. That coldness that she could feel in her bones, inside her fingers, in the pit of her stomach…there could be nothing else like that. She was shivering in the middle of her sterile workshop, from the kind of cold that a blanket wouldn’t solve.She yanked, as hard as she could, on what she thought of as the bond, pulling him towards her.Almost immediately, there was an explosion of white in her eyes, and she flinched backwards before realising that what she was seeing wasn’t through her eyes. There was nothing. No movement. She could feel the breath coming in shallowly into her lungs, not deep enough, but it wasn’t as though she could feel her chest. She didn’t want to close her eyes, but the thought of them freezing over open, seeing everything that happened until the last moment, was terrifying.Just as her eyelids slipped down, Natasha came back to her own body with a sharp intake of breath. She was shaking from head to toe. Shoving herself away from the workbench, she made her way upstairs to Steve’s room. Her fine hair on her arms was standing up, goosebumps all over her flesh.Steve was awake, or slowly coming into consciousness, but still stuck to that corner in his mind, like he dare not reach out to anyone. She didn’t want to startle him by barging in mentally, so she stayed on her side of the bond.That didn’t mean anything for her physical self. Natasha opened Steve’s door slowly, knowing it’d be unlocked.“Steve?” she whispered. “It’s me. I’m coming in, alright?”“Tasha?” Steve rasped, voice low.It went to show how shaken he was; Steve would usually jump out of bed the second she, or anyone, showed up, ready for action – he always seemed to assume there was an emergency, which, in all fairness, there had been the majority of times someone had come into his room at this time of night.Natasha walked over to where the lamp was and turned it on. From what she’d seen of Steve’s behaviour in the last few years, he didn’t like to be in the dark after a nightmare.He was leaning up on his elbows, staring off into the distance. Not completely awake yet, she conceded.“Come with me to the kitchen,” she told him. “I’ll make hot chocolate. The old-fashioned way you like it, even.”Steve nodded slowly, mechanically pushing the covers off of himself and swinging his feet onto the ground. He was barefoot and sockless, with sleep pants and a thin T-shirt on for pyjamas, and he didn’t bother with putting on any other article of clothing.Natasha walked ahead, just slowly enough that she knew Steve was behind her. She was wearing shoes – she’d come from the shop – but she remembered a time she only did that as an act of rebellion (clean ones always, though – she’d never make more work for Jarvis and the rest of the staff).The kitchen was empty and dark when she got there. She flicked on all the lights, and the brightness made Steve blink rapidly. Walking to the stove, Natasha had a brief moment of panic when she realised that she had very limited experience with where everything was. In her peripheral vision, she saw Steve sit himself down on one of the stools and gaze out into the room. There were portraits of the team hanging on all the walls – although considerably less here than the rest of the Mansion.She started talking. She had no idea what she was talking about; she started off with the Quinjet designs again, going over her work after he’d gone to sleep, moving on to the newest episode of Dog Cops that she knew he’d seen.Her hands quickly rifled through all the drawers and cabinets, pulling out ingredients and the saucepan she’d seen Steve use before. She couldn’t remember if the chocolate went in first. Words still streaming out of her mouth, she pulled out her phone to start Googling. Hopefully there would be a website that did it the same way Steve did—“Chocolate first,” Steve said quietly.Natasha almost jumped. Turning around, she flashed him a quick smile of thanks before turning back and breaking the bar into small pieces into the saucepan, stirring it with the spoon.“Did I wake you?” he asked.Natasha glanced at him. “No, I was awake,” she said without too much guilt.Steve huffed out a breath, more of a loud exhale than a chuckle. “Should’ve known you wouldn’t go to sleep, not with how fast your mind was going.” Natasha added the milk, wincing at how some spilled onto the benchtop. She’d clean up later. “I was waiting for you to go to sleep before I snuck off,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t think that without risking you picking up on it, so…”“You felt it, through the…” He waved his hand slightly, to indicate the telepathy.“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t mention how she’d accidentally pushed herself in trying to pull him out. “I tried to wake you up.”“You did,” he said with a small frown. “It usually takes me longer to wake.”Natasha poured the mixture into two mugs, taking a small sip of her own to see how it’d turned out. Not quite as good as Steve, she reflected, but then again, no one’s hot chocolate could ever match Steve’s.Steve smiled softly as she handed him his mug. It’d been a present from Hawkeye, from the first line of merchandise that came out of his superhero persona. The mug was a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree caricature of his head in 3D, with the nose being the handle, and Clint had complained about it for days before buying himself twenty. There were now nineteen: Natasha had told him that they’d gotten the hollowness of his head perfect, and he’d thrown one at her.“This is good,” Steve told her. “You were expecting worse?” she asked, falling back into their normal banter with ease.“I had to tell you the order of the ingredients, and you spent about twenty minutes trying to find everything.”Natasha pulled a face; she didn’t think Steve had noticed that.“Thank you,” he said sincerely.“Anytime,” she replied. What are telepathically bonded buddies for?  It’d been almost two months, and Natasha thought they were slowly climbing down the hill back to no telepathic connection. That was what she thought, because she hadn’t done any more tests or tried to find any way to switch it off faster, or block it without sending it into freeze-mode.She was, unsurprisingly, being completely selfish. It was nice, having Steve there twenty-four/seven. It didn’t feel intrusive at all. It wasn’t like what they’d been bracing themselves for, which was constant thoughts and emotions and unwanted sharing of memories of the other at all times.It was like always having a chat window open. There were things they both kept hidden from the other, and that was fine because Natasha knew what it was like to want to keep the darker parts of yourself away from things you didn’t want to contaminate. And despite not knowing what Steve would hide – his nightmares? – she’d never barge in and open all those doors that weren’t hers to look inside.Natasha tried not to think about how dark and empty her mind would go back to being once this was over.  
