2.4k

Romantic

Angst/Fluff

Natasha was a complicated woman. You never quite knew where you stood with her. Granted, you hadn't known her long, but there were some moments where you thought that there was the slightest possibility that you might be on the same wavelength and other times where it seemed as though she would rather eat a shoe than be near you.

Being the newbie on the team meant that by default you were going to be the one that everyone was the least warmed up to, you understood that, but the rest of the team tried to make you feel as included as they all did. And for the most part, you felt like you were fully part of the dysfunctional superhero family that the compound housed. But there was still someone who had not fully come around to the idea of your existence.

Natasha Romanoff.

If you were with the team mingling during group training or general activities like movie nights, she sent you small smiles and engaged in small talk if you ended up standing near each other, and the smiles that she smiled seemed genuine. They reached her eyes and made them sparkle. Though when you were alone with her, which was a rarity due to the way she avoided that situation like the plague, she ignored your entire being.

You would walk into the kitchen with a pep in your step, and your happiness tended to increase when you saw the redhead making herself a drink or a small snack in between meal times. You would grin and continue your walk forward, offering a happy greeting as you got your own beverage. Sometimes she would offer you some sort of annoyed grunt in response, or just ignore you completely. You would watch her walk out of the room with a frown on your face and your head tilted, not knowing why she was treating you like that when recently she had been talking to you about how well you are advancing in training and seeming to want to know you more personally.

It was confusion on a level that you had never felt before, and it always left a stinging pain in your chest. Natasha was an amazing person. She was strong, passionate about what she believed in, a hard worker, had a good sense of humour, and made you feel as though you were the only person in the room when she looked at you. It was hard not to fall for her. So when she made out that she hated you, it hurt. But she didn't seem to care when she saw your saddened expression before turning on her heels and making her exit.

It wasn't like you could confide in anyone about it either as no one else ever witnessed her actions, so they likely wouldn't believe you. You would be coined as the newbie who tried to create a rift with pre-established friendships. A homewrecker of sorts. You didn't want to be known as the Avengers homewrecker. So, during hangouts where you would normally talk to her in an enthusiastic manner, excited that she seemed to want to get to know you as much as you wanted to get to know her, you withdrew yourself.

You had probably been over the top, too overexcited; coming to the conclusion that you had been annoying, and who knows who else you had been annoying on the team and they were too polite to say so. The easiest option was to just barely talk. But due to your usual bubbly and bouncy nature that the team all grew to love, it was easy for them to see your change in behaviour, and it led to some concerned glances being thrown your way when you weren't looking. Including glances from Natasha.

She had been looking forward to games night as it was her opportunity to talk to you. With how she felt for you, one on one was far too scary for her, but she loved talking to you when there was a group, she was hoping to build up the courage to eventually talk to you when no one else was around. It was an alien feeling for Natasha and she didn't know how to interact with you, but her main focus that night was how even though you were offering small smiles during conversations with other people, your eyes were completely dull.

It went on for weeks, and no one had explicitly mentioned your change in behaviour to you, they all seemed perfectly happy still, so you just assumed that you had indeed been annoying and that this change in personality was a good thing. You weren't happy, you were far from it, but you were happy that your friends were happy, so you would be able to deal with it.

But you had completely withdrawn from Natasha, and she wasn't happy either. The way she felt for you was the first time she had ever felt that way before, and she had ruined it before she had even started it.

What she hadn't been aware of is that you had quickly become a safe space for her when in the compound, and she really couldn't understand why she couldn't have kept it that way. Even after just a few weeks of radio silence from you, she missed your calming aura that could settle any tidal wave that flowed through her, the way your smile made her feel like everything was going to be okay. It was all gone, and she only had herself to blame.

She holed herself away in her room more often than not as she became a captive of her own mind, spiralling as her mind took her on trips down memory lane all too often, the realisation that she was not built for simple comforts flashing before her eyes. Love wasn't a pleasure that she could divulge in, she didn't deserve it.

---

On a particularly quiet night in the compound, you decided to go out and explore. All of your paperwork had been finished early as you had managed to get into the zone in the evening and sped through all of your administrative tasks, so a nice stroll around parts of the compound that you had not visited yet sounded fun. It was a giant place, and you tended to stick to the block in which your room was situated, the training areas, and the common areas, having had not much time to get a grand tour of the rest.

With headphones on you allowed your feet to be guided by the quiet melodies. It wasn't the most exciting of grand tours as a lot of the hallways looked the same and were just full of office and meeting room doors which you couldn't care less about - until you would eventually need to know where one of those rooms were. But that was a problem that you could face on another day.

Though your interest was piqued when you accidentally stumbled across another residential block. Your block housed Tony, Vision, Thor for when he was on Earth, and yourself. It was quite a boring block in your opinion as Tony was always in his lab, Vision was Vision, and Thor lived on Asgard most of the time. Your roommates sucked to put it in layman's terms.

