drabble natasha romanoff vs. devotion
Natasha Romanoff has always understood power.
She understands how to wield it, how to withhold it, how to make someone crumble without ever raising her voice. It's instinctual. Controlled. Elegant. She learned it in cold rooms with colder instructors, learned it as a language before she learned it as a weapon, and she carries it now the way she carries everything â quietly, efficiently, without flourish.
What she didn't anticipate was how intoxicating it would feel to have someone willingly unravel for her.
It isn't new. It has never been new. But there's something about domesticity â about the ordinary weight of a shared life, of coffee mugs and grocery lists and Sunday mornings â that makes it more potent somehow. More real. She's stood in front of heads of state without her heart rate shifting. She's negotiated in three languages with a gun pressed to her temple and felt nothing but calculation.
You, from across your own kitchen, can reduce her to something close to smug satisfaction just by the way your eyes drag over her.
No occasion. No mission debrief. Just a Tuesday, which is arguably when she's most dangerous, because she isn't even trying.
Natasha is standing at the kitchen counter in one of your oversized SHIELD pullover sweatshirts â hers by aggressive borrowing, permanently now â coffee mug in hand, reviewing something on her tablet with the distracted focus of someone who exists partly in another dimension at all times. Her hair is loose. She hasn't done anything with it. She's wearing sleep shorts and she's barefoot and the sweatshirt has slipped slightly off one shoulder and she is, objectively, dressed like a person who does not care.
She feels it before she looks up. That specific warmth. The weight of your attention, which has always been different from anyone else's â more total, more unguarded, like you've never once thought about hiding it.
She turns her head just enough to catch you over the rim of her mug.
You're leaning against the opposite counter with your own coffee, in your running kit â leggings, a worn tank, hair up â and you are staring directly at Natasha's chest through the sweatshirt with the fixed, helpless attention of someone who has completely lost the thread of their morning.
"You're supposed to be running," she says.
"Mmhm," you say, not moving.
"That wasn't an invitation to keep staring."
She turns back to her tablet. Lets the silence stretch. Takes a long, slow sip of her coffee with deliberate calm, and she knows â she absolutely knows â what the shift of fabric does when she moves. She isn't above it. She has never once been above it, and at this point she's made her peace with that.
Your exhale is audible from across the kitchen.
"You're doing it on purpose."
She looks up, expression perfectly neutral. "I'm reading."
"I'm absolutely reading." She turns the tablet to show you. "Classified incident report. Very engaging. Pay attention â there will be a quiz."
You set your coffee down. Walk across the kitchen. Stop directly in front of her, and she lets you get close because she likes when you do â likes the way you always gravitate toward her like you can't quite help it, like proximity is something you require on a biological level.
You reach out and tug the sweatshirt up onto her shoulder.
She watches your face while you do it. There's something almost ceremonial about it â not possessive, exactly, more reverent. Like you needed to touch more than you needed to fix anything.
"No," you admit. "But now I can function."
She laughs â a real one, bright and warm, the kind she only has here â and goes back to her tablet.
You go for your run forty minutes late.
She doesn't mention it. She does, however, watch you leave, and she absolutely looks at your ass in those leggings, and she feels entirely no guilt about this. You've been staring at her chest for ten minutes. She is allowed.
It happens again on a Thursday.
They're having people over â nothing formal, just Wanda and Carol and Pepper, which means there's wine on the counter and Natasha is in a soft burgundy blouse she's had since before you met her and she's laughing at something Carol said when she catches you from across the room.
You're not even trying to be subtle.
You're in the middle of a conversation with Pepper and you are not looking at Pepper. You are looking at Natasha's cleavage from across the room with an expression that is doing absolutely nothing to disguise what you're thinking about.
Natasha holds eye contact with you just long enough to watch the tips of your ears go pink, then turns back to Carol and continues her story without missing a beat. She is, privately, delighted.
Later, when the guests are gone and you're reaching up to put glasses away and she's leaning against the counter with wine in hand, she says simply: "You were embarrassing yourself tonight."
"I know," you say, not turning around.
"She very pointedly said nothing, which is somehow worse."
You turn around, drying your hands, expression caught between mortified and completely unrepentant. "You wore that blouse on purpose."
Natasha looks down at herself. At the cut of it specifically, with a small, serene expression. Back up at you. "I own it. I've had it for years."