I. Am. Dying.
Steve frowned, blinking out of his exercise haze. He took out one earbud, a hand running over his forehead and wiping away sweat. He’d been pushing himself harder than he usually would – this was the one time of the week when he was off the Avengers roster, and thus didn’t need to preserve some energy in case of a call.Stepping off the treadmill, he paused the music still playing. He could’ve sworn he’d heard Natasha, but that may have just been his imagination. Steve headed to his room to shower – he preferred it to the ones in the gym. Stripping out of his sweat-soaked gym clothes, he stepped under the cold water and tilted back his head, allowing the water to run through his hair and down his back and chest. And then practicality and his early-twentieth-century upbringing kicked in, and his hands moved automatically to grab shampoo and soap.Within seven minutes, he was out and rubbing himself dry. He and Natasha had realised early on that showering with a telepathic bond that had also moved onto physical sensations was problematic, so now Steve opened up that door he’d been holding forcibly shut the entire time – possibly another reason for why his showers were now a few minutes faster than they used to be; he didn’t like to shut Natasha out.The second he opened up the telepathic channel, though, dressed and towelling his hair dry, he felt a strange twisting in his gut. Brows furrowed as he stopped his movement, trying to discern whether the sensation was his or Natasha’s.
…fucking kill me now…gonna rip it out myself one of these days…
Definitely Natasha’s. He felt the tickling sensation of a sneeze course through him – and those were the worst – and then there was another bright spark shooting up inside him.
If I get blood on these white ass pants, I’m going to shoot something.
Steve was out of his room before he’d even consciously thought this situation through, the heavy wooden door of his room banging against the doorstop as he flung it open and raced downstairs to the workshop.He stopped short outside the door, keying in his passcode as swiftly as he could without making a mistake. And then the door was swinging open and he was striding inside, eyes searching for drops of blood on the floor, perhaps even a Natasha lying on the ground unconscious… Screw privacy, he thought viciously, no more blackout time during showers. Because if his seven minutes of keeping Natasha out resulted in her bleeding to death in the workshop alone, he’d never forgive himself.“Tasha?” he called out, eyes scanning the room for her. He silently cursed the amount of equipment there was in this huge space. She could be anywhere—Steve? “Steve?” She spoke simultaneously with both her mind and voice.“Where are you—” He neared the side of the workshop, where Natasha had her cot and small kitchenette. A computer screen had been turned to face it and was streaming something on Netflix. Natasha was half lying on the cot in a foetal position, and various objects were strewn all around her.“You okay? You felt…panicky. Did something happen?” She sat up, head cocked slightly.She wasn’t visibly bleeding from anywhere, but Steve could still feel that stabbing pain. “Are you?” he asked. “You said you were bleeding? I thought you…” He trailed off at the look on her face.Natasha was holding back a laugh, and the only reason he knew that was because of their bond. Because while she was outwardly just biting her lip hard, in her head was chaotic mess of noise – oh my god oh my god wait till Rhodey and Pepper hear about this oh my god. Steve opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, a snort escaped Natasha’s tightly shut lips.“What—” “Steve,” she said with a massive grin, like Steve had just handed her the formula for life itself. And then she made a face, and Steve felt the ache become a sharp jab for one intense moment.Kneeling down, he reached out with a tentative hand. “You’re definitely not fine,” he said firmly. “Look, Shellhead, I don’t care what you did or how stupid you were, but if you’re injured, you gotta let us know about it—”“Steve,” Natasha interrupted, the grin transformed into a smaller but no less genuine smile. “I’m on my period. What you heard was me complaining about it like I do every month – just ask Rhodey or Happy.” Steve felt his face begin to grow red, but he still stood his ground. “But...you’re in pain.” His voice went up at the end of the sentence, turning it into more of a question than a statement. “Don’t tell me you’re not, because I can feel it.”Natasha’s mouth turned down. “Sorry about that,” she said, grimacing. Steve had thought he’d seen all her types of idiocy, but now that she was apologising for something entirely out of her control, he had to rethink that. “And yeah, that’s part of the whole shtick,” she waved her hand up and down her body, “and I used to take meds – I even tried drinking one time without googling about it first, and let me tell you, that was a mistake – but now…” she shrugged, “I mostly hug a hot water bottle and power through it.”She didn’t like being dependant on drugs, especially not after having to go through various stints without them. She didn’t think it, not exactly, but the sentiment came through all the same.Steve nodded, trying to think up a course of action now that his gallant rush into the room had been for naught. “Can I—” he cleared his throat, “is it okay if I—do you want company?”Natasha blinked in surprise. “Um,” she said. “Of course. But only if you want to. You don’t have to feel obligated to stay.”