To Go Unseen (A Natasha Romanoff Story)

24 [hotel bed in Houston]

James remained fast asleep for half of the morning and Natasha laid across him with her cell phone, wide awake and hard at work tracking Yelena Belova.

“She’s still in Nebraska…,” Natasha said after a while. She’d gotten into the new SHIELD’s tracking resources and was searching photos and tweets and security camera info to find Belova. “There’s been three sightings of her there in the past ten hours. She’s getting careless.”

“Mmmph,” James said and rolled over a little and Natasha shifted around him and laid back down with her head on his stomach and her bare feet crossed in front of her, twisting in the sheets. The sun was starting to come up and light was coming through the curtains. She’d already gotten up once and shut them further so James could keep sleeping, but he couldn’t do it in this bright light for long.

“You’re gonna miss the continental breakfast, darling,” she said, her eyes on her phone. She felt one of his hands-metal?-lazily stroke her hair.

“Mmm I don’ need breakfas,” James mumbled. She smiled a little, both because of him and because her hard work was paying off, and downloaded another fuzzy picture of Yelena onto her smartphone.

“You do,” she said back distractedly. “Hate to break it to you, but humans have to eat. Even super ones.”

“Can we jus stay here…,” he said back and she looked up at him, his eyes closed and tired and stubble on his chin.

“Sure,” she said back finally and she nuzzled her face into his chest, turning and moving her smartphone along with her. “We’ll lay here forever.”

“And everythin’ else’ll jus… Go away…,” James replied slowly and Natasha laughed.

“Whatever you say,” she said. Then, she pulled up all her social media accounts (surely the first thing Yelena Belova had even thought to stalk), and made one large post to all of them.

She took a few selfies to post with it, for good measure. She scooted up next to James’ face and took one of her kissing his cheek while he smiled sleepily and another of her sitting up and smiling almost tauntingly at the camera with James under the sheets behind her. It was so brash and borderline uncharacteristic that it was almost a joke. It was perfect.

She wrote this in accompaniment;

“Vacation w bf James in Houston! Luv him <3 Were staying in the Holiday Inn on the second floor and havin SO much fun. ;) Ur move, Belova

#bejealous #vacationtime #houston #buckybarnes #romanoff #iamtheblackwidow”

Then, she clicked post.

“I’m putting some pictures of us up,” she told James. He rolled over and sat up clumsily, then, squinting, looked over her shoulder at the post on her phone.

“Oh, geez,” he said and she heard the cringe in his voice.

“What?” She said back. “You’re cute when you’re half asleep.” Then, “Maybe I should have picked a nice filter…”

“You shouldn’t take pictures of me,” James groaned. “I wasn’t even wearing a shirt.”

“Shh, James, it was your right side, okay? They couldn’t see anything,” Natasha said and James didn’t respond. Instead, she heard him get out of bed and start pulling on clothes. She heard him grumbling.

“Can’t take pictures of me when I’m fully dressed and awake, no,” he muttered. She turned around.

“James, it was a joke,” she said. “I was showing Belova that she’s not stopping us from being happy, okay? I was rubbing it in her face because you looked so content. Okay?”