"It's a perfectly normal blouse."
"It is not and you know it."
She takes a slow sip of wine. Says nothing. Which is, as you have always understood, its own kind of answer.
You point at her. "You're the worst."
"Those are not mutually exclusive."
She smiles into her glass â and then you say, very casually, while turning back to the cabinet: "You were looking at my ass when I reached up for the glasses."
She does not react. She takes a perfectly measured sip of wine.
"I was getting comfortable," she says.
"The wine was already in your hand."
"I was re-getting comfortable."
You look at her over your shoulder. She looks back, expression perfectly composed, and holds it for exactly two seconds before the corner of her mouth twitches.
"You're unbelievable," you say.
"You were staring at my chest in front of Carol, Wanda, and Pepper."
You open your mouth. Close it. "It just is."
"Mm," she says, entirely unconvinced, and finishes her wine.
And that's the thing, isn't it â the thing that settles warm and permanent every time. You say it like it still means something new. Wife. Like the word hasn't lost any weight. She has watched people grow comfortable in relationships the way they grow comfortable in old shoes â familiar, worn, present without feeling. She always assumed she'd be the same. Built for mission parameters, not permanence.
But you look at her like she's a revelation on a Thursday night in your own kitchen, wine in hand, blouse she's owned for years â and she looks at you reaching up on your toes for the top shelf and she thinks, privately, that those jeans are extremely good, and she finds she does not mind this arrangement one bit.
She minds it almost not at all.
The gala is her idea, technically, in the sense that she agreed to it when Fury said someone from their unit needed to attend and you volunteered and she said then I'm coming in a tone that left no room for discussion.
She tells herself it's protective habit. It probably isn't entirely.
The dress is deliberate. She'll admit that to herself, privately, even if she'd never say it aloud â the black silk, smooth as ink, cut low enough to be dangerous without being obvious. She tries it on, studies herself in the mirror for exactly four seconds, thinks about the look on your face from Thursday, and hangs it on the door.
She takes extra time with her hair.
When she steps out of the bedroom and into the living room where you're waiting, you go completely still.
You're in a deep navy dress that hits just above the knee, your hair done, a pair of heels you only bring out when the occasion demands â and you look good, objectively. She notes it the way she notes most things. Efficiently. She also notes â in the interest of thoroughness â that the dress fits you extremely well across the hips, which is information she clocks and does not comment on.
But you are not thinking about your dress.
Your eyes drag down her body slowly, unhurried and unashamed, and they settle at her chest â specifically, precisely, with no ambiguity whatsoever â and stay there, and you forget, quite visibly, to maintain any pretense of composure.
"You're staring," she says calmly.
You swallow. Don't look away. "You're not wearing that."
Her eyebrow arches. "Excuse me?"
"That dress," you murmur, stepping closer, voice dropping, eyes fixed on her cleavage with an intensity that would embarrass you if you were capable of embarrassment right now. "You're not bending forward in it tonight."
The smile that touches her mouth is small and deeply satisfied. "Am I not?"
"No," you say, fingers brushing her waist â possessive, controlled, barely restrained. "I am the only person in that room who gets to see what that dress does when you lean forward, and I am not sharing that with anyone tonight. Not until we get home."
That tone. That tight, barely-held hunger that always pulls something pleasantly taut inside her.
She steps closer until the silk of her dress brushes your jacket.
"And what happens when we get home?" she asks softly.
She almost laughs. She doesn't.
Because she sees it â the devotion, the obsession, the focus that makes her feel like the most wanted woman in any room, including this one, including every one she's ever stood in. She has been wanted before in ways that felt like transactions. This doesn't feel like a transaction. This feels like reverence.
She likes it more than she'll ever say.
The gala is exquisite torture and she knows it, because she designed it that way.
She's careful about it â never obvious, never cheap. She's not trying to embarrass you. She is simply existing, in her dress, in the room, and she lets you experience that fully.
She feels your stare even with her back turned. Feels the exact moment your breathing shifts when she leans slightly over a table to speak to the deputy director, just far enough that the front of her dress shifts and does exactly what she knew it would do. Your hand arrives at the small of her back within four seconds. Firm. Territorial. Like you're reminding yourself, and possibly her, that what's in that dress belongs to you.