“Natasha,” Steve said softly. “Does it feel like I’m staying out of obligation?”He could feel her gently running her metaphoric fingers over his mind, a quiet surprise when she found his offer sincere. Without a word, she moved over slightly to allow him space on the cot. Steve sat down beside her, back against the wall and legs curled up beneath him.“What’re we watching?” he asked, arranging the blanket over himself and Natasha, who had resumed her foetal position that involved her being partly upright, much of her weight against his side. He felt himself settling into the position, leaning back and slumping slightly to allow for his torso to be a better pillow.“The Last Five Years,” she said. “It’s a movie musical. Romance. After this I’ve got Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade queued, and then it’s a rom-com Happy recommended, with that actor who looks like Wade.”Halfway through the scene where Indiana Jones and his father were escaping in the fighter planes, stomach hurting with laughter, Steve flicked his gaze to Natasha. There was a smile on her lips – she’d seen the movie too many times to laugh as roaringly as Steve had – but was immersed nonetheless.Maybe it was because she felt Steve’s gaze on her, or maybe because she could read what was running at the speed of a bullet through his head – love love love; it was always love, wasn’t it? – that made her turn her head to him, eyes steady in the dimmed light of the workshop.Steve’s breath caught slightly, heart hammering in his ears. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, because he was too wrapped up in her gaze to think anything himself. He bit his lip slightly, watching as her eyes tracked the movement. Natasha opened her mouth to say something – what, he didn’t know – but Steve leaned in anyway, willing to seize the moment and go with it if Natasha hadn’t yet moved back.But maybe it just wasn’t destined, maybe Natasha was only frozen because she didn’t want to make things awkward by rejecting him outright, and maybe Steve had only been imagining things, because at that moment Henry Jones Sr. blew up an aircraft and Natasha jerked back, and the moment was gone. She turned her head towards the screen, body held perfectly still against his, as though she wanted to pretend like nothing had happened. Steve tried not to pursue her thoughts, keeping his hurt and confused ones in his side of the bond while she stayed on hers.And if they fell asleep there, after their fourth movie of Bridge To Terabithia, during which he’d shed a few tears and been surprised to find that Natasha had, too, then that was another secret kept between the two of them.   “You’re telling me,” Pepper said sceptically, “that you think Steve Rogers isn’t into you?”Natasha Romanoff ran a brush gently over Pepper’s nail, placing a final clear coating over the shimmery red. “What happened to your telepathic bond?”“It’s still there,” Tasha grumbled, resisting the urge to run her still-wet fingernails through her hair. “It’s just…we try to maintain privacy? We can ignore each other pretty well. We don’t actually use it all that often, not unless we’re in the field.”That was…a bit of a lie. They didn’t use it that often anymore, but before the almost-kiss, they would greet each other in the morning, say goodnight before turning in (although that had been Steve mostly), tell the other about what they were working on, how their other friends were doing that they’d just met for lunch, how the new exhibit at the MoMA was, a funny story they wanted to share…Natasha had never thought of connection as being a bad thing, but being able to talk to Steve like this – and not just talk, but to see his memories through his eyes, to be able to feel his emotions, to wake him up from his nightmares and know that he did the same for her – it was too much. Too much potential that would disappear very soon (they were already down to the minimums of what they used to have) and the fact that Steve would no longer be on the other side was not a comforting thought.She didn’t like to be left with her mind.“Tasha. Tasha! Do me,” Pepper said, snapping her out of her bleak thoughts. “Your nails are dry enough.”Natasha obediently moved to sit behind Pepper, getting her phone out. “What do you want?”“Something new.”“Um,” she scrolled through a few Pinterest boards, “inverted fishtail braid?”“Sure.”Natasha got to work, hands weaving the strands in and out. She was good at braiding, having gone through a number of hair experiments in her teen, young adult years. And engineers had to have good hands.