assassin

starry eyes

natasha romanoff
chapter five: starry eyes

I continue to pace around Tony's room, my stress levels dangerously high as I wait for Bucky to be done showering. To buy myself some time after he pinned me, I told him to hit the showers and let me know when he was done. Unfortunately, the man showers quickly so I have no idea how long I have to come up with a plan. Could I pretend to be sick? Could I just beat the shit out of him and hope he gets knocked out long enough to think it was all a dream? What if I just refused? But every option I could think of would result in him trusting me less, which is counterproductive to the larger, more important task at hand. However, one breath of this to Stark and that task is in the gutter anyways.

"Natalia?" Bucky calls, interrupting my thoughts. Damn him for constantly using my real name and always catching me off guard. I decide to ignore him for the time being, clinging to the last few minutes of privacy for the night. He still hasn't told me what he wants me to wear, but if I'm being honest that's much less worrying than some of the other aspects of tonight. "Hey, you."

I turn to face Bucky Barnes in nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants and boxers. I sigh heavily, signaling for him to "get this over with."

"I know what I want you to wear, doll." He smirks, then tosses me the pair of black undies that he discovered in my old room the other day. I groan, noticing the fact that he gave me no other covering but those garments. I can't do this. Before I can protest, another item is thrown onto the bed in front of me. I look down at it, an old black t-shirt that smells like an oddly pleasant mixture of rainy asphalt and mahogany. "It's better than Stark's." He comments as he turns and walks away from me.

With confusion descending upon me like a fog on a starry night, I slowly change into Bucky's outfit of choice. Once I'm done, I look at myself in the full length mirror that Tony has propped against his wall.

Narcissist, I scoff to myself with a little chuckle.

I stop observing myself for a moment when I hear the vibrations of my cellular device coming from the bed. I walk leisurely to pick it up, only to immediately drop it when I see the caller ID. I stare at it, hoping that by some act of God it would change to any other name than Tony Stark. What does he want? Did he change his mind about Bucky? Is he on his way to the tower now? Did he find out about our wager? Millions of options swarm through my head as I refuse to pick up the phone.

Pick it up, Nat, if you don't he might really come over here to check on you, I command myself, snatching the phone up and answering it right before it went to voicemail.

"Romanoff here." I answer as nonchalantly as I can. The second my voice goes through the line, Tony's is rattling off a million words a minute. Most of them are debriefings on the state of the Avengers, some are in the form of questions about my mission, but the last words are the ones that strike fear into my heart.

"I'll be over Friday morning to check up on you and your Manchurian Candidate. Make sure he's up to code, no funny business or rule breaches. Hate to have to boot him so soon into the training." He deadpans, his voice telling me that he wouldn't hate it as much as he claims. "See you then." And with that the line goes dead.

I try to reason with myself, thinking that I still have a few days and that by then this whole fiasco will have been over and forgotten. He has more trainings to go through and tomorrow starts Operation Trust the Avengers. By Friday, Bucky should be the prime addition, or at least on his way to becoming it. For now, however, I still have to get through the night.

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I knock twice on the door before entering the room, mentally trying to prepare myself as I do so. The shirt is soft and worn and just long enough that I'm not constantly having to yank it down. Plus, it smells really nice. When I first go in I don't see him, so I place myself crosslegged on the comforter, fidgeting with the hem of the shirt as I wait.