Purgatory: Ad Interim

December 19th -- 4:45 PM

Steve: When is your flight getting in tomorrow?

Natasha: 11:40. You’ll pick me up?

Steve: Stark wanted to know if we wanted a lift from DC.

Natasha: Is this you trying to get out of our road trip?

Steve: Never.

——————

December 20th -- 7:42 AM

Natasha: Boarded.

Steve: See you soon.

——————

December 20th -- 8:59 AM

Natasha: Just got to Chicago. Kiev reached out. We’re going to have to make a quick pit stop on our way to New York.

Steve: Where?

Natasha: Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

Steve: That’s like six hours in the wrong direction.

Natasha: It’s important.

——————

December 20th -- 11:40 AM

Natasha: Landed.

——————

Natasha saw Steve from inside the airport, and she wanted to laugh. He was driving Rumlow’s old Porsche, the same one that she had picked him up with from the reflecting pool before the Triskelion. Something to cheer her up, she was sure of it. She wasn’t looking forward to going back to Mount Vernon, even for only a night. When Kiev had sent her the address she had thought she was imagining things.

The Rowley Residence had sat unoccupied for years after she had fled it years ago with Yelena, Melina, and Alexei. She never thought she would return there, but evidently there was something there that she needed to find. Something that would bring her closer to fixing her mistakes. To atoning for her past life.

Steve had his arms around her before she could even set her bag down, squeezing her so tightly she almost lifted off the ground. He smelled clean, like sandalwood shampoo and the musky cologne he wore when he actually had time to get ready for the day. She inhaled into his shoulder as he set her back down.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, holding her gaze with that intense stare he always seemed to muster. “How was your flight?”

“It was fine,” she said. “Better than what I’m used to.”

He laughed, but it was forced. Neither were really in a laughing mood.

Steve hadn’t made any progress looking for Bucky, and he was about as frustrated as Natasha was. It didn’t help that it had been nearly a month since he had seen her, in Barcelona in that cramped hotel room. Sam had already flown home, down to Louisiana to visit his sister, and Steve had struck out yet again. They had both arrived exhausted and covered in grime, Natasha practically falling asleep as they waited for their key from a receptionist who reeked of menthol cigarettes.

They had showered together, neither one capable of staying awake long enough to wait for the other to be done, both ignoring when their bodies would brush against each other. They fell asleep immediately after, not leaving enough time to linger on the possible repercussions of that action. Their little rendezvous had shown up many times in Natasha’s thoughts since then, as well as her dreams.

She averted her eyes and turned to the car, where Sam was struggling to get out from behind the driver’s seat.

“Oh no, don’t mind me,” he said, one leg searching for the ground blindly. “No, I’m fine. You two have your little reunion.”

“Did you make him sit in the back?” Natasha whispered to Steve.

Steve nodded. “He lost a bet.”

“Not coming with us?” Natasha asked Sam as she reached around to pull the seat forward. He finally got out and shook his head.

“Flying back to Louisiana to visit my sister. I’ll save the circus for you freaks.”

“Have a safe flight, man,” Steve said, half-hugging Sam. It felt like such a simple gesture to Natasha, yet so out of place. How many times had these two risked their lives in the past few months? And here Steve was worried about a commercial flight to New Orleans?

They drove in relative silence for the first half of the drive, the only sounds-- bar the occasional conversation-- being the playlist that Natasha had made for Steve when they had first started working together. Somewhere in Pennsylvania she fell asleep against the windowsill, her legs tucked up on the dash. When she woke up it was dark and Steve was pulling into a diner parking lot.

They were seated quickly by an older man in a pinstriped apron who looked less than thrilled to be working that close to Christmas. Steve waited until they each had a plate of food in front of them (a burger and a shake each) to broach the topic he had been wanting to ask about all day.

“Why are we driving to Ohio?”

Natasha looked up from where she was hunched over her food and chewed slowly. “Kiev thinks there may be a lead. Some old HYDRA information or something.”

“In Mount Vernon?”

Again, she took her time. Chewed slowly. Took a sip of her milkshake. “Mount Vernon is where Yelena and I were stationed. The address is to our old home.”

