I wasn’t much of a party person, but after everything that had happened, a night of dancing and karaoke felt immensely cathartic. I even managed to get a little drunk. The 190-proof Everclear didn’t taste like much beyond a mild burning sensation, but half a bottle was enough to punch through even my enhanced metabolism for a while.
Nat had had the foresight to arrange her calendar so she had the entire next day free after our trip to Westview—she’d been worried that it would be hard on me so she wanted to be available to take care of me if need be—so we slept in late after our big night out. I’d portalled Pietro back to the Avengers compound before we’d gone to bed and, when we woke, there was no sign of Yelena, so Nat and I were left to our own devices. With nothing on Natasha’s slate for the day, she’d told me she was happy to do whatever I wanted.
…Leaving herself completely at my mercy.
The fool.
We’d spent some time in bed, gotten up, spent some time in the shower, eaten, finally gotten dressed in actual clothes, and were now engaged in a little side-project I’d devised.
Once I was finally satisfied with the fruits of my artistry, I stood up, retrieved my phone from the bedside table and opened the camera app with a few quick taps. “Alright. Give me a smile.” I peered at the screen, leaning over Natasha and tilting the phone a little bit to adjust the angle, then grinned at her expression. “Good girl,” I murmured, taking a couple of quick snaps.
“Are you done?” she asked, pulling herself up into a sitting position from where I’d made her lie down on the bed. Her smile was wide and genuine, crinkling the corners of her eyes, but there was a delightful little hint of self-conscious embarrassment in it that really completely the look.
I double-checked the pictures I’d taken, sitting down on the bed next to her and swiping back and forth through them a few times while ‘hmm’ing. There were only very minor differences between them and, honestly, it was basically impossible to choose which was the best shot because they all looked amazing.
I grinned. “Yep, looks great. Wanna see?” She sighed as she nodded, but she was still smiling. “Ta-da!” I turned my phone around, presenting one of the shots for her inspection.
The picture was a headshot of her, lying back on flowing, off-white silk sheets. The off-the shoulder top she was wearing wasn’t visible at all, letting the picture suggest that she might not have anything on at all. Lipstick kiss marks, bright red and nearly perfectly shaped, liberally adorned her face, neck and collarbone—each carefully and strategically applied by my own lips. She looked happy but slightly embarrassed, her hair a little tousled in the perfect glamour model ‘just gotten out of bed’ look. I honestly had no idea how she always managed to look so good.
“I think this is going to be my new phone wallpaper, if that’s okay.”
Nat sighed again and rolled her eyes, though, again, she was still smiling. “You are the most ridiculous person I know.”
“Oh, come on, you’re an Avenger—you know plenty of people at least as ridiculous as me,” I said airily, waving my hand in a dismissive gesture before eyeing her suggestively. “You know, I wouldn’t mind, like, a whole body shot of you like this. For, uh… scientific purposes.”
“Don’t push your luck,” she said with a snort.
I looked between her and the photo on my phone a couple more times and shook my head. “God, you’re pretty. I know it’s not like the Avengers will ever run out of money because of Tony, but if you ever did need an alternate source of funding, you could make bank as a model.”
“I know,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I’ve done modelling before.”
“Oh, yeah! You did, didn’t you? I didn’t see it, myself, but I did see Tony be very interested in that part of your cover identity’s portfolio, the first time you two met.” My smirk at the recollection faded. “Did SHIELD make you do that?”
“It was just part of the job. Not a big deal.”
I frowned. “I guess. On the one hand, I do honestly think it’s kind of gross that SHIELD kept using you for your body in basically the same way that the Red Room did. But, on the other… I, uh, don’t suppose you kept copies?”
“It wasn’t the same—I always had a choice, with SHIELD. Fury never asked me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable doing.”
“Fair enough. Sorry.”
She flashed me a small smile. “It’s fine. And, if you want copies, all you need to do is Google me. The portfolio we did was already online as part of the cover. When we leaked SHIELD’s data someone made the connection between me and that old ID, so it’s all out there. Though… you might want to brace yourself if you go randomly Googling me. You know what the internet’s like. Celebrity fandoms can get weird.” She hesitated a moment, then winced. “You haven’t Googled yourself lately, have you? Story broke about us being together a little while ago. The internet’s been having a bit of a normal one about it.”
