Allegro

Elektra Natchios was a pompous bitch. Based on their interaction, Natasha could tell that Elektra thought she deserved Snow Queen more than she did. Which she did not. The fact that she was pretending to be so nice to her really threw her off. In the entire time she’d known Elektra, she was never kind to Natasha. The fact that she even said she would’ve rather gotten Natasha’s role over her own was just ridiculous. And her getting Bucky involved showed how desperate she was to hurt her. Why else would Elektra start dancing with her best friend?

Matt walked into the bedroom as Natasha was changing into her work clothes in the morning. That day it was a dark green, boatneck Yumiko leotard with white Capezio tights. Natasha was the queen of mixing brands. She was going to put some Nike sweatpants and a sweatshirt on over it. Maybe it wasn’t fashionable, but it was comfortable.

“What do you think of the look?” Natasha asked, stepping into her sweatpants.

“Looks amazing as always,” Matt responded.

In ways, Matt being blind was a blessing. Natasha never had to worry about looking good to him, though she actually still did. She’d always know he fell in love with her for her, not her looks. It also made it very easy for her to get affirmations. Natasha would always ask him how she looked or if she looked good or if she looked fat or anything like that. Of course, he always responded with the correct answer. Though she knew it wasn’t necessarily true, it still made her feel better.

“I’m going to work from home again today,” Matt said, changing out of his work clothes and into sweats. He was working from home more and more recently.

“Oh?” Natasha questioned, turning towards him. “Why? Is something wrong?”
Matt sighed. “No, everything is okay. I just can’t focus there very well. There's too much going on. Too many people, too much noise.”

Matt was easily stimulated, so Natasha didn’t push it any further. She trusted him. Besides, he was close with his coworkers, so it was pretty unlikely that there was any sort of work drama with him. She was jealous of that. Natasha would do almost anything to not have to deal with Elektra anymore. Almost.

There was a company class right away in the morning, before real rehearsals would start. It was a petit allegro class, which Natasha wasn’t necessarily looking forward to. Since it was jump-heavy, it always got her very tired out. Being tired was not helpful for rehearsals. 

Natasha showed up at the company extremely prepared, for once. She had her clothes on, her hair perfected, her make-up done, fully stretched and warmed up, and a full stomach. Usually she only had about one of those things done when she arrived at the company. 

Walking into the rehearsal studio for the petit allegro class, it appeared that Maria was going to be the instructor. Natasha absolutely loved Maria, so she was excited about it. She felt like Maria gave the best instruction out of any of her instructors when it came to technique.

“Good morning,” Maria greeted as Natasha walked in, the first company member to arrive.

“Good morning,” Natasha responded, standing by the barre for a little extra warming up.

“Are you ready to do some petit allegro?” Maria asked.

“Never,” Natasha replied. “It’s really not my thing. I much prefer adagios. And pas de deus, of course. Though it seems I’m no longer a part of the go-to pas de deux pairing.”

“Oh, Natasha,” Maria sympathized. “Tony told me you weren’t happy with Sugar Plum Fairy. But trust me, it’s much better for you than Snow Queen. I think that because you’ve already danced this role multiple times, you can really push it and make it the best Sugar Plum anyone has ever seen.”

“I’ll do my best,” Natasha promised.

As Natasha was doing some tendus, Bucky walked into the studio. He was wearing dark red biker shorts and a black t-shirt, which was new for him. It looked amazing. It was much more fitting than the classic black pants and white t-shirt look that most of the male dancers wore on a daily basis. Bucky walked over to Natasha at the barre and sat down, beginning to do some hamstring stretches.

“Hi,” Natasha said, looking straight forward and not at Bucky.

“I’m super excited to work on some jumps today,” Bucky enthused.

“I’m not excited to work on jumps before we have to do some rehearsals. I know it’s gonna tire me out,” Natasha said.

“If this class tires you out, Natasha, then your stamina is much too low,” Maria commented from the front of the room, evidently eavesdropping. 