Steve froze, his eyebrows shooting up in the same way they did whenever he heard a new piece of slang. “And you’re fine going back there?”

“Of course.” But she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“I just thought with how much you’ve been struggling it might be hard--,”

“I’ll be fine, Steve. It’s work.”

He nodded and went back to eating. “Do you remember when we used to go to Josie’s every night?”

Natasha laughed softly at the abrupt subject change. “Of course. After every mission.”

“Remember when we went on that first sting op and you had to seduce that girl?”

“And you sat there for the entire thing trying to subtly push me towards her brother,” she said. Steve blushed again, really smiling now.

“I had only been living in the twenty-first century for a year. Cut me some slack, Romanoff.”

Natasha smiled at him, a true smile for the first time in a while. He hadn’t called her Romanoff in years. She missed that kind of easy camaraderie.

“I miss that place,” he said. “I miss that whole… that whole life.”

Natasha nodded. “Before our pasts caught up with us.”

He laughed. “It sure feels that way, doesn’t it?”

“I guess I thought I could outrun it. But when SHIELD fell… well,” she pushed a fry back and forth, “I don’t know.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay going back?” Steve asked.

Natasha pursed her lips and nodded. “I will be.”

-----------

It was dark by the time they arrived and Natasha pulled herself away from the brief nap that she was taking to watch as the town she had once known so well rolled in.

“Do you still recognize it?” Steve asked, glancing over at Nat as he drove.

“Most of it.” She pointed down the road, where a Meijer glowed blue in the night. “That used to be a roller-rink. Yelena lost a tooth there one time. Fell right on her face.”

Her neighborhood was-- remarkably-- unchanged. Natasha didn’t know if she preferred it this way or if she would have wished it was different. As they drove down the familiar streets, illuminated by the sickly glow of yellowed streetlamps, she could almost see Yelena and her running down the road from the bus stop, racing each other to the front door. She would always let her win.

The house was empty, as Kiev had told her. No one had been there in years, not since the KGB had cleaned it out after their mysterious escape. Natasha prayed they hadn’t changed the locks, grabbing her bag from the trunk and lifting up the rock that sat next to their porch. Beneath it was the hide-a-key that Melina had left after she had locked herself out for the third time in a week, with a finger to her lips and a promise from the girls not to tell Alexei.

She pushed the door open and her face fell almost immediately.

The inside was… empty. All the family photos, all the artwork on the fridge, everything that she had come to associate with this place in her mind’s eye was just gone. Realistically she knew it would be. They had to pretend this family had never existed, to deny their presence all together. Still, it was hard to see a bookshelf that was once overflowing with board games sit empty and covered in dust.

“So this is the place?” Steve asked. Natasha nodded, walking around the first floor. The house looked like it had been cleaned out in the span of a couple hours. Magnets left on the fridge where the artwork had once been, a Happy Meal toy that had gotten stuck between the counter and the wall-- the whole thing had Alexei written all over it. Natasha could picture him, all grumpy and cursing, shoving things into boxes while he bitched about his glory days.

She picked up a sock that was crumpled in the corner and covered in dust from the past twenty years. It was one of hers. She had probably thrown it in the corner after school, a habit Melina had always yelled at her about.

“This is the place,” Natasha said. “It’s where it all-- where everything happened.”

Steve walked up behind her. His voice was soft. “Nat--,”

“The basement,” she said. “That’s where we’ll find everything. Come on.”

The basement was unfinished, with shelves along all the walls and the old TV that Alexei had bought them still pushed in the corner. It was like something out of time; a complete relic. Bins lined the walls. They had been empty when they moved in, just more clutter to carry in and make them look normal, but over the years they had filled up with things. Old clothes, old school projects, Christmas decorations. Natasha gestured at a stack of cardboard boxes shoved in the corner.

“Look over there. They never touched those.”

Steve began sorting through a barrage of old files while Natasha went over to the south wall and pushed the bookshelf out of the way. Behind it was their family safe, flush against the paint from when Melina had painted the basement after Yelena began coloring on the walls.

She pressed the code in, praying the fat bastard hadn’t been smart enough to change it.

