Real Love is Hard to Find

Me and No One Else

This was driving her crazy.

Every time Natasha saw Steve, it seemed like he was spending time with Sharon Carter. Now, there was nothing wrong if they decided to hang around each other, but honestly, this was far too much.

Last week, Sharon kept finding some excuse to drop by the Avengers complex. She had some special assignment in upstate New York, and Steve had invited her - really, what the hell was he thinking when he did that?! - to come over sometimes. And boy, did she ever. Natasha thought there hadn't been a single day when she didn't see the blonde, and that began to irritate her something fierce.

Both Wanda and Clint noticed her attitude after a while. It was kind of hard not to. Natasha had grown increasingly gruff and ill-tempered each passing day. Seeing Sharon and Steve together was threatening to make her the nastiest woman on the planet. Every time she saw Steve, he was either sitting next to Sharon, eating with her, running with her - he only ran six miles so Sharon could join him in the morning; Natasha, herself, could go for twelve miles with him, not a measly six - or sparring with her.

At breakfast, Clint asked her about it. Between a spoonful of yogurt, he asked, "Why are you so pissed, Nat? You are the one who told Steve to call Sharon. Did you really think he would just ignore your advice?"

Natasha bit into her blueberry bagel and scowled at Clint. "No. I knew that he would call her. I just didn't expect things to happen so fast between them. They're spending so much time together that it could really affect the team as a whole. I just don't want Steve's focus to be on something less important."

She was really overcompensating for the reason of voicing her concern, but Clint wasn't going to address it. Natasha needed to be honest with herself about why seeing Steve and Sharon together bothered her so much.

"Nat...you know I'm not one to butter you up with assurances and tell you that everything is gonna be okay because it clearly isn't. You need to sit down and have a talk with him about your feelings."

There was no pretense in her eyes as she looked back at Clint. He was her best friend and he knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. It was a blessing because he could give her a helping hand when she needed one and a swift kick in the ass when she needed that, too. In this case, it felt like both.

"I...I don't know if I should. Clearly, he has an interest in Sharon. They're probably in a relationship too, so if I were to tell him 'Hey, guess what? I like you,' it's not going to end well."

"You're damn right, it's not going to end well. Not with you saying it like that. 'Tasha...you're the toughest woman I know. And Steve Rogers is the toughest man I know. I've seen the way you work, both in the field and off-duty, as friends. It's pretty obvious that you have feelings for him, at least it is to me. I think there's a high probability that he feels the same. If I could pick any two people in the world who I would love to see together, it would be you and him."

There were only four times in Natasha's life when she was genuinely taken by surprise by other people, and this was the fifth. Natasha raised her eyebrows and said, "Clint, how long have you known?"

He sighed and took a sip of his coffee. "I don't know. Maybe a few weeks before we dealt with Ultron. The two of you had definitely gotten more chummy since the fight with the Chit'auri, but I dismissed it as a friendship that had grown during your work together on SHIELD missions..."

"But?"

"But I started realizing that in the midst of all the teasing you give him about his age and trying to get him a date, you really care about him. You've even touched him on the arm or on the shoulder. You hardly ever touch other people like that, but with Steve, you seem freer to be close. Whenever I see the both of you around each other, I noticed there was something in your eyes at times that made me realize you had begun to fall in love with him."