Natasha blushed. She wasn’t a bad dancer, she didn’t have bad stamina. Well, she didn’t think she did. But maybe Maria was right: maybe if she couldn’t get through a petit allegro, her stamina was bad. That was something she could work on, something she would work on. Since she was just doing the same old dance, she’d have plenty of time to work on the treadmill. 

It wasn’t long before the studio was full of company members. Natasha noticed Bucky and Elektra constantly looking over at each other, but she chose to ignore it. It reminded her of middle school crushes. It hurt her to think that they were spending so much time together now, rehearsing.

The class was absolutely and utterly exhausting. It was filled with entrechats, brises, and royales. And it wasn’t even just filled with that, it was packed full of those plus plenty of other tiring steps. The constant looks between Bucky and Elektra didn’t help, either. Overall, it was not a great rehearsal. As she was grabbing her water bottle and getting ready to go to her rehearsal, Elektra walked over to her. Great. Just the person she wanted to speak to. Never.

“Hey, nice class today,” Elektra said in a friendly tone.

“Thanks,” Natasha replied, bluntly.

Natasha could see that Elektra was preparing to say something more, but she didn’t want to talk to her. She took her water bottle and went into her dressing room as Elektra began her next sentence. Natasha wasn’t trying to be a bitch, she just didn’t want to become friends with the girl who had made her life a little more hellish. And could anyone blame her for that? She wasn’t going to easily forgive Elektra for all the shit she had done.

Today Natasha would be spending her rehearsal period working privately with Maria on the Sugar Plum variation. Then she’d be spending a little time working on the Sugar Plum pas de deux with her partner, Alexei. Alexei was a principal dancer at the company, and he was actually Bucky’s understudy for Swan Lake who she ended up dancing with. He was a good partner: he was actually her usual pas de deux partner. Overall, it was a very average day.

The next week and a half was extremely mundane. In fact, it was almost painfully normal. The one thing that wasn’t very normal about it was Bucky. Ever since he got partnered with Elektra, she was seeing him less and less. They spent an extremely long period of time practicing daily. They were really trying to perfect that dance. It was annoying to Natasha. That should’ve been her dance. And now she rarely got to see her best friend. Bucky and Natasha only got to talk for about fifteen minutes a day in person now, as opposed to the usual hour. It made life a little more lonely.

Natasha figured that Bucky wasn’t only absent from her life right now, but from everyone’s. For that reason, Natasha decided to take an afternoon away from rehearsing her Sugar Plum variation and go see Steve. Steve was one of Natasha’s close friends even before Steve and Bucky started dating. He was just such a sweet and attractive guy, it was almost impossible to not be, or want to be, friends with him. 

Steve lived in a cute little house in the suburbs with his best friend, Sam. Sam was also a really cool and sweet guy, but he was always working because he was a social worker. It was a much needed, yet absolutely exhausting, career. The house was always clean and looked super sleek. Natasha would love to live in a house just like it. In fact, once she and Matt had a family, it was likely they’d get a cute little house in the suburbs. But she didn’t want to think about that yet, that was much too soon.

Natasha stood on Steve’s porch and knocked on the door. Yes, his house was cute enough for a porch. There was even a little welcome mat with mistletoe on it. Super adorable.

Steve opened the door promptly and smiled at Natasha. 

“Hey, Nat, come on it,” He said, stepping aside to let her in.

Natasha walked inside his house and carefully took her shoes off at that mat. All the flooring was tile, so she didn’t want her shoes to get it all dirty. It was way too much of a hassle to clean.

“You don’t have Nutcracker rehearsal?” Steve asked, taking Natasha’s coat and putting it in the closet for her. God, he really was the sweetest.

“I decided to take this afternoon off. I need some time to… I dunno, not work on the Sugar Plum variation.”

Steve nodded. “Makes sense. We don’t start our real rehearsals until next week when we’ll be accompanying the dancers. I’m kinda looking forward to it and kinda dreading it. It’s always fun at first, but we do it every year, so the music gets old fast.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about dancing Sugar Plum. I think I’ve done it the past four years in a row,” Natasha said. 