“Huh.” I hadn’t even considered that, really. I was still having trouble properly internalising the fact that I was suddenly famous… and not just famous but, like, really famous. I was a B-lister next to the actual Avengers, but I’d still had people recognise me in the street and Liz Allan wasn’t the only person that had asked for a selfie. I did know that the clips of me using my magic that had circulated, combined with my weird Avengers-adjacent position and the fact that Pietro was an Avenger, had fuelled some pretty significant speculation and gossip, but I didn’t think that was exactly what Natasha was talking about.
Huh… Even beyond the usual celebrity fixations and gossip, if I ducked onto Tumblr or AO3 or something would I still find smut about the Avengers? Would there be smut about me? I hadn’t thought about it until just now but, I mean, there’d almost certainly be some, right? I would definitely need to spend some time Googling myself later. For science.
“Can I go clean this off, now?” Nat asked mildly.
I touched my bottom lip with my index figure, checking how much lipstick I still had on before eyeing her up and down again consideringly. “I dunno, I kind of like the look. We’re not doing anything else today.”
“Yelena will come home at some point.”
“That sounds a little bit like a ‘Yelena’ problem, to me,” I replied. She responded with a pleading look, shooting me the most dangerously heartstring-tugging big doe eyes I’d ever seen, and my resolve immediately crumbled. “Oh, fine. Go clean yourself up.”
“Thank you.” Nat leaned over and pecked me on the cheek before rising to her feet.
I stood as well and followed her to the bathroom, lurking back near the open door to watch her reflection in the mirror as she retrieved some makeup wipes and started carefully removing each of the kiss marks I’d applied to her skin. She was about halfway done when I got bored and sidled up behind her, leaning my chin on her shoulder and staring at her quietly, trying my best to look cute. Nat chuckled, her eyes widening fractionally as she stopped what she was doing. We stood there for a moment, and she raised an eyebrow at me in the mirror.
“What?”
“You’re grabbing my butt,” she pointed out.
Ah. So I was. I had, in fact, a rather firm grip on her left cheek. “Oh,” I said, innocently. “Sorry. It was an accident.”
There was a beat where neither of us said anything, then Nat licked her lips, trying not to smile. “You’re still grabbing my butt.”
“It’s still an accident.”
She looked down, breaking eye contact, her shoulders shaking as she tried and failed to suppress a laugh.
“…Did you want me to stop grabbing your butt?” I asked, injecting a little bit of disappointment into my tone.
She let out an amused but exasperated sigh, looking back up at me. “No, that’s okay.”
“Then I really don’t see what the problem is.”
Natasha took a breath, schooling her features into a more neutral expression, then resumed removing the lipstick marks. “I was thinking…” she said as she worked. “You remember how excited you were to meet Luis when we went to check in on Hank Pym and Scott Lang?”
“Heh. Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. It was cute. I mean, he was annoying, but you were cute. I was wondering, though… are there any other people you haven’t met from your visions that you’d really like to?”
I laughed. “Oh, jeez, like… so many. It’s a really long list. Lots of complications with most of them, though.”
So many complications. I really wasn’t looking forward to whatever my conversation with Thor about Loki was going to look like, for example. I knew Loki had potential for good in him, but I didn’t really know how to get him there. I was keen to try, though. How would Nat feel about that, for that matter? I mean, the last time she saw Loki he’d invaded with an army. Would Tony see me trying to get Loki onside as yet another example of why I couldn’t be trusted? Sigh.
“Well, what about the ones without complications? Any low-hanging fruit? People you’d like to meet that you could without causing a ruckus?”
I thought about it for a moment. I’d had Luke Cage on my list for a long time now, but had never actually made it over to Harlem to see him. I just kept getting sidetracked or having other things come up. Then again, after what had happened with Jessica, I wasn’t feeling super keen about inserting myself into the street-level scene in New York again, either, just in case.
“There are actually a couple of Avengers-adjacent people,” I said, finally.
“Like who? Anyone I know?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Maybe. Bruce has a hot lawyer cousin in LA,” I said with a small grin. “Jennifer Walters.”
