Set between Captain America the Winter Soldier and Captain America Civil War.
Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow is on a mission hunting down Rumlow and his ex-hydra strike team. Injured and on her way to a safe house she comes across someone unexpe...
Sword surveillance during whatever hours necessary, followed by arriving at James's flat day or night whenever she could, had become a part of Natasha's routine; with what time was hers, there was only one place she wanted to be:- with James Bucky Barnes. The unspoken arrangement had evolved into a relationship. Not purely physical, they cooked together danced together, and Natasha's favourite activity with him now wasn't sex, though that was never disappointing; it was reading. She'd lean up against him in his stolen clothes that were comfortably oversized with his titanium arm around her as he read aloud to them both. James was somewhat unwilling to acquaint himself with modern literature; he liked poetry and the classics. Natasha remembered some briefly from her time in an American school before her fake family had fled back to Russia. Nevertheless, she loved sitting and listening to him read.
"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
His deep tones were soft and measured as she turned the pages for him.
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If they had sex, she initiated it; he seemed perfectly content either way. For the past week, however, she merely wanted his company, his contact, his touch, and to sleep at his side. James stayed with her longer than he had done that first night Natasha had asked him, but, more often than not, she found him in the doorway to the outside, writing in his notebook or reading on the couch. Sometimes Natasha found him passed out on that couch from exhaustion, the empty vodka bottle at his side to keep the nightmares from re-emerging.
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Natasha began to feel anxious as the days had turned to weeks, becoming months, and their time together became a familiar, comforting routine. Surveillance showed Natasha, however, that her mission here was about to end, which had always been inevitable, but increasingly, she knew every moment with James could be her last. Every morning, she dreaded whether it would be time to say goodbye, and increasingly, it gave her reason to question what this affair had become. Was this love? She'd always considered that love was for children, the innocent. She was neither, and yet she'd watch him trying to ingrain the lines of his face into her memory, the sound of his voice as he read, the beat of his heart as they danced, his smell, his warmth. Occasionally, he'd catch her watching, observing, memorising, but she waved off his questions.