“Food’s arrived,” Natasha announced, rising up from where she was curled up. She rose with a grace that Tasha envied.“Thanks, Nat,” Pepper said with a smile.“So,” Tasha said the second Natasha walked out the door. “You two are getting close?”“We’ve come a long way since her PA days, if that’s what you mean,” Pepper replied evenly. “She gives me the insider goss, and I help her stay sane through it.”Tasha snorted. “Can I subscribe to this, too? I always seem to find out a week after everything happens.”“That’s because you hole up in the basement like an asocial bat,” Natasha told her, returning with two plastic bags in hand. She placed them on the table in the centre, then resumed her position on the couch. “Are we finishing mine and Tasha’s hair before we eat?”Tasha shrugged. “Sure,” she said, just as Pepper nodded.“Nat, tell Tasha what you told me about the thing between Bruce and Thor.”Tasha’s eyes widened. “The romantic thing between Bruce and Thor?” At Natasha’s affirming nod, she gaped. “When did this happen?”Natasha stared at her for a beat. “Wow,” she said. “You really do need to get out more.”“What Nat means is,” Pepper clarified, “they’ve been dating for about a month now. Very publicly. Thor calls Bruce every endearment under the sun, some in Nordic languages from what I can tell.”“What Pepper wanted me to say,” Natasha continued, “is that they’re planning on going to some other planet for their one-month anniversary. Which is tomorrow.”“But I talk to Bruce all the time!” Tasha protested. “He never mentioned it!” “He probably thought you already knew,” Pepper shrugged.Tasha rubbed the bridge of her nose. There was something that Steve seemed to be thinking especially loudly – not panicky, though – and she felt a warmth bubble up in her stomach. And then slammed the mental door shut. She couldn’t be thinking about him now, not so openly when he could hear her thoughts.“I’ve been so wrapped up in this whole telepathy thing that I haven’t been focusing on the team, or you guys,” she nodded to Pepper, “much. God, this sucks. How do I even make it up to Bruce and Thor?”“You’ll think of something,” Natasha said. “Now do my hair. I’ve had this bookmarked from our last spa night, and if you mess it up, Thanos won’t hold a candle to what I’ll do to yours.”  The day was just…not going according to plan. At all. Steve had woken up half hard with the resolution that he needed to rack up the nerves to ask Natasha out. Today. He’d confess his feelings, he’d lay all his cards out, he’d open his heart up for the reckoning.He’d walked up to the coffee machine, intending to make a cup for him and Natasha as an excuse to take it down to her – not that he needed an excuse, and she probably already knew exactly what he was planning anyway. He was just glad that they’d stopped being able to see into each other’s dreams. At this point, it seemed like they could barely hear each other’s thoughts without projecting them loudly and directly. But Clint had been seated on the counter. “Morning, Cap,” he’d greeted.“Morning, Clint,” Steve had replied, grimacing at the sight of him drinking milk straight from the carton. “Anyone else up?”“Uh,” Clint tilted the carton back in an attempt to catch the last drop, “Jarvis, obviously. Bruce made tea and then left without the tea, which Thor came and grabbed later. Tasha left just now. I think Spider-Kid was here, but I can’t be—”“Wait, Tasha left? Where?” Steve had probably been a bit too intense with Clint, but the entire foundation of his plan was falling apart, so he figured he was allowed some hysteria. He couldn’t ask her where she was without feeling like a stalker and probably alarming her…“The office…?” Clint said slowly. Oh God, it was a weekday, of course she’d be at the office. “Dude, you okay?”“Yeah, fine.” Okay, he would need to start it from scratch. He’d go find Natasha for lunch, drag her out because she never took lunch breaks properly, particularly when she got into the groove of things. They’d go to some low-key restaurant, because this wouldn’t be a date; it was like a pre-date. And if everything went well, they’d plan something for dinner, maybe; not that day, not if she didn’t want to, but maybe the next.Steve didn’t think he’d ever been so nervous for anything. Maybe it was lucky she couldn’t feel that – it’d put her off. Judging from Natasha Stark’s track record, confidence and self-assurance was something she definitely went for. “If you say so.” Clint jumped off the counter, walking over to the bin and chucking the empty carton in.Steve went back to his room, a cup of coffee and banana in hand. He needed to research a restaurant. FRIDAY made matters surprisingly easy; she pulled up a map with all the food places within a five-kilometre radius of the office, and as Steve put more and more conditions on, she slowly removed them until he was left with a handful.