Natasha finished what she was doing and turned to face me. I didn’t move my hand, so the motion tucked her into my arm, our faces a bare inch away from each other. “I’ve met Jen, actually,” she said. “Just the once. She seemed nice.”
A thought occurred to me and I straightened up a little, giving Nat a serious look. “You know what we could do? Stealth double date. Work out some excuse to be in LA, ask Bruce if he wants to come out with us to dinner or something, casually ask if he wanted to invite his cousin… You seduce him, I seduce her, we all have a good time.” I grinned cheekily, waggling my eyebrows at her, then shrugged. “Actually, there’s a distinct possibility that Jen might just be completely straight. But, hey, if it doesn’t work out, I wouldn’t mind joining you and Bruce, either… if he doesn’t have any objections, of course.”
Natasha paused, cocking her head slightly to the side, her expression suddenly calculating. “Honestly? I don’t hate that idea. Hard to come up with an excuse as to why we’d need to be out in LA, with your portals and all, so we’ll need to workshop that part a bit. Leave it with me; I’ll have a think.” Her eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. “Although, if anything does happen with Bruce, promise me you won’t try to make him Hulk out.”
Damn, foiled again. “Fine,” I said, a little grumpily. “I won’t. But I am going to find out one of these days. One way or another.”
She smirked and leaned forward briefly to give me a little peck on the lips.
I drummed my fingers idly on her as I thought. “It’s a shame there’s no way to track down Madisynn,” I mused. “She’d be fun to hang out with.”
“Madison?”
“With two Ns and one Y, but it’s not where you thiiiiink!” I said, grinning as I wiggled a little bit, imitated the movement Madisynn did when she said it. “She’d be in her late teens or early twenties now, I’d guess? I don’t know if she’d even be in LA yet, and I don’t know where she was before that. I literally don’t know anything else about her—no surname, no nothing.”
“While I am pretty good at finding people, I’m not quite that good.”
“Oh,” I perked up. “Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, do you know what Darcy Lewis is up to these days? She’s probably not working for SWORD yet, right? You should really see if you can tap her to come work for the Avengers—offer her a job at the compound.”
“Darcy, huh?” Natasha’s brow creased and she let out an amused snort. “Ah. Yeah. I can think of two big reasons why you might be interested in meeting her.”
I shot her a vaguely hurt look, letting go of her butt and bringing both my hands up to lightly rest on her hips instead. “Well, I mean, she’s a highly intelligent astrophysicist who worked closely with Jane Foster—Tony’s smart, but it might be worth getting an expert in to look over all the data we’ve got about the Universal Neural Teleportation Network, see if she has any insights. She’s a team player with a good sense of humour and works well under pressure, so she’ll fit in with the team well, and she’s already got a surprising amount of experience helping out against world- and universe-level threats. She’s even helped to handle the fallout around an Infinity Stone before.”
“Oh.” Natasha blinked, looking a little chastened.
“Also, she’s got a nice set of boobs,” I said, somehow managing to keep a completely straight face. My hands wandered up to Nat’s chest and cupped hers firmly through her top to emphasise my point. “I mean some serious honkers. A real set of badonkers.”
Nat closed her eyes for a moment, fighting a smile as she made a small noise of frustration in the back of her throat.
“Packin’ some dobonhonkeros,” I added. “Massive dohoonkabhankoloos.”
“Yes. I’m aware. Are you done?”
“…Big ol’ tonhongerekoogers. Okay, now I’m done. Thank you.”
“You know,” Natasha said, playfully poking me in the belly with her index finger. “When I asked if there was anyone you’d like to meet, I wasn’t just asking for a list of all of the women you want to sleep with.”
“Well, I mean, I’ve already met most of the guys I want to sleep with. Seriously, the Avengers compound is a real sausage-fest right now, isn’t it?” I let go of her chest and took a step backwards, gesturing dismissively with one hand, then straightened up again as a thought occurred to me. “Hang on, the Avengers are like, super-celebrities, right? Does that mean you get to meet lots of other celebrities? Actors and stuff? I bet you get invited to a lot of events.”