05-03-90.

Yelena’s birthday.

The light turned green and the door clicked open. Inside were a pile of passports, many more than a family of four could possibly need, detailing all the aliases the Red Room had cooked up before they left. Natasha tossed them on the floor in a pile, along with the personnel files on all of them and the map of safehouses they had in case they needed to flee. In the back of the safe was a small box, flush against the back wall to the point that she almost missed it. She pulled it out slowly and opened it.

A picture of their family stared back up at her. She remembered taking this photo. They had just finished moving in, the van was still parked behind them, and a neighbor had offered to take their picture on an old polaroid. Alexei was holding Yelena on his hip and Melina had her arms around Natasha’s shoulder, bent over and smiling. This was one of the only pictures they had not taken by the Red Room as part of some effort to blend in.

She flipped it over. On the back, in Alexei’s distinct scrawl, was the date, as well as the words ‘The day I became a father.’

She wanted to scream. Some father he had been.

Natasha set the photo back in the box, next to the few other keepsakes that Melina and Alexei had managed to hold on to. A picture of Yelena and her on Santa’s lap at the mall, the bow that the former had refused to go to school without for almost a year straight. Natasha’s first report card.

Hurriedly, she shut the box, shoving it back in the safe and replacing the bookshelf. Her cheeks were wet with tears she hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t seen her sister in so long, not really. The photo attached to her personnel file made her look cold and dangerous. That was not how Natasha remembered her-- not at all.

“Natasha?” Steve called from the other side of the basement. “Did you find anything?”

She furiously wiped her tears away. “Just some old locations and aliases. More stuff for me to sort through.”

“Do you want me to help you?” he asked.

She shook her head, not bothering to look up. He knew her too well. He knew she was upset.

She couldn’t bear to see that look on his face, the perfectly etched concern that made her stomach drop.

She was too tired to be vulnerable right now. Not when there was still so much to do.

“I’ll handle it. You can head up, it was a long drive. The master bedroom is at the end of the hall.”

He paused at the base of the staircase. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Steve,” she assured him. “Go on, I’ll be fine.”

She heard his footsteps retreating and the tears began to fall anew. She looked over at the piles he had sorted out and sat down on the carpet next to them, trying to focus as she combed through them.

It was still unclear to her who her contact was in Kiev. She had never met them face to face, only knew that they were trustworthy. They had helped her on multiple occasions over the past decade. She knew they were safe. But this… this felt cruel. She felt like she was seven again, missing her Tetya and fresh out of her first cycle of training, assigned to America with a woman from the lab and a man she had only heard stories of.

And a baby.

So young she didn’t know any better, didn’t cry for her mother like the other ones did. A precious little girl for her to protect. A sister that she would do anything for.

The addresses and names began to blur together as Natasha wrote careful notes in the margins of the files, making note of the locations she knew were gone and the ones that could be possible hide outs. She wanted to stop thinking about Yelena, but the whole house was a memory. Even the smell of mothballs and dust in the basement took her back to those years they spent here.

Natasha remembered their first day of school. The kids had made fun of her teeth and she had cried to Melina when she got home. Yelena had sat next to her, also in tears, while she seethed, frustrated that she couldn’t control herself like the older girls at the facility had. When Natasha cried, Yelena cried. So Natasha learned not to cry.

She had only ever wanted to protect Yelena. From the Red Room, from Maya, from the world. She had wanted to do some good for that little girl, the one who called her Nata before she could say her full name. The one who used to hum and claim it was whistling. The one who had crawled into her bed when it stormed.

In a way, Natasha felt like her time in DC with Steve was a lot like Ohio. It was an escape from the life she was destined for, the one that she kept finding her way back to. No matter what. The past always came back. Natasha was tired of running.

She was so, so tired.

An hour later she called it. She had run out of tears thirty minutes ago. Her body had simply given up. All she wanted to do was sleep, to forget. When she went upstairs, brushing her teeth in a bathroom that still had her pink robe hanging on the back of the door and changing into a shirt that she had stolen during the weeks she lived with Steve, she realized she wouldn’t be able to. Not here, not in the room she had shared with Yelena.