"Possessive tonight," she murmurs, mouth barely moving.
"Always," you say under your breath.
"He's sixty-three years old."
"I don't care how old he is. He was looking."
"People look. It's a gala. There are eyes everywhere."
"Not like that." Your jaw tightens. "Not atâ" You stop yourself. Just barely.
She turns her head just enough to look at you from the corner of her eye. "Finish that sentence."
"Mm." She faces forward, lifts her champagne, takes a long slow sip. "Afraid of what it'll sound like out loud?"
"I know exactly what it sounds like."
"And you'd enjoy it too much."
"I'm already enjoying it," she says, cheerfully, because she is thirty-four years old and she has earned the right to be honest about this.
You make a sound that is almost a laugh and almost something else entirely.
The evening progresses. She leans. She laughs. She exists in her dress in the way she's always existed â fully, deliberately, aware of exactly the effect she has. She has known she was beautiful since she was young enough to be trained to weaponize it, and somewhere along the way it became simply a fact about herself, neutral and comfortable. What isn't neutral is having a wife who looks at her like she's the only thing worth looking at in any room.
She catches you near the bar about an hour in â stopped mid-sentence with someone from legal, staring at her cleavage from across the room with absolutely no attempt at subtlety. The person from legal says something. You don't respond. You are not present. She holds your gaze for three seconds when you finally look up and find her watching.
She hears you excuse yourself, abrupt and graceless.
What she doesn't expect is what happens ten minutes later â she leans down to retrieve her clutch from where she set it on a chair, and your hand is at her lower back immediately, which is normal, you are always within range, but this time she feels you shift slightly behind her, and she realizes, with a flash of delight, that you have placed yourself between her and the eyeline of at least three people behind you.
She straightens up and looks at you.
You look back, carefully neutral.
"You were blocking theâ"
She stares at you. You stare at her. And then she laughs â a real one, helpless and bright, quickly pressed into her champagne glass â because she is married to the most absurd woman alive and she finds she loves that completely.
"You," she says, "are going to explain yourself later."
"There's nothing to explain."
"Mm," she says, still smiling, and turns back to the room.
She sets her champagne down with perfect composure, says warm goodbyes to the people she was speaking with, and lets you guide her toward the exit with your hand pressed to the small of her back â slightly lower than strictly necessary, which she clocks and says nothing about.
The tension in the back seat is a physical thing, specific and familiar, hers by choice.
She watches the city lights move across your jaw. Thinks about the Tuesday kitchen and Thursday glasses and the way you have never once in three years tried to look like you're not completely gone over her. She thinks about how that should feel ordinary by now. It doesn't. She suspects it won't.
Your hand finds hers in the dark between you. Quiet. Just â there.
She turns her hand over and lets you hold it and watches the lights.
The door closes behind you.
And you're on her instantly.
Your hands find her waist, walking her backward, breath already unsteady at her throat, and she lets you press her to the wall for exactly three seconds â lets you have that, lets you feel the power of it for just long enough â and then she moves.
One hand. One redirect. Effortless.
Your back meets the wall instead.
"You don't get to touch me like that yet," she says softly.
Your breath stutters. "Natâ"
She takes her time. Both hands press flat against your chest, sliding upward slowly, feeling the shift of your breathing under her palms, the way your ribs expand faster the higher she moves. She traces the line of your collar. Settles at your jaw. Tilts your face up toward hers with two fingers, and she watches you let her do it â watches you surrender to it willingly, immediately, the way you always do.
"You spent the entire evening staring," she says quietly.
"Every time I moved. Every time anyone looked at me."
"Were you paying attention to anything else?"
You think about it genuinely, which she finds endearing. "Some. Mostly no."
Her thumb traces your lower lip, slow and deliberate, and she watches your eyes go dark.
"You don't get rewarded just because you can't control yourself."
"Here I am," you agree, voice rougher now.
"Completely gone," she says softly. "In the middle of a professional event. Because of a dress."
"It isn't just the dress."
"It's â yours. That's the part. They're yours and Iâ" You stop. Try again. "There is no version of you that doesn't do this to me. Sweatshirt in the kitchen. That blouse Thursday. This dress tonight. Every day of my life. I cannot be normal about this. I have tried and I cannot."
Something moves through her chest at that. Warm and specific. She files it, the way she files things she wants to keep.