Nat pulled a bit of a face. “Yeah, we all do. You’d be getting some, too, if anyone knew how to contact you. I know that we’ve had more than a few calls to our support team asking after you for interviews and such. Maria’s been pretty firm with them that you’re not directly affiliated with the team and we don’t have a public-facing number we can refer them to.”
“Huh.” I blinked. “I hadn’t even thought about that. Should I… do I need to get an agent or something? To handle stuff like that?”
“If you really want to start getting involved in that sort of stuff, that would be the way to do it. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t recommend it—take advantage of your relative privacy for as long as possible. The thing I like the least about being an Avenger is just how much of a public figure it’s made me.”
“You know, if you got invited to a thing and brought me along as your plus one, then I’d be able to take advantage of my fame and also get to keep my privacy.” I was nowhere near as skilled at weaponizing cuteness as Nat was, but I did my best, batting my eyelashes and biting my bottom lip.
“Want to have your cake and eat it, too, huh?” Nat smiled and shook her head. “What celebrities are you wanting to meet, anyway? Scarlett Johansson?”
I inhaled sharply, almost reflexively flinching away. I really wasn’t sure how to respond to that—they hadn’t seen her in the not-Hex, had they? I feel like someone would have mentioned it by now if that were the case. I realised that my body language had suddenly gone defensive and made an active effort to relax it. “Uh. What makes you think… um. Why Scarlett Johansson?”
Nat was watching me carefully, her forehead creased, looking slightly surprised by my reaction. “You brought her up randomly yesterday at the psychic’s shop. Patti LuPone, too.”
Oh. Right. I had, hadn’t I?
I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to come clean to Natasha about exactly what my ‘visions’ were and, even if I did, it wouldn’t have been today. I needed this time to just to relax and unwind after what happened in Westview. “Let’s just… put a pin in this conversation for now,” I said, shooting her a slightly strained smile before turning to leave the bathroom.
As I went to step away, Nat reached over and gently caught my wrist. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” she said gently.
I stopped, but didn’t turn back to face her. “It’s not… nothing’s wrong. I just… I dunno. It’s not important.”
Natasha stepped in and hugged me from behind. “Talk to me.”
“It’s fine. Really,” I said, leaning back into the embrace a little bit. “I just have some stuff I need to think through on my own. We’ll talk about it, eventually. Just… not today, please?”
She sighed, but didn’t argue, giving me a little bit of a squeeze as an acknowledgement instead. After a moment, she pulled back and touched my back with both hands, her fingertips probing gently up to my shoulders. “You’re really stiff. There’s a lot of tension in your shoulders and back.” I felt thumbs being pressed into the muscles to either side of my spine, tracing a small line down my back as she explored the extent of it. It felt good. “Did you want a massage?”
“Absolutely I do.”
She pulled at my arm, turning me to face her. “Strip,” she instructed, then flicked her head toward the bedroom.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a grin, already hurriedly pulling off my clothes.
Five minutes later, I was watching with surprise as Natasha finishing putting up a full, actual massage table next to the bed. It looked like a solid, professional one, too, not a cheap flimsy thing at all. She’d connected her phone to a Bluetooth speaker, filling the room with some quiet, generic-but-calming music, laid out towels and a few bottles of stuff on the bedside table and gotten changed again—switching out her jeans and off-the-shoulder top for a simple sports bra and bike shorts.
Once she’d finished setting everything up, Natasha patted the soft towel she’d spread over the table expectantly. I lay down as directed, sticking my face in the weird face-hole that massage tables have.
She applied some oil, then dug her fingers in a little and raked her hands down my back before starting in on my lower back in earnest. She didn’t ease in, either, going in with full intensity right from the start, using her thumbs, knuckles, the heel of her palm, and then what I was pretty sure was her elbow to press down hard into my back using her entire body weight. She started working out the knots with slow, deliberate movements, sending jolts of relief that bordered on pain—an intense, satisfying ache—through my body. The noises that came out of my throat in response were absolutely not fit for a PG-rated movie.
“Oh, god. You’re really good at that,” I said, fighting to stop myself from moaning again.
“I know.” I couldn’t see her face, but her tone radiated smugness. I could feel the heat of her against my skin, coaxing warmth into the places in my body where the stress had settled. Moving upward along my spine, she pressed into a different spot and I made another lewd-sounding noise. She chuckled. “You know, I feel like with a bit of effort I could literally play you like a musical instrument.”
