It’s subtle, but if someone looked hard enough, they would see the subterfuge. Considering the person, one might say it’s a risk. But a risk she’s willing to take, because they haven’t proved that they were the danger to the whole world she calculated they could. So she indulges, until proven otherwise.
She is very subtle, taking this like a game that she knows they won’t see or understand unless she tells them. Whenever one is out, in their luggage, she will place in what she will take back later. She’s lending them something of hers which they think is theirs. They’ll use it as their own, and she afterward will take it back as her property. This method is better than outright stealing, because it doesn’t raise suspicion. And when the item has no more trace on it but her own, she will give it someone in dire need of a reminder that they are not alone. If they will accept that she considers them family.
She doesn’t know is they see even see her as a friend, but she likes to think sometimes at night that someone on her team is comforted of having something of hers with them, to help fend of the nightmares and keep warm.
When she’s forced to go off the grid after the fallout between Cap and Tony, it hurts so much to not have a physical reminder that she is not alone. That the Red Room is over, that the nightmares are just memories of what was and not what could be. She misses Clint, their banter and competition, the crack jokes they did together. But since she’s more than a human scared at night, she sucks it up and spits in the face of loneliness, like she always did.
Everything she used to keep herself aware of her reality stayed at the Tower, and she is fairly certain that Tony found it. She can imagine his face from here, confused and intrigued at the same time, like she’s some sort of puzzle he discovered more pieces of. But everything she had in the Tower is related to them, to her team, to what they built together. So she doesn’t need it now, and it’s safe where it is.
And one day, the call comes. The Rogues are cleared and on duty again, she is kindly asked to bring her ‘chaotic dangerous butt back home please, we have cookies.’ So back “home” she goes, and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen.
For one, there are new people now. Well, new…There’s one person new in her home, and the other one she knows him from another place she used to call home. She has to admit, she briefly wondered if Steve had gone completely bonkers to think that bringing The Winter Soldier in their home, their safe space, was a good idea. Sam? She knows him, and considers him almost like a friend, and to her, he’s no threat. The Winter Soldier? That’s whole fucking other story.
But hey, even she can be wrong sometimes, because The Winter Soldier turns out to be Bucky. Bucky who remembers his time in Hydra, but also when he trained the Red Room. He remembers her, and it’s ugly. But she’ll take ugly over brainwashed soldiers any day. And he fits right in, hits off with Tony. Sam also wedges his place into her heart, with that smart brain of his and his almost all seeing eyes.
So she deems that the threat level is acceptable, and she picks up her routine again. Like she thought he would do, Tony discovered her subterfuge, but instead of calling her on it, when she comes back from a mission, she sometimes can see that someone has been in her room, and her stash of items had been raided. And honestly, she doesn’t mind.
Except when he does just that.
“Tony? Why are you wearing my sweater?”
Natasha never freezes in her life, but her attention zeroes on Steve that just pronounced that dreaded sentence. And now she’s just waiting for Tony to respond.
Tony that must have seen the glare of pure murder she’s sending him, because he smiles fondly before yawning convincingly, like the great actor he is. “Oh, this yours? I found it in the gym when I came out of the lab this morning…. I was cold and it’s really warm?” And then he sways a little on his feet to accentuate the exhausted vibe he’s giving off.
Considering the look on Steve’s face, he’s not really buying it, because the Spangled Grandpa doesn’t have a reputation of leaving his things on the floor. But Tony’s tired face ends the questioning.
And then Sam decides to open his damn mouth right at this moment. “Speaking of clothing, I found out yesterday that I packed two identical sweaters when we went to investigate Hydra. You bought us clothes, Tony?”
Hence Tony looking like a deer in headlights, all supposed exhaustion miraculously flown away with that innocent question. With all the frowny faces the dudes are making, she knows they’re listing mentally if the saw new clothes appear in their closets or their packs, and right about nooow…
“Somebody put a new jogging in my closet several days ago.” Bucky drawls from the couch, clutching his cup of coffee like a lifeline.
“How do you know it’s new?” Clint asks, “All you’re wearing is jeans and army pants, dude. I’ve never seen you in jogging pants.”
“For your information, I don’t sleep in combat gear when I’m at home, birdbrain.” She tries not to smile at the mention of home. “And the smell’s not mine. But it doesn’t smell like anyone here, so therefore” a big gesture of his metal arm to Clint. “It’s new.”