She catches your chin immediately, tilts it back. "No. Look at me."
"Tell me," she says again, softer.
"I'm obsessed with you," you say. "With my wife. With â your boobs. Specifically. I know how that sounds. I've been thinking about it since the moment you walked out of the bedroom tonight and honestly since most mornings and I've been trying to look like a person all evening and I can't anymore."
She studies you. Every line of your face, open and honest in a way that most people never manage. You have never once tried to hide this from her, not even at the beginning, and she thinks about what that costs â to be that transparent, that unguarded â and she thinks about how she used to find it overwhelming and now finds it essential. Necessary. Hers.
"Does thatâ" You pause. "Does that bother you?"
She tilts her head. Considers this with the seriousness it apparently deserves.
"No," she says. "I think it's extremely funny, actually."
"You are a capable, trained operative," she says, "and you spent an entire professional event standing in front of people's sightlines like a bouncer at a strip club. Because of me." She lets the smile come now, fully, because she's earned it. "Yes. I think it's funny. I also think it's the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Something in your face does something complicated.
"Ask me properly," she says, softer now. "What you want?"
Your jaw works. You hold her gaze with visible effort.
"Please," you say. "Please, Natasha. Let meâ"
"Let me see. Let me touch. I've beenâ" Your voice drops. "I've been good. I was good all night."
"I know," she says. "I watched you try."
She considers you for a long moment â tilts her head, reads you the way she reads everything, unhurried, thorough â and she lets you wait because she wants you to. Because the waiting is part of it. Because you in this state â undone, straining, honest â is something she will never get tired of.
"Why do you want it so much," she asks. "Tell me something real."
You swallow. Your eyes drop involuntarily, just for a second, before you catch yourself and force them back up.
"Because they're yours," you say. "Because they're â you're â it's you, and they're part of you, and I think about them constantly and I know that'sâ" You stop. Start again. "I've thought about them every day since I met you. I thought about them when we were just colleagues. I thought about them at our wedding. I think about them when you're in three layers and a tactical vest and there is no earthly reasonâ" Another exhale. "I can't make it make more sense than that. I just â I want them. All the time. I always wantâ"
"I know," she says. "I've always known."
Something about the simplicity of it undoes you more than the waiting did.
She reaches behind herself.
Unhurried. No rush. Her eyes stay on yours the entire time, watching your face, and she finds â as she always does â that your face is infinitely more interesting than anything else in the room.
She makes it slow on purpose.
She watches you watch it. Watches you breathe. Watches the way your hands press harder against the wall behind you like you're using it as an anchor, like you don't trust yourself to have them free right now.
"You're shaking," she notes.
"Just from watching you," you correct. "I'm alwaysâ" You stop. "Yes. Yes, I'm shaking."
The fabric loosens from her shoulders gradually. She lets it slip at a pace that she controls entirely â down, slowly, revealing exactly what she knows you've been thinking about since the moment she walked out of the bedroom two hours ago â and she watches your pupils blow wide and your chest rise faster and your composure finally, properly dissolve.
Not just the wanting. The specific wanting. The fact that it has always been this, always been her, always this exact focused hopeless obsession with this part of her. That Tuesday mornings and Thursday blouses and all these years of shared life haven't made her ordinary to you.
You still look at her like this. Every single time. She finds she intends to keep that going as long as possible.
"You can touch," she says. "But carefully."
Your hands come off the wall like you've been released from something, and the way they find her is exactly what she knew â slow, deliberate, both palms curving to cup her breasts with a gentleness that is frankly embarrassing for someone as competent as you. You exhale the moment you make contact, long and shuddering, and you close your eyes for just one second, like the reality of it needs a moment to land.
"I'm right here," she says.
"I know." Your voice is barely anything. "I know. I justâ"
A beat. Your hands are still moving, slow and careful, relearning something you already know by heart.
The question comes out so earnest, so genuinely asking, that something warm moves through her chest. Not amusement, exactly. Something more than that. Something adjacent to the word mine that she doesn't always let herself say out loud.
She tips your chin up with one finger.
"Ask me properly," she says.
Your throat moves. Your eyes, which have been fixed on her chest, drag up to her face with visible effort.
"Please," you say. "Please can I kiss you. Please, Natasha."