Without thinking, she passed by her bedroom door and walked to the end of the hall where Steve slept. When she opened the door he was lying awake, staring at the ceiling. He sat up as she came in, taking in her tear stained face and mussed hair.

“Can I sleep with you?” she asked softly. He nodded quickly and moved over, pulling back the covers so that she could climb under them.

“Did you find what you needed?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her. She nodded into his chest.

“More than I needed.”

“HYDRA?”

“KGB,” she replied. “Names. Addresses. Maybe some widows that I could try to get to.”

He breathed out heavily and stared up at the ceiling. “You know, it kinda seems like we’re chasing our pasts more than they’re chasing us.”

She laughed humorlessly at that, running a hand over his chest. “You may have a point.”

They laid in silence for a while, neither able to fall asleep, neither able to admit it. Snow fell softly outside their window and for a moment the world felt still. Frozen.

The lull of night and the emotional rollercoaster she had been on left Natasha with a feeling of panic in her chest, a tight ball of worry that had knotted itself around her heart. She leaned in closer to Steve and felt his grip tighten around her waist.

“I miss when life was simple.”

“Back when all I had to worry about was them dragging you out of the ice.”

“Back when Tony was the craziest thing on the scene.”

“A norse god.”

“A green giant.”

She snorted. “Aliens.”

“God, aliens. Who would have guessed,” he said. “I met you in Fury’s office. Do you remember?”

She nodded and her face pressed tighter against his shoulder. “I do. You barely fit in that waiting room chair.”

“Are you calling me fat, Romanoff?” he chided.

There it was again, that nickname. The way he said it reminded her of their missions with SHIELD, the gruff way he would say her name when they were with Rumlow and she knew they would share a private joke later on. She shivered slightly as a chill ran over her skin.

She knew he could feel her body against him, but she tried to distract him. They were both too awake for this. Too vulnerable.

“Not in the slightest,” she replied. She patted his chest again, trying to make it playful, but it came off as anything but.

“Good.” His voice was low. “I mean who would have guessed where we’d end up.”

“In a russian operative safe house in suburban Ohio,” she said. Her voice was raspier than she wanted it to be. It felt like there was something caught in her throat.

His hands had bunched up under her shirt, pressed against her torso like they always did when they slept together. For some reason, feeling it while she was still very much conscious was doing something different.

“Tracking down dead men and lost girls,” he said. “A dynamic duo.”

Her leg had slid between his. “Best friends.”

He nodded, his breathing heavy as his mouth dipped closer to her neck. “Best friends.”

There was a moment where neither of them moved, neither of them broke the silence. They sat as their bodies hummed with the uncertainty of it all and the emotions of the past few months finally bubbled over. Steve’s hands were gripping her waist tightly now, pulling her towards him but holding her back at the same time. A constant pressure. A constant presence.

“Steve,” she breathed out. His mouth was millimeters from her neck and his breath was driving her crazy.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispered, but even as he said it her head arched backwards.

She couldn’t, not with the way her arousal flared at the sound of her name. God, she hadn’t realized how badly she wanted him, how much these little rendezvous were driving her crazy. She had kept it pushed down, batted away her feelings.

Now, she simply didn’t have the energy to try.

His lips never touched her, never kissed her lips. Perhaps that was the line, the line they wouldn’t cross.

It didn’t matter, not really. Not when his leg was between hers, pressing into her with just the right amount of force and the hard quads of a man designed for performance.

He cursed against her shoulder, pushing her off of him so that his hands could find her breasts beneath the rough cotton of the SHIELD t-shirt, hesitating at her rib cage and tracing the outline of her breast as if hesitant to touch it. She rolled her head back onto his shoulder, opening up more space for his breath to touch her skin.

They should stop.

They really should.

This was more than what they had silently agreed upon that first night in Buchanan, when neither had mentioned his erection or the way her skin was flushed as red as her hair.

But it didn’t matter, not to Natasha. His hands were on her, properly now, running over her chest and playing her like an instrument. His breath continued to draw goosebumps from her skin and light her body up, even as it became more erratic. Less controlled.

Control was something they both seemingly lacked.

