In her youth, Sharon was competitive. Some people called it type A, some people called it determined, or motivated. Most people saw her grades and thought she was merely studious. But no. The only reason she’d mastered the alphabet so early was because Ryan Hereford told her girls were too dumb to read. Algebra, Anna Millbrook was a bully who boasted that she’d be first in class. Valedictorian in high school? Tom Faulkner kept saying sexual stuff and wanted to be valedictorian to get into an Ivy League school.
As she gets older, her temper cools. She recognizes that she wants to go into SHIELD, and she exerts herself to be the best agent she can, to get by on her own merits and not those of her great-aunt. Maybe she’s just ambitious, she thinks.
Tom Faulkner doesn’t get into college; there’s an anonymous tip to the cops and they catch him driving drunk with an unregistered gun in the glove compartment. Not that Sharon ever mentions it. Not that anyone ever has a reason to think she had anything to do with it.
In SHIELD, she is no longer competitive. She is only professional.
Natasha survived by being competitive. She never would have survived the Red Room is she hadn’t pushed herself to be better than everyone else. She deconstructed people. Their strengths. Their weaknesses. Their wants. Their fears.
She survives, and she joins SHIELD. There, she isn’t competitive. She is only a survivor. Fury may be smarter. Clint may be a better shot. When he’s eventually found, she’ll realize that Steve may be stronger. But she isn’t competitive with any of them. Because she already knows how to take each of them down. If she ever has to.
She’s sent on a mission with Clint and a rookie agent. Fury wants to test Thirteen, but wants agents along who can fend for themselves if things go to shit.
Things go to shit. In Thirteen’s defense, she wasn’t responsible for what goes wrong.
Infuriatingly, Thirteen is responsible for much of what goes right. While Clint and Natasha are busy in their room, Thirteen is downloading files and fighting bad guys and watching their backs. It’s impressive.
It isn’t more impressive than the Red Room. She isn’t more impressive than any of the Red Room’s recruits.
But it’s close enough that Natasha keeps a closer eye on Agent Thirteen.
Sharon knows she’s good. It isn’t her being cocky. It’s her being realistic. But she also knows she can be better. That she needs to be better. She hears that no one can come close to Black Widow, except maybe Melinda May, the Cavalry, who has been doing paperwork for years now, and Grant Ward, who spends too much time eyeing female agents for Sharon’s tastes. Perhaps, she thinks, she could spar against STRIKE Force, but they like pain too much – both giving and receiving.
Sharon spots Natasha in the hallway, but Natasha is gone by the time Sharon reaches where she was, vanished in the crowd of agents. It happens again a couple days later. More times the next week. It’s almost as if Natasha is doing it on purpose. Not avoiding her, necessarily. It’s as if Natasha is baiting her.
Sharon won’t admit it, but she enjoys the idea of a challenge.
She shows up at Natasha’s apartment unannounced, looks unimpressed by Natasha’s nonchalance when she opens the door.
“I’m surprised it took you so long,” Natasha says.
“Bullshit,” Sharon counters. “No one else has tracked you down. Despite trying. Now are you going to train with me or not?”
“Is that all you want?” Sharon can’t think of anything else she would ask for, and Natasha smiles. “All right, Thirteen. Let’s train.”
She gets more bruises with Natasha than she’s ever gotten in her life, and she loves every moment of it. They spar on mats in Nat’s living room, away from prying eyes, and Sharon’s glad that Natasha doesn’t leer at her the way the men do. When Natasha looks at her, she’s sizing Sharon up, finding ways to pin her down.
At least, that’s all Sharon thinks Natasha’s doing.
“You’re never going to take me down at this rate,” Natasha complains.
Sharon has to agree.
The night after she has a dream, she moves differently. She knows it even without Natasha pinning her to the mat twelve times in less than five minutes.
“What’s with you?” Natasha demands, and Sharon can hear the barely-hidden disgust in her voice.
Sharon sits. Avoids eye contact. Starts to speak. Brushes some hair out of her face.
“Oh. Did you have a sex dream about me?”
Sharon goes scarlet, and Natasha laughs.
“Was I any good?”
After a moment, Sharon shakes her head. “That’s why I can’t look at you. You were so embarrassingly awful. Just. Awful.”
Natasha laughs again. “I’m going to make you pay for that.”
Sharon doesn’t get dropped on the mat as much after that. She has to defend herself, after all.
Natasha keeps tabs on Sharon at work. Always on the sly. So sly that only Fury puts the pieces together, though he never says anything. She’s pleased to hear that Sharon is moving up through the ranks, becoming one of the top fighters in her unit. She’s likely to get promoted soon.