She holds you there for exactly two seconds â just long enough to watch you mean it completely â and then she says, softly: "Yes."
The sound you make is barely audible. Relief and want in equal measure.
She watches your head bow toward her, feels the first press of your lips, and she exhales slowly through her nose and lets her hand slide into your hair and thinks, with the particular calm of someone who has exactly what they want, that she is never giving this up.
She does. She knows the overwhelm of getting something you've been wanting all evening â all these years, really, and you have always been devastatingly honest about it. She knows because she feels the mirror of it: the deep, specific satisfaction of being wanted this completely, this permanently. Of being someone's persistent, helpless preoccupation. Of being the person whose sweatshirt you borrow and whose dress you guard jealously and whose chest you have been losing your mind over since the day you met her.
"You're completely gone for me," she murmurs.
"Completely..." you agree without hesitation.
"It'll be fifty and I'll stillâ"
"I know," she says. "I know you will."
She moves closer then, pressing into your hands, watching the way you catch your breath, and she brings her mouth to yours slowly â not frantic, not rushed, just warm and consuming and entirely on her terms. She slides her hands into your hair. Lets you pull her closer. Lets you deepen it when she decides you can. Gives you the control for exactly as long as she chooses before taking it back, shifting the angle, slowing it down, reminding you quietly and clearly who has been running this entire evening.
When she finally pulls back, you are breathing like you've forgotten how to do it efficiently.
"Next time," she murmurs against your lips, "you beg before I have to ask."
"And next time," she adds, softer now, something in her voice that isn't quite the same register as everything that came before, "stop trying to be normal about it."
"You said you've been trying to be normal about it for three years." She pulls back just enough to look at you. "Don't."
Something shifts in your expression. Something warmer.
"I like it," she says. "I like that you are an adult woman who cannot get through a work event because of my boobs. I like that you physically positioned yourself to block people's views. I like all of it. It is excellent for my ego and I refuse to apologize for that."
You laugh â surprised and real, the tension breaking into something easier.
"Your ego," you say, "is not the problem here."
"No," she agrees pleasantly. "You are the problem. I am simply the catalyst."
You look at her for a moment â that look, the Tuesday-morning kitchen look, the helpless one â and then you pull her back in.
This time, she doesn't take back control.
She decides she doesn't need to.
Later â much later â she's lying with your arm under her head and the city making its sounds through the window and she is thinking about nothing in particular, which is a luxury she only has here.
"Hey," you say eventually.
She smiles at the ceiling. "What about it?"
"You wore it Thursday knowing exactly what it would do."
"I've owned it for years."
"The cleavage, Natasha..."
"It's a perfectly normal blouse."
"It has never been a normal blouse."
She considers this with great seriousness. "I may," she says, "have been aware that the cut was favorable when I got dressed."
"To the overall aesthetic."
"To my entire ability to function as a person."
"They are accurate words."
"That," she says, "is a you problem."
You shift, pulling her slightly closer, and she lets herself be pulled.
"You're the worst," you say, warm and entirely unconvincing.
"I know," she says. "You've said."
A pause. Comfortable. The city does its thing outside.
"You... were staring at my ass at the gala." you say.
"When I leaned down to get my purse."
"I was ensuring your safety."
"You were looking at my ass."
"I was providing coverage."
"There were a lot of people in that room."
You lift your head to look at her. She maintains perfect ceiling-gazing composure.
"You were staring," you say. "I felt it."
"You have an excellent sense ofâ"
"You are not allowed to give me a hard time about your boobs ever again."
"That is not how this works."
"It is absolutely how this works. Mutual destruction. We are both embarrassing."
She thinks about this for a moment. "That's fair," she says finally.
You make a sound that might be a laugh. "Oh, now it's fair."
"I looked," she says simply. "The dress was very good on you. I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because you caught me."
The honesty of it lands in the quiet between you. She means it. She has always meant it â there is something about the specific weight of you, the way you carry yourself, the way that navy dress sat on your hips that she registered the moment you walked into the living room and did not examine and does not intend to stop noticing.
You settle back down against her shoulder.
"Three years," you say quietly.
"Three years," she agrees.
"And we're still like this."
"Mm." She looks at the ceiling. Thinks about when the'll be fifty. "Fortunately."
You smile against her shoulder. She feels it.
She'll let you say it first.
