More Tony Snark, Please I'm Dying

Sam dropped back down onto the bed next to Natasha, trying to catch his breath as the adrenaline slowly wore off. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to fuck a team mate while on the run, but damn if she hadn't looked good at the dive bar the three of them had gone to to let off a little steam. Natasha had been playing pool, stretching that tight body, showing off her curves. Smirking at him like the cat that ate the canary.

And damn if redheads hadn't always been his weakness.

Next thing he'd known, Natasha showed up at his door and....

Shit, she was even a helluva good kisser. Those soft lips against his as she eagerly pressed him back toward the bed, and her talented fingers somehow managing to work his clothes off without breaking contact with him. For hours she'd pulled sounds from him he'd never heard himself make before, and did things with her tongue he wouldn't have thought possible.

The woman was magic.

Absolute fucking magic.

No way in hell would they be able to pretend nothing had happened, Steve would've heard them with how loud they'd been.

Shit.

"What are we doing?" he panted as reality started to crash back down around him.

Natasha popped up on her side, resting her head in her hand as she watched him with a teasing smirk playing at her lips. "Didn't think you needed an instruction manual, Wilson."

Sam couldn't help the light chuckle that pushed past his lips. "Not what I meant."

"Think we might need to give Steve a talk about the birds and the bees?" Her fingers danced over his skin, tracing a pattern he couldn't work out.

Pushing out a breath, he shook his head at the ceiling, then slowly brought his gaze back to hers. Red hair, green eyes, luscious pink lips...damn if she wasn't one of the most gorgeous women on the planet. His attraction to her went well beyond that, but with her looking at him like that it was hard to think about anything else. Without thinking, he lifted a hand and tucked one of those soft red curls behind her ear. "I meant, what are we doing?" he clarified. "'Cause after that, I'm not so sure I can go back."

A smooth, rich laugh wrapped around him like a warm breeze off the sea, and he had to stop himself from pushing her back down on the bed. "I'm flattered."

Sam fixed her with a look that he hoped conveyed his mild irritation. "Natasha."

"You always do that," she murmured. Behind those green eyes casually roaming his face, there was calculation. As if she was trying to work out the sincerity of his words.

Rolling onto his side, he matched her posture. Not that he thought he could get the subtlety past her - hell, she definitely knew more about body language than he did - but he had some hope that it might at least put her at ease. "Do what?"

"Call me 'Natasha'," she replied.

Another sigh pushed past his lips. "You're deflecting."

"I'm not wrong, though," she said, a slight quirk at the corner of her lips. "I'm 'Nat' or 'Widow' to everyone else, but with you, it's 'Natasha'." In another day and age, with her timeless beauty, she might've been regarding him with a cigarette wedged between her fingers, blowing a trail of smoke out the corner of her mouth. Why did something so disgusting have to be so irresistibly sexy?

"You know," he said, reaching out to catch another stray lock of red between his thumb and forefinger, "I'm not asking you to marry me, Natasha."

If he didn't know her better, he would've sworn that smile was involuntary, that him saying her name like that might have the same effect on her as her voice had on him. "Just exclusive long-term booty call rights?" she teased.

Twirling the hair around his finger, Sam tried to collect his thoughts. How the hell was he supposed to explain himself without spooking her? Natasha wasn't exactly the type to keep her heart on her sleeve. And trust was a thing she seemed to still be learning, in a way. Sure she trusted the team, trusted Steve.

But intimacy was a whole other ball game, and until she'd wound up in his bed, he wasn't even sure she'd be ready for that, let alone the emotional closeness something like that would entail. Then again, physical intimacy might’ve been more of a commodity to her, something to trade for secrets or survival.

Emotional intimacy would be something to guard carefully and rarely, if ever, give to someone.

Over the years, though, he hoped he'd earned some modicum of trust to warrant that little leap of faith she’d have to take with him. And he really didn't want to screw this up.

Not with someone like Natasha, a woman who could easily outsmart him. Or make him laugh. Over the years, he’d come to discover that she had a nerdy side to her. Sure, she could kick his ass and looked hot as hell in leather. But the part of her he enjoyed most was that dorky redhead who liked to watch bad action movies while eating ramen, or quote her favourite films with that adorable twinkle in her eye. Half the time he wasn’t sure if she was hoping nobody but her would get the reference.

"Can we just take it one step at a time? Maybe have a meal or two in public once in a while? See how things go?"

Her smile turned coquettish. "You gonna buy me a drink? Show me off a little?"

"Don't do that," Sam groused, dropping the lock of hair.

Head quirking to the side, she asked, "Do what?"

"That," he said, gesturing toward her face. "That Black Widow shit where you do what you think I want you to do. Just....be Natasha. I like Natasha."

The smile dropped and the calculation returned. For a minute she just scanned his features in silence, almost like an animal trying to work out whether it was caged or safe; the comparison was an apt one, if you asked Sam. Silence stretched on so long, he started bracing himself for rejection.

Calculation turned to curiosity.

Curiosity turned to…shit, he had no idea. A mere mortal like himself could only do so much against someone like her.

But eventually, she ducked her head and stared at a spot on the bed between them. Well. What little space between them there was. "One step at a time, huh?"

Shoulders sagging a little in relief, he grinned. "Baby steps. That's all I'm asking."

Now he was sure her grin was genuine. "In that case, you're buying breakfast." She rolled off the bed and stalked off toward the ensuite, hips swaying hypnotically, every move calculated just for him, for his attention. Natasha Romanoff was a manipulative little shit, but he found he didn't mind so much, if he got more of...just her. That smile, that dorky personality she rarely showed to anyone outside their close-knit group of…well, fugitives now, more than heroes. More of her was all he wanted. "And coffee. We can eat here."