The new block that you had come across seemed lovely though. There were four doors like in your block, Wanda, Clint, Bruce, and Natasha. You gulped at seeing Natasha's name but pushed any thoughts out of your head and looked around. Three of the doors were blank, but Wanda had a red, wooden 'W' nailed to her door with a few small posters of various sitcoms and vinyl covers. It looked cute. There were also some small intricately detailed metal tables dotted around the block with potted plants on. Likely courtesy of Wanda too.

After looking around for a moment, you decided it best that you leave the area, but just as you reached out to yank open the thick metal doors that lined every hallway, you heard a crashing noise and then a muffled sob coming from one of the rooms. You froze on the spot and took your headphones off after pausing your music, letting them settle around your neck, thanking Thor that they were only on quietly in the first place.

The only issue now was that you didn't know which room it came from, though you did know it sounded like a feminine voice. You awkwardly walked forward with small strides and placed your ear against Wanda's door, hearing a small chuckle followed by an echo of audience member laughs. She was watching TV. By the process of elimination with your small group of options, this left Natasha.

Still under the inclination that she didn't like you, you were hesitant to knock on her door and check on her, but your mind was screaming at you to not leave her at a moment when she clearly needed someone. Your heart and breath began racing as you stared at the door, the proportions of the place looking as though they were growing and shrinking as your brain started spacing out in panic, it had been a while since you had been this anxious.

Quickly regaining control of the situation, you shook your head to try and rid yourself of any anxious thoughts and focused on walking towards the bedroom door. Your fist cautiously raised and hovered for a few moments before you knocked thrice. At first, there was no response, and you were about to walk away. Natasha was a guarded person, she would see you if she wanted to see you, besides, you were the last person that would be able to push her, she clearly didn't trust you.

But as you took a step back, the door opened a crack and you could see a small portion of her head peeking through the gap, but the eye that you could see clearly widened when she saw it was you standing there.

The sound of you clearing your throat could be heard when you realised that she wasn't going to talk first. "I heard a crashing sound and I just wanted to make sure you were okay". She was analysing you during and after you spoke, trying to figure out your motives and whether you were being genuine. Trying to figure out if you would think that she was weak.

After half a minute of contemplation on the redhead's side, she opened the door a smidge more and walked back over to her bed. Stepping through and closing the door behind you, you eyed up her room briefly. You had expected it to be bare, minimalistic, but it was in fact the opposite. It was cluttered, but in a neat way, in a Natasha way. There were books and notebooks carefully dotted around, stationary placed strategically, paintings hung on the wall, potted plants, and lots of trinkets that looked to be from various gift shops.

You smiled softly as you looked around, but your face dropped when you finally turned to Natasha who was sitting on the edge of her bed, spinning the rings on her fingers repetitively. Taking another step forward, you noticed that she flinched slightly, almost as if she had gotten lost in her own head again that quickly, and you reminded her that she had let you in.

Once you slowly reached her bed, you took a seat next to her, making sure to leave a large gap so as to not scare her off, and it was only when you looked at the room from this angle that you could see some things on a chest of drawers were thrown to the floor. You frowned and wondered what had caused the outburst, but you didn't dare make a sound whilst she was clearly needing to gather her thoughts first.

It was silent for ten minutes before she shuffled slightly in her seat, clearly feeling uncomfortable, and you didn't know if it was because of your presence, but she let you in so that meant that she may have wanted to see you, right?

Again you shook your head slightly to push irrelevant thoughts away and focus on the issue at hand. "Is there anything you want to talk about?", you spoke quietly and carefully, and as expected you didn't receive a verbal response, just a soft shake of the head. You nodded and pursed your lips in thought, "Do you want me to go?".

"No", she blurted out loudly and looked to you before looking at her lap again and speaking in a whisper, "I'd like you to stay".

You sent her a warm smile, even though she wasn't able to see it, "That's okay, we don't have to talk, we can just sit". She looked over to you in her peripheral and could see the outline of a smile, and that immediately sent a warm feeling through her chest. She visibly relaxed in your company, which relaxed you too. You had really missed her over the last few weeks, and though you weren't sure why she had been ignoring you, it was clear to you that she didn't hate you. Baby steps.

Your thoughts had been racing to the point where you hadn't realised that it had gotten late, and when looking at Natasha she looked to be getting tired. Her stature was faltering and her head kept dipping, trying to force herself to stay awake but not quite succeeding. Tiredness was washing over you too, so you tapped the gap in the bed in between you, causing her to snap her head towards you. You shuffled your body to be sitting up on the headboard, your legs extending on the bed and gestured with your head for her to climb up next to you.

She raised an eyebrow in response, debating whether or not to do so, but it was getting late and she was getting tired. So, she moved further up the bed towards you and lay down, placing an arm over your legs as you were still in an upright position. She let herself get comfortable, but tensed up when you brushed some stray baby hairs out of her face before relaxing into your hold more than she had before, prompting you to continue your ministrations, and in no time at all, she was out like a light.

That was the first good night's sleep Natasha had had in years, and it was all because she had you. Just you. No words needed to be said, she just needed a comforting presence, and you had that to offer and more.

Sometimes silence can be comforting.