Later, Natasha would think back on this moment and wonder what they had been thinking. Why she hadn’t stopped him, why she hadn’t wanted to, but in that moment she could think of a million reasons to justify it. To explain to herself how this was okay, why this was something they could reasonably do and still tell themselves they were just friends. Because he never kissed her, because they were both tired and vulnerable and in a random town in Ohio where nothing was real and the world was muted and muffled from the snow on their windowsill.

That’s why, when he asked her again—

“Tell me to stop.”

—in that same begging whisper, she placed her hands over his. Steve groaned and buried his head in her shoulder, his nose brushing over that spot that made her moan into his ear.

The hand that wasn’t rubbing her nipple between its fingers slid down to her hip and pulled her back to him, arching his hips forward to meet hers and groaning as she ground her ass against him. She wanted more from him— needed more from him— but she couldn’t seem to figure out what, only that she was hopelessly wet.

“Nat, I—,” he couldn’t seem to get the words out. She could feel the urge he was fighting to press into her. She wanted him to. She wanted him inside of her.

She turned around and faced him, swinging her legs over his waist and straddling him. His eyes were dark with arousal, his mouth slightly agape as he stared up into her eyes. She held his gaze as she slowly pulled her shirt over her head, tossing it to the ground beside them. He brought his hands up once more, rubbing his fingers over her waist, cupping her breasts and pressing her nipples between his middle and fore fingers. She arched back, pressing her chest towards the air, feeling his calloused thumbs brush over them. As she sat back he sat with her, raising himself up onto one hand and pressing his face to her sternum.

“Jesus, Steve,” she whispered. Her hips rolled against him of their own accord and he brought his hands down to press her into him.

“Tell me what you want from me,” he said.

She rolled her hips again and felt his fingers tighten around them.

“Natasha,” he said again, his eyes wide and vulnerable, “please. Tell me what you want.”

She nodded, pulling one hand from her hip and guiding it between her legs. His middle finger slid under her underwear, running between her lips and grazing her clit. She whimpered at the contact, sitting up further on her knees and allowing his finger to slide deeper into her. He was watching her attentively, his eyes drawn to her body, watching his hand disappear between her thighs.

“Deeper,” she urged him. He leaned against her chest again, wrapping his arm around her back to support her while he slid a second finger in. She gasped at the contact, spreading her legs wider and settling further onto his lap. He was watching her again, scanning her face as he fingered her for any sort of reaction. She had forgotten about this, how eager he was to please. How badly he wanted to see her come.

Her hands found their way to his boxers on their own accord, pulling the band down and freeing his straining erection. He groaned as she wrapped her hand around it and brushed her thumb over its head. The noise went straight to her core and she lifted up again so he could get a better angle.

“Natasha,” he whispered, his lips a millimeter from her ear. “Natasha, I’m not going to last long. It’s been forever.”

“That’s okay,” she assured him. She ran her hand down between her legs, briefly meeting his as she searched for moisture, before resuming her ministrations.

“Christ, Nat, just—,” he bit his lip and sucked in a breath, “—just tell me what to do, please. Please tell me what to do.”

His voice was pleading, begging as he looked up at her. He was practically panting. She wanted him inside of her, wanted more, always wanted more, but she had some rationale left.

Some.

Her legs were shaking trying to support herself above him as his fingers pumped within her. Over and over, matching the rhythm of her strokes. As if they were fucking each other, as if they lived in a world where that could happen.

“Natasha, please—,” he bit out again, his hips beginning to lift slightly with each stroke of her hand, a sign that she knew he was going to finish soon. She rocked against his hand, feeling the butt of his palm rock into her clit.

“Just keep— keep doing that,” she said. She was close, she knew she was close. Her eyes began to slip shut.

His hand found her neck and pulled her close to him again, resting her face against his and forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Look at me, Natasha.”

She held his gaze as she came, her forehead against his, his dick jerking in her hand and her legs finally— finally— collapsing down.

They both caught their breath, panting, holding their bodies close. Nat laid down on his chest, her legs still around him, his pants still down, both covered in sweat and cum, and neither one wasted one minute thinking about the consequences.

That was a problem for the morning.