“We’ll go to the pizza place,” he said decisively. Nothing could go wrong with pizza. He knew Natasha definitely liked pizza.Glancing at the clock, he saw that he still had a few hours to go until it was a socially acceptable time for lunch. Steve debated finishing reading War of the Worlds, but there was a nervous itch under his skin that prompted him to change into his jogging gear.Grabbing his phone on the way and slipping it into his pocket, he said a quick goodbye to Jarvis. The weather was good for a run, he decided. It was cloudy, with a cool breeze ruffling his hair. Because of the awkward timing, there were less joggers out than usual – but by no means was it deserted; this was New York, after all – and Steve automatically smiled at everyone he passed.It was a good day. It was going to soon be an even better day.He ran through Central Park, smelling in the scent of nature. He was a city boy through and through, but despite being more comfortable around huge crowds of people and tall buildings, there was something soothing about being surrounded by the greenery that Central Park had to offer. And then it began pouring with rain.Steve almost lost his footing as the ground beneath his feet turned muddy in an instant – he’d gone off track at some point – and cursed inwardly. He might as well head back now, before the rain got any worse. And then think about what car he was going to borrow to take Natasha out, because his motorbike was no longer a viable option.He regretted the white T-shirt he’d put on, because while it was fine with sweat – he didn’t even produce that much, seeing how this was a light jog – it was a completely different matter when it was absolutely soaked with rain. Steve could feel it cling to his body, heavy and cold, and didn’t have to look down at himself to know that it was now see-through: everyone he passed on the street looked at his chest rather than his eyes as he passed them, and he could feel his face flushing for reasons other than the physical exertion.After the first whistle in his direction, he firmly stared straight ahead and focused on getting back as fast as he could, which, because of the serum and his general fitness, was much faster than the normal speed of a human. It probably looked like he was either running to or from danger, but all he cared about was getting back home and away from all the strangers on the street staring at his body.By the time he’d reached the Mansion, his hair was plastered to his head and his tracksuit pants were dripping. He was glad his phone case was waterproof – he doubted that even StarkPhones could survive the ordeal his had just gone through.Steve walked over the threshold before realising his mistake. Glancing down, he saw the mud he’d just tracked into the house, complete with bits of grass and flower petals that had stuck to his shoes. The water from his drenched clothes was now creating a puddle on the hardwood floor, and his mind conveniently pulled up a memory of Natasha casually discussing the pricey wood used throughout the Mansion.It wouldn’t do to let Jarvis deal with the mess, but Steve had no idea how to get to his room to change without making things worse. He stood there, a wave of grey despair surging through him.“Steve?”Steve looked up. Jan stood there, a clutch in her hand and a long piece of royal purple fabric draped over her other arm. She stood opposite him in the wide entrance, staring at him.“Jan,” he said numbly. “Are you okay?”“Fine. I just…” He looked back down at his feet.“Not the best day?” she said sympathetically, depositing her things on a decorative side-table as she walked over.“You could say that,” he replied, trying his best to keep the ‘kicked puppy’ look that Natasha had told him of on countless occasions off his face. Nothing too big had gone wrong – he had no idea why he suddenly had the urge to crawl under the covers. “I’ll grab towels, just wait there.” And then she flitted off.Steve was grateful to have someone else take over the situation – if he had to make a decision now, there was every chance he’d burst into tears.“Here,” said a voice, and Steve jumped before realising Jan had walked up in front of him without his realising. She handed him a fluffy towel and he held it in his hands without moving. “Take the shoes and socks off – maybe chuck them outside and we’ll see if how they look tomorrow. You aren’t dripping too much anymore, so if you make a run for it, you’ll be fine.”She gave him a soft smile, and Steve hurried into action, toeing off the shoes and socks, not even wincing at the squelching sensation. “Thanks, Jan,” he said tiredly.She shrugged. “What’re teammates for?” she said. “And now you can try out my new sneakers, because sweetie, those are not salvageable. No matter what you’ll say in the morning.”A laugh escaped out of Steve, startling him.