“When you offered a massage, I wasn’t expecting a whole production,” I murmured foggily. “Maybe oil, but not the table and everything. I thought I’d just lie on the bed. Where did you learn to…? Oh. Stupid question.”
“Yeah. Part of the Red Room’s training,” she said, working her thumbs into the muscles on both sides of my spine. “One of my first missions after I ‘graduated’, there was a German politician I was assigned to—my initial cover was a massage therapist.”
Natasha moved higher, tracing the line of my spine with her knuckles as she moved up my naked back, pressing along each vertebra. Her touch was deliberate, practiced, as she found the tightness trapped in each muscle and used her body weight to help release it, sending deep waves of sensation rippling through me.
She paused to take a breath and I shifted slightly on the table. “I’m surprised you’re not struggling more, given I’m effectively a super soldier.”
“You’re not even the worst I’ve done,” she said with a small snort of amusement. “Steve always carries so much tension in his shoulders.”
“You’ve, uh, massaged Steve? Like this?”
“Not exactly like this,” she said, a teasing scold in her voice. “Purely platonically.”
“Uh huh…”
“The first time was a few weeks after the Battle of New York,” she said, resuming working on my shoulders as she spoke. “He had a lower back thing. Went to a normal masseuse and, well… not her fault. She was freaking out a bit working on Captain America himself, I think, and just didn’t get in there properly. You really can’t hold back when you’re working on a super soldier. We were talking and he mentioned it, I offered, and…” She paused again and, even though I couldn’t see her, I could hear the shrug in her tone. “I’ve given him full deep tissue treatments a few times since then.”
“All completely platonically.”
“Yep. Steve and I really would not work out.” I heard the smile in her voice and imagined her shaking her head at me. “For some of the same reasons you and him wouldn’t work out, even,” she added.
“Hurtful,” I muttered, then grinned to myself. “We’ll see. Next time he’s looking to get oiled up and rubbed down, let him know I’ve expressed interest in joining in.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“You love it.” I sighed as she reversed direction and started making her way back down my back. My whole body felt floppy, all of my muscles turning to goo as I melted into a puddle of contentment. “Okay,” I said. “Devil’s three-way. Steve and Bucky. Who’s in front, who’s in back? Be prepared to defend your reasoning.”
“Steve in front,” Nat said immediately.
I chuckled. “You answered that way, way too quickly. Explain yourself.”
I could hear the smile in her voice as she responded. “I love Steve and I imagine he’d be an attentive lover, but I think Bucky would just be a little bit more… experienced.”
“Hmm. Acceptable.”
“What about you?”
“Those two can have me however the fuck they want,” I said, my voice a little dreamy. “The important question is, do you think they’d lean in and give each other a lil’ kiss while they’re doing it?”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m pretty sure Steve’s as straight as an arrow.”
“Aw, really?” I couldn’t help a small hint of disappointment creeping into my tone.
“Bucky, on the other hand… I see the way he looks at Steve sometimes. I’m not sure if Steve knows. I haven’t pried.”
“Oh.” I really wasn’t sure what else to say to that.
We didn’t talk for a bit, the conversation having stalled out with that slightly sad little revelation. The world shrank to the feeling of Natasha’s hands on my body and, for the first time in a long time, I felt my noisy thoughts quiet down, replaced by the grounding, hypnotic sensation of her skilful hands working me free from myself.
After a little while, she stopped. It took me a second to realise she wasn’t just repositioning herself—instead, she took a step away and I heard some rustling noises. I mumbled a weak protest; I had no idea how long she’d been massaging me for, but I felt like I very easily could have laid there for another hour. A hand gently but firmly took me by the hip and gave an insistent little pull, indicating she wanted me to roll over. I opened my eyes as I did and my breath caught in my throat as I saw she’d stripped off completely, her own body already glistening with oil.
“Part two of the massage is a bit more… intimate,” said, her eyes roving over my own exposed body. I opened my mouth to say something, but she silenced me by gently pressing a finger to my lips. “And before you ask—no, I have definitely not done this part with Steve.”