Actually, it’s not. We switched this jogging with the other one because it didn’t smell like you anymore. But I’m not explaining that.
“Well, I may have ordered new clothing for you guys I guess…But I honestly can’t remember hehe.” Tony intervenes, rubbing his face against the fabric of the sleeve, and everything in the room thinks: adorable.
And that overgrown shit knows the effect it has on people, and has no qualm about using it.
Natasha smiles toward Tony, thanking him for repairing his mistake, because one does not simply shimmy into the kitchen after a 72 hours’ bender wearing what should normally be Captain’s America property. But he’s forgiven, and she exits the living room without another thought.
The question of clothing only comes back when they are away on a mission, and she is piloting the jet, a Russian lullaby stuck in her head since Bucky started to hum it. Clint is rummaging through something at the end of the plane and comes towards her with questions written in his blue eyes.
“Nat?”
“Hm?”
“I am pretty sure I left another pair of tactical pants in the jet when we left for Wakanda last month. Do you know where they could be?”
“Do I look like your landlady, Hawkguy?”
“No, but you sure look comfy in my clothes. It’s cool to finally have front pockets in your pants, am I right?”
If the Quinjet enters suddenly a turbulent area at this exact moment, it’s not really her fault. Clint is braced on the nearby chair, his eyes squeezed shut, and she can’t help but smile.
“I’m borrowing them for now. Hope it’s not an inconvenience.” She says like it’s not really a big deal when it obviously is and that any negative reaction would make her question every coping mechanism she ever put in place because she might’ve brushed past the question of consent and directly went to ‘I am buying the exact same clothes they have so that they wear them without noticing and then I can take it back when there’s their scents on it.’
Which is an awesome plan by the way. She just couldn’t resist stealing someone’s actually belonging when they exited the jet after that hell of a mission, knowing full well that for this one, she was risking bigger. But now her stomach is in knots, she faces her fear of rejection full-on and everybody in the back of the jet is even more aware that she drives like a New York taxi, should it be car or plane, with or without traffic.
And then everything’s all right again. Because Clint smiles and open his big mouth. “Naaah, my casa es tu casa and all that jazz. If you wanna take some sweats from me, be my guest. As long as I can wear that awesome wool sweater you bought two months ago. That shit just looks like knitted heaven.”
She smiles, and now this whole plan of replacing to prevent noticing seems a bit foolish. “You got yourself a deal.”
So tonight, when they have movie night, she catches Tony by the elbow and drag him to her room. She takes the sweater he was wearing this morning, the scent of grease and coffee mingling softly with an older scent of paint and old books. Ignoring his protests, because - ‘normally’- this week was his turn with Steve and Bruce’s clothes. (she never said yes or no, so she can do the fuck she wants with that ‘rule’ of his. It was her idea, he just hoped on the ride, so he shuts up) she puts it on the pile for her pj’s.
To make him shut up, she throws him Bucky's jogging pants she hogged the last two days and Bruce’s hoodie. (well, to be more precise, he doesn’t have hoodies. But Bruce doesn’t need to know that it’s actually not his but Natasha’s.) While the inventor’s getting changed in her room, she goes to her bathroom, where she slips on Clint’s yoga pants and Steve’s ginormous hoodie.
They exit her room in total relax mode, hoodie drawn over their faces in a poor attempt to imitate Assassin’s Creed, each of them a blanket they lent respectively to Sam and Thor–without them knowing it was even lent, of course- and enter the living room in their complete this shit is stolen, whatchu gonna do 'bout it glory, where the rest of them are already there.
Bucky’s the first to catch up, squinting his eyes suspiciously at them. He even taps on Steve’s shoulder to get his attention when he finally understands.
“That’s my jogging.”
And Natasha can’t help but feel proud, because…
“Well, actually, no. It’s mine, but we’ll let you borrow it for a while.” And we’ll want it back is clearly written on both of their faces when she takes Tony by the hand to make him snap of his embarrassment and sit down with the others.
The plan she designed was maybe useless in the end, but she has now a whole stock of clothes she considers hers in order to surround herself with the scent of people she considers hers as well.
(And if in the process, her family starts to smell like her, then it’s golden.)