"Thank you for your cooperation."

It’s been a week since she’s spoken.

Everyone on the team just assumed she broke, that everything in her just went quiet.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Her mind was flooded with thoughts of Steve. Of how it was too late for Fury to pull Steve out in time. And how she’s never going to see him again. Every day and every night all she thought about was Steve.

The team had given her her space over the past few days- only offering silent comfort, like the occasional arm rub or they would just sit next to her and join her in her silence. They were all suffering from Steve’s death, but for the first time in Natasha’s life, all she could think about was herself.

“You loved him.”

It was Bucky, probably the only one stupid enough to talk to her. Or brave enough.

Plenty of things ran through her mind:

Their first kiss on the elevator when they were undercover. How unsure Steve was when he leaned in.

The small smile on his face every time she made a joke. And the deep sigh he took every time she suggested a date to him.

His voice every time he said “mind if I join you?” Whenever he walked into the gym.

The way his face lit up every time he saw her.

The confidence in his eyes when he said he trusted her.

How he brushed his hand against her cheek before he first kissed her. Their actual first kiss, not their undercover one.

The flustered look on his face when he asked her a date.

All the love in his eyes when he said he loved her, and small spark of disappointment that replaced it when she didn’t say it back.

She wished she said it back. It was too late now.

She looked up at Bucky, and for the first time since Steve’s death, she actually had some emotion. Her voice was croaky from disuse.

“Now that I think about it, she and I danced briefly during a mission last year. Not even a full song. Barely enough to scratch the itch.” Though the itch then had been something far bigger and far more demanding. It had consumed him so completely, he had been half convinced that he would lose himself to it. “It was fun.”

As Phil took control of the dance, he gave Natasha a genuine unguarded smile–almost equal to the false once he’d been giving the women in the class. A bit more tension slid out of him, relaxing into the easy repetition of the dance. Slow, slow, left and together.

“Fun...?” she echoed, a faintly knowing smile curving her lips. “1,000 says she hated it.” Or professed to, anyway. Melinda never gave much away, but Natasha had spent years watching her.

“My thoughts on the class are that you’re going to be a damned good decoy,” she said with a roll of her eyes, adding a cha-cha step on the three count just to see if he would keep up. “Emerald top was showing off, and it wasn’t for my benefit.”

She shrugged as if to remind him not to blame the messenger; he had to have expected being the hot dish in class.

“The one on the end is Debbie. They told me she transferred from another studio in town, but I never heard why.” Natasha easily followed his lead, spinning neatly out of, and then back into, the cradle of his arms.

Fully prepared to fold if it meant putting herself in a better position in the future.

Matt mentally traced her path through the apartment as he dried his hands over the bathroom sink — water made it a little difficult to re-bandage the cuts on his hands.

He heard her pause, and with it the well oiled cogs turning in the soviet wearpon’s mind as she assessed the situation. He wouldn’t be surprised if she left; needless to say it wouldn’t be the first or last time.

She was something like a stray cat, honestly. One that had chosen him, for whatever reason. What else was there to do but just leave the window open?

He silently followed the watery path she’d left towards the bedroom, lsliding between the sheets and wrinkling his nose at the sensation of damp material clinging to his skin. But then he was overwhelmped by the tsarina. The warmth of her body and the scent of her hair.

The man breathed her in deep, arms braced on either side of Nat’s body as his lips pressed firmly into her collar in apology.

       "I meant what I said.“

     “--Idiot,” she cursed quietly, her exhalation barely lifting his damp hair as she nosed against his temple. The expanse of his ceiling was spotless and white, the bulk of his body warm and familiar, and for a moment she felt so typical that it was almost comical.

     “Don’t get sentimental on me,” she warned him mock-jokingly. “You don’t have the vodka for that.” She went silent after that, never having believed in small talk in the first place, and certainly not with him. It was enough to stretch against sheets washed with his favourite fabric softener, wondering what force guided his moral compass.

There would always be a disconnect between them, it seemed.

So she took a long look at him, knowing that he was doing the same to her in his own way, and bridged the gap the only way she knew how. Her lips met his, not tentative in the least, the slightest exhale giving him permission to part them further.

“And I haven’t had my preferred dancing partner.”

He took Natasha’s hand with his own, the other one coming to rest at her back. A moment was spared to consciously straighten and tighten up his frame. It really had been too long since he had last danced like this. Since before New York, if memory served him.

A tap of her fingers told him to drop his shoulders, and in the next moment she counted out a 4-step.

“One... two... three and four and... one... two...” A foxtrot. More flavour than the waltz, less thinking than the tango. She would leave that one to Melinda. Or Clint. If anyone could encourage him to learn, it’d be Phil.

“Any suspicions?” she prompted, gradually giving over control of the lead. He was one of the few she’d allow it to, it was just hard to remember how to not tense at the guiding pressure of fingers at the small of her back.

Some of his classmates would offer him supportive–if flirtatious–smiles, and exaggerate the poses to help guide him to what he should be doing. He gave them grateful, appreciative smiles in return, and committed their faces to memory.

When the class was called to an end, several of the women came to him to compliment him on his dancing, and expressed their hope that he’d be a regular to the class. One even boldly asked if he wanted to go for coffee. Letting his cheeks tint red, Phil politely declined–he might have conceded if he’d considered her a suspect–and returned to where Natasha stood.

“It just so happens that this was my last class of the day,” she conceded with a small smile. The other women resumed packing their things, giving each other knowing looks. Natasha let them think what they liked; it was an easy enough cover as to why she’d agreed to stay behind with Phil.

As the rest of the class trickled out of the studio, she went over positions with him, turning her full attention to the turnout of his feet and hips. When the door closed behind the last student, she let herself smile.

“Haven’t danced in a while, have you?” She didn’t just mean ballet. “You’re stiff.” With an eyeroll, she offered him a ballroom frame, a cant of her head instructing that he should take her hand. There was a long line of windows along the hall that looked in on the studio, and just because there was no one to overhear their low conversation didn’t mean that appearances shouldn’t be upheld.

The room was bright, open, and airy–that itself made it unlike any other place he’d been in recent times. The air around him held hints of chalk and sweat, and the wooden floor was well worn beneath his feet. It was altogether quite welcoming, which was appreciated, considering he felt rather silly standing in a room full of women in only a pair of loose pants and a tee.

Setting his gym bag on the floor, Phil approached the woman at the front of the room. It wasn’t hard for him to single her out as the instructor; every movement she made had purpose and determination, and there was a strength there that Phil would have spent extra time appreciating in other circumstances.

“You’re in the right place,” she nodded encouragingly, watching the way the others had begun to watch him. Half of them were the ballet affair type. It was too bad for them that Phil wasn’t.

She kept a slim cane beside her, not for walking but for tapping against the hardwood, pounding out a rhythm when a dancer needed a more obvious illustration of the beat, and its light wood hung at her side now.

“I realise that none of you are used to the way I run my classes, so for today and today only, we will begin with warmups. Beginning tomorrow, I expect you to show up ready to begin in earnest.” The hint of Russian in her voice was remembered, not mimicked, and the way that the other women hung on her every word, scuttling to their places at the barre, meant it was working.

It was the perfect cover, and she didn’t try to hide from him how much she enjoyed it. She ran the class 13 minutes long, watching them with a harshly critical eye. It wasn’t that she cared about their arabesques -- it was that Phil suspected a powered individual in their midst.