“Now go and get yourself into a warm shower. You look terrible,” she said kindly. Steve nodded, but before walking to his room, he added, “Don’t clean up the mess – I’ll be right out.”Jan pretended not to hear him.An hour later, and Steve was standing in the kitchen, staring blankly at the selection of tea available. Someone – or maybe Steve himself – had finished Steve’s favourite peppermint tea.Maybe today wasn’t the day to ask out Natasha. He sat down at the counter, placing his head on his folded arms dejectedly. Maybe this was the universe telling him that it could never work out, that there was no way someone like Natasha would ever feel want anything to do with someone like him.He should probably tell FRIDAY to cancel the booking at the pizza place that he’d placed just in case it was busy.“Do you need anything, Captain?” came Jarvis’ voice, neutral and without judgement. Steve had never been more grateful for it.“Do you have a block of ice I could crawl back into?” he asked, feeling a headache make itself known. Seeing how he could no longer get headaches, this was evidently psychological. Sometimes he really hated the universe. “I’m afraid not.” A cup was placed in front of him, and Steve sat up, looking into it. It was peppermint, judging from the smell, and he felt the sudden urge to hug Jarvis.Instead, he said, “Thank you, Jarvis,” and tried to convey his sincerity with a smile.Jarvis merely nodded, taking an elegant sip from a cup of his own.But before Steve could do the same, the Avengers alert rang out. He stifled the sigh before it escaped, resigning himself to a long day. Maybe punching something would help. 
Steve?
Hearing Natasha’s voice made everything a tiny bit better.
Tasha.

I just got here. It’s a slime monster.
Steve grimaced. I’ll tell the team.So no punching, then.  It was probably not the best idea to go out to a fight when your headspace was so rattled, Steve reflected as he found himself lying on his back, dazed. His hearing was wacky; it faded in and out and he could hear chunks of the battle and various words being shouted. A large part of him knew he needed to get up and keep fighting, but he was so winded from that last blow he couldn’t catch his breath. Instead, he lay there on the ground, wheezing in oxygen as he fought for control over his body.A streak of light shot across the sky, and Steve felt something settle in his chest as he recognised it as Iron Woman. She seemed to be coming towards him, going faster than he’d ever seen before. As she drew nearer, he forced himself to sit up. There was probably a threat he hadn’t noticed coming towards them. Iron Woman would need backup.“—eve?!”Steve grimaced; his hearing still wasn’t all there.And then suddenly the faceplate was gone and he could see Natasha’s pale face as she fell to her knees beside him, hands hovering over his body but never touching.“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she was shouting as his ears tuned back in. “You could’ve dodged that, easy!”“I—” He had no excuse. He had no words. Fortunately, it seemed that Natasha had enough for both of them, as was so oft the case. “Don’t you dare get a death wish on me now, Rogers. Not you. If you aren’t up for a fight, you fucking tell someone. Me, preferably, seeing how I’m technically co-leader. I can’t—”“I’m sorry,” Steve managed to get out, stifling a cough. “This one was on me. My head wasn’t in it. I’m sorry.”“Don’t apologise, you bastard.” The affection in Natasha’s tone belied the harsh words. “God, everything in my head went all quiet. It was like before, only worse.”I’m sorry, Steve said telepathically. I’ll do better. He didn’t know if it’d gone through.Don’t be sorry, just don’t be an idiot next time. Natasha sniffed, and Steve reached out a hand, intending to lay it on her shoulder, as was the camaraderie thing to do. But instead, it somehow ended up on her cheek, part of it on the helmet still on her head, parts on her adrenaline-flushed face. He imagined it would feel warm, if he were doing this without his leather gloves.“I was going to ask you out today,” he said, and this time his voice was thin from nerves. “And everything just kept going wrong. But we’re here now, in one place, and I don’t want today to end without knowing your answer. Will you go out to dinner with me?”Natasha gaped at him, mind entirely silent for once. She was frozen beneath his fingers, breaths imperceptible. And Steve’s thoughts began to go down a spiralling pit, filled with every fear and insecurity he’d ever had about Natasha Stark wanting to be friends with him, let alone date him.