“What are you going to do when you beat me?” she asks Sharon.
“I’ve got plans.”
“They involve kissing me?”
“No, there’s a burger joint I-” Sharon blinks at her. Natasha has grown increasingly fond of how Sharon doesn’t assume everything is about sex right off the bat. Most people treat her as a sex object, but Sharon… definitely doesn’t. She has her suspicions as to why, but Natasha has always loved a challenge.
“I could make your dreams come true,” Natasha says, her voice sultry.
Sharon covers her face, her shoulder shaking. The laughter breaks loose. “Oh, God! That- you were so bad, though! So bad!”
“Like you on the mat?”
Sharon wipes away tears. Goddammit, tears. Laughing about how bad dream!Natasha was at sex. “Looks like we’ve both got something to prove.”
“Deal,” Natasha says firmly.
Sharon’s face goes slack. “Wait. What?”
“Nope. It’s a deal.” Natasha pulls Sharon to her feet. “Now try to beat me.”
Sharon gets butterflies sometimes when she looks at Natasha. She’d never admit it. Butterflies are for unwise teenagers. “You know it would never work between us.” She still can’t drop Natasha to the mat.
“Darling.”
“That’s what I-”
“No, the line is, “You know it would never work between us, darling.’”
“Is it?” She gets dropped to the mat and groans.
Natasha looks down at her. “I think it depends on what you want to work. If I were thinking friends with benefits, and you were thinking a relationship...”
“Didn’t think of friends with benefits,” Sharon admits.
“You’d want a relationship with me.”
She helps her up whenever Sharon falls, Sharon thinks. But she doesn’t say that. Plus, Natasha is usually the reason Sharon’s fallen in the first place. “I’m an all-in person,” she says instead.
Natasha wrinkles her nose. “I’m not.” Her voice is flat, but she holds out a hand to help Sharon up nonetheless.
“Maybe I could make you an all-in person,” Sharon challenges.
It must sound better in her head, because as soon as it leaves her mouth, Natasha is laughing harder than Sharon’s ever seen her laugh.
It takes one year, two months, and three days for Sharon to finally pin Natasha to the mat. Natasha’s look of surprise is replaced by one of pride. “Finally,” she says.
Sharon jumps to her feet, beaming, and offers Natasha a hand.
Natasha takes it and stands close, almost too close. “You want your prize now?”
Sharon glances at the clock. “Ugh. Burger place is closed.”
Natasha snorts. “That had better be a joke.” And then her lips are on Sharon’s. They aren’t as soft as Sharon had imagined. They’re still soft, but they’re also demanding. Commanding. There’s no way to mistake her intentions.
“It wasn’t,” Sharon gasps. “But I guess this’ll do, too.”
Natasha pulls away but keeps their bodies flush together. “You guess?”
“I mean.” Sharon blinks. “Yeah. I mean. Between awful sex with you and a burger, I really want that burger.”
Natasha sighs. “You dropped me on the mat. Doesn’t that show you that anything’s possible? Maybe your dream was wrong.”
Sharon considers. “I’ve had a lot of bad sex, and a lot of better burgers.”
Natasha covers her eyes and shakes her head. “You’re almost impossible.”
“Weren’t you just going on about how anything is possible?”
Natasha grabs her by her hand and pulls Sharon to another room. A spartan bedroom with a couple framed artworks from a home store. Sharon looks around.
“Personal things put people I care about at risk,” Natasha says, uncomfortable.
“You’re just not an all-in person.” She grins uncertainly, bites her lip to try to stop, knowing she looks like an idiot. “Now that I’ve pinned you to the mat, maybe that’s my next goal.”
Natasha is instantly closer. “You’re on.”
It takes a week for all the bruises to fade, and by that time, she has new ones. Natasha makes love much like she fights, but Sharon is confident that she can show Natasha some different, gentler ways.
She isn’t giving up. She’s stubborn like that. And maybe she, too, likes a challenge. Likes a fight. Likes beating someone at their own game.
So she gives Natasha a black cat magnet for her fridge one night when she goes over.
“What’s this for?” Natasha asks.
“To put on the fridge.”
“I know that, but why?”
Sharon smiles. “Because black cats are unlucky and so’s the number thirteen. This way you have something here to remind you of me without other people knowing what it means.”
“You’re just trying to get me to go all in, you dork.” Natasha sighs. “Okay. See if you can drop me.”
Sharon grins. Now that they’re more evenly matched, now that Sharon knows she can drop Natasha, sparring with her is even better. What happens after has nothing to do with it, or so she tells herself.
It doesn’t escape her notice that the next time she comes by, the magnet is on the fridge.