“I don’t know how you deal with that,” Steve said. “Like, for us, there’s no way we can ever play different music. But they could give you a different role. Though I suppose there’s not that many roles you can give to your principal dancers. I mean, the main character is a little girl.”

“I think she’s twelve this year,” Natasha stated.

“I’m always amazed at how good the little kids can be,” Steve said.

Steve grabbed two waters from the fridge and a carton of raspberries. Obviously he knew Natasha was always trying to be healthy. Sometimes it sucked, but it was kind of all she knew. She was a dancer since she could walk, it was always about what she could do to get better. One of those things was maintaining the ideal body. Or, as ideal as possible. And it did help. Natasha attended the Vaganova ballet school, which had strict weight requirements.

Natasha sat down on Steve’s couch, pulling her knees to her chest. It was her preferred way to sit. Steve handed her a water, which she promptly opened. Water was probably her favorite drink.

“I’m thinking of making chocolate dipped strawberries this weekend,” Steve said, leaning against the arm of the couch so as to face her.

“Please please please give me some of them when you do,” Natasha begged.

“Maybe you guys could come over Saturday night,” Steve suggested. “I mean, we were at your place recently: we gotta return the favor.”

Natasha smiled and nodded. “I would absolutely love that, and I’m sure Matt would, too.”

Matt and Natasha loved to spend their weekend with their friends. Most often it was Steve and Bucky, since Bucky was Natasha’s best friend. But they also spent quite a bit of time with Matt’s friends from the office. Matt’s friends were busy more often than Natasha’s were, though. With Steve and Bucky, they usually just had dinner and talked. Sometimes they would play card games, that was a Bucky thing. 

“Come over after you eat dinner,” Steve instructed. “I’m gonna just make and buy a bunch of snacks for us. I much prefer making snacks to making meals.”

“We’ll be there. Probably around eight thirty,” Natasha said.

Steve and Natasha sat in a comfortable silence for a while, just eating the berries. Natasha looked around the room and noticed something new. On the tv stand, there was a new photograph. It was a picture of Steve and Bucky standing together after a Swan Lake performance. It was absolutely adorable and really sweet. Natasha had advocated for Steve and Bucky to date for a long time, she was happy to see them in such a loving relationship now.

“So, does Bucky talk a lot about Elektra now?” Natasha asked, nervous to hear the answer.

Steve shrugged. “I guess. I mean, more than he used to.”

Natasha definitely saw this coming. Bucky was such a nice guy, it was easy for anyone to become friends with him. And Elektra was good at switching up her personality. She went from being a complete bitch to randomly wanting to be friends with her. It hurt, but there was nothing Natasha could do about it. It wasn’t her place to tell Bucky who to be friends with. 

“It sucks,” Natasha stated.

“I’ll try to talk to him about it,” Steve offered. “I can talk about how I think it would hurt you if he were friends with Elektra and all that stuff.”

“That would be amazing,” Natasha said.

The day after talking to Steve, Bucky came into Natasha’s dressing room before rehearsal. It was obvious that Steve had talked to him and convinced him to spend more time with her. Instead of being upset that Bucky had to be convinced, Natasha was just grateful that he was spending more time with her. Their conversation was nothing abnormal: they talked about the usual company drama. What was unusual was that as soon as Bucky walked out, Elektra walked in.

“Oh my gosh, could you just leave me alone?” Natasha begged. She was tired of constantly interacting with Elektra.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Elektra said, her face flushing.

“I’m sorry, Elektra, but I don’t want to talk to you,” Natasha said. “You’ve been 

rude to me since the beginning. I don’t want to just forgive and forget. I have lots of friends, I don’t need another.”

“I just want to make things better. I don’t want us to hate each other anymore. You don’t have to become friends with me, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d forgive me,” Elektra said.

“You’ve never even apologized,” Natasha stated.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so rude to you over the years,” Elektra apologized.

Natasha rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Yeah, there’s no way I’m accepting that poor excuse of an apology.