“Yes! Of—of course, yes!” she blurted out. Her eyes were wide; she looked like she’d just been zapped with a bolt of Thor’s lightning. “I’d love to go to dinner. I’d love to date you, period. Regardless of dinner.”Steve huffed a small laugh of disbelief, relief coursing through his veins and making him giddy. Every part of him wanted to kiss her, right at that moment, but there was a right way of doing things and a wrong way, and what if she decided he was a terrible kisser and—Natasha leaned forward and pressed her mouth over his in what was barely a kiss, waiting for a reaction. When he moved forward towards her, she tilted her head to fit better, parting her lips slightly. Steve could taste the aftertaste of coffee she’d evidently been drinking, a bitter flavour over her lips, of chapstick, perhaps. The tip of her tongue touched his lower lip, and nothing else at that moment existed outside of the tiny bubble the two of them were in.Steve had no idea how the battle was going (which was definitely something he should be concerned about, especially since both the leaders were occupied), but he trusted the team to work without them for a little bit.Iron Woman’s gauntlet was on his shoulder, grip tightening when she tilted her head to the side, as if to make sure he didn’t disappear. Steve could feel her in his mind, like there was a glowing door that hadn’t been lit before, hidden from him among the other locked doors in Natasha’s head.Natasha broke away from him with a gasp, lips parted slightly as she held his gaze. Steve had the strangest sensation of the earth beneath him realigning itself as they moved away from one another, and for the first time in however long, he chanced a look around the battlefield.The rest of the team were bundled around a small distance away from them, where emergency services were grouped. Paparazzi were crowded around, snapping photographs, and Steve could feel both his and Natasha’s hearts sink as they simultaneously realised their kiss had probably been captured, well on its way to headlines for the following day.“We should go,” Steve said, clearing his throat. He looked at Natasha and saw that she was staring straight ahead, looking slightly shellshocked. “Tasha?”Natasha turned to him, a shaky smile on her face. “That was okay, right?”“Kissing?” Steve stared at her. “Of course it was alright! I’ve been wanting to kiss you—” He broke off, ducking his head. There was no right way of telling your best friend, your teammate, that you’ve been wanting to kiss her for years, without making things weird. They hadn’t even had a single date yet. Thank fuck. Steve almost snorted at the thought projecting from Natasha.“I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while, too,” she told him. And then one morning Natasha woke up no longer being able to feel Steve in her mind like she had the night before. She moved her arm backwards blindly, reaching out for him, hoping he’d stayed the night and hadn’t gone out on his run in the morning.She had no idea what the time was, either – she hadn’t opened her eyes yet. All she knew was that no matter how far she probed, she couldn’t feel Steve. Natasha fought the panic surging up inside her, and tried to breathe around the emptiness.“Tasha?” Steve mumbled from behind her. "Wha' is it?"The wave of relief crashing over Natasha was so strong she almost cried. Instead, she stifled the urge and shoved it away behind another lock; her head was her own now, but the need to hide everything was still strong. Turning around, she faced Steve, who was squinting in the darkness – it was four in the morning, according to the clock.“Nothing,” she whispered, and he gazed at her in concern before appearing to believe her words and fall back asleep.Lying would be a lot easier now. Natasha had no idea why the loss of the telepathy was hitting her so hard, but it felt like she’d just lost a piece of herself. There was nothing where Steve’s light had once been. She was alone in her mind, and despite Steve’s warmth beside her, within arm’s grasp, it was the loneliest she’d felt in a long time.She couldn’t stand to lie there any longer. Quietly, she slipped out from under the covers, grabbing a robe from where it had been strewn on the back of a chair. Natasha glanced back to where Steve was still asleep, a dark mound beneath the sheets.She needed to do something. Something that would require maximum brain power so she didn’t have to think for a while—“Tasha?” came a soft voice from the staircase just as she’d had come out into the hallway.Tasha blinked in the dim light of the passageway. “Morning, Nat,” she said, equally hushed tone.“What’s wrong?” Natasha asked bluntly, leaning a hip against the wall as though she thought she was going to be standing there for a while.Tasha chewed on her lip before speaking. “The telepathy’s gone.”Natasha was silent for a moment. “Come upstairs and have tea with me,” she said finally, turning to walk down the hall. Tasha followed her without a second thought, somewhat relieved at the thought of being bossed around.“Sit,” Natasha ordered, indicating to a large, green armchair. Tasha sat down, curling her legs under her.Natasha walked over to where a tea-set was laid out, and poured hot water from a kettle into two cups. Tasha wasn’t surprised at this point that she had tea ready to go – Natasha had superpowers like that.She walked over to Tasha, handing her a cup as she sat down on the coffee table in front of her. Tasha blew on it softly, staring through the liquid. Natasha had even put gold glitter in it, and she watched as it swirled around with the liquid.“I thought you would be happy now that the telepathy’s gone,” Natasha commented.Tasha shrugged miserably. Her posture was terrible, shoulders slumped inwards and spine curling forward, and on a normal day Natasha would threaten her until she fixed it. “It’s just…so empty now. Steve was so bright and I haven’t had so much goodness in my head in forever. I just felt freer, I guess.” She wrapped her fingers around the cup, absorbing its warmth. “God, he’s probably happy to get rid of me from his head.”“What have I said about negativity?” Natasha frowned at her.Tasha sighed. “Sorry. But you say to be honest! I can’t be honest without being negative!”“Trust me, I know. You need to go through CBT, honestly.”“CBT’s alright. I should’ve continued with it.”“You really should’ve.” There was a moment of silence as the two of them sipped from their cups. Tasha watched outside the window as the sun shone brightly, illuminating the leaves on the tree outside Natasha’s window. She didn’t know when Natasha quietly took the empty cup from her hand, or when a soft blanket was placed over her, but the next thing she knew, she was waking to loud voices.“…seen her? She isn’t in the workshop, and I called the office and they say she hasn’t come in today—and I can’t feel her in my head—” “Steve.”“Why would she—”“Steve. She’s in my room. She was sleeping, but after all the shouting, I doubt she is anymore.”Tasha didn’t hear any more, the voices becoming quiet once again. She stretched slightly, feeling her back complain at being squashed in a foetal position for…She glanced at the clock, eyebrows rising as she read the time. Ten o’clock. It was a wonder Steve hadn’t come to find her sooner. Pushing the blanket off herself, she padded out into the hall. Natasha was no longer there, but Steve was sitting on the floor beside Natasha’s door, his back against the wall and a sketchpad on his knee, fingers moving across the page. At the sound of the door opening, he glanced up, naked relief on his face as he took her in.“Fancy meeting you here,” Tasha said, unsure of how to bring up the absence of the telepathic bond. It was better now that Steve was beside her; she could deal with the loss if she wasn’t alone, if the bond didn’t take yet another part of him away from her. She sat herself down beside him, thighs not quite touching. Steve flushed, placing the sketchpad beside him on his other side, away from Natasha. “Sorry. I panicked a little, when I woke up and you were gone and the bond…” He trailed off, obviously waiting for her to fill in the gaps from a scientific perspective.Natasha nodded, staring straight ahead. “Yeah, it’s gone. We’ll have to do tests and everything, but from what I can tell, it’s over.” She didn’t look at Steve, but she could feel his gaze on her.A hand took hers, making her turn her head sharply at the unexpected touch. “Are we…” Steve licked his lips, hesitant. “We’re alright, aren’t we? You wanting to date me wasn't just me projecting really strong?”“Of course I still want to date you! Do you?” She stared at him now, holding his gaze. “I don’t want to you to feel obligated to, and if you wanna bow out, then—”Steve kissed her.His hand was cupping the side of her face softly, tilting her mouth just right. Natasha had no idea kissing could ever feel so much like safety, safety and comfort and connection. A cool sensation slid down her body, calming her frazzled mind from both the sharp jaggedness of waking up, and their conversation. Her hand had, at some point, moved to Steve’s chest, and now it trailed upwards until it was wrapped in his thick hair, fingers wrapping in it like she’d wanted to do for so long.  Despite the loss of the telepathic bond being more profound than Steve had thought it would be when they’d first gotten it, he and Natasha had quickly adapted once more. He slept in her bed every night, despite never actually moving out of his own. He would occasionally paint in there; everyone needed their space occasionally, and Tasha had the workshop. It was still disconcerting in the first week for his head to be so blank – he hadn’t realised during the last few months how much space Natasha had filled in his mind, or how much he’d stopped himself from thinking to avoid projecting awkward thoughts.There was a horde of A.I.M. agents behind him, half of them firing. The bullets pinged off the shield strapped to his back. He didn’t turn around, knowing it was the best way to get himself shot in the head, and that was probably something Natasha would never forgive him for.“Catch me, Shellhead,” he called out, flinging himself off the building, pieces crumbling beneath his feet.There was a stream of curses over the comms, and Steve felt himself grinning, adrenaline coursing through his veins. In some ways, it was really easy to know exactly what Natasha would’ve said had they still had the bond.“I hate it when you do that,” she told him as she wrapped an arm around his waist, making sure not to jerk him upwards when she caught him. “What’re you gonna do if I’m not there?”Steve smiled at the grim mask of Iron Woman, knowing she was smiling underneath. “I know you always will be.”