Work Text:
“Where the hell have you been?” Maria snaps when she opens the door.
Natasha, limping slightly, with her ripped jacket and bruised knuckles, shrugs but can’t help but flush at the sight of Maria in the doorway.
Short hair tousled from sleep, Maria stands there in nothing but a worn pair of boxers and a black tank top riding up to reveal a pale sliver of skin. Her narrowed eyes radiate anger but for a moment, as she looks at her, despite the exhaustion, all Natasha can feel is a pulsing in her stomach, a hungry, stifled need clawing at her skin.
“Relax, Hill,” Natasha smirks, doing her best to turn her limp into a saunter as she moves past Maria into the apartment, “What’s got you so grouchy?”
Although Maria’s expression has softened somewhat at the sight of dried blood on Natasha’s torn clothing, she’s in no mood to be bated. Still, her eyes move quickly across Natasha’s body, accessing the damage, and she is relieved to see that Natasha is—at least physically—whole.
Natasha perches on a stool and watches Maria studying her. “I’m fine,” she rolls her eyes, “close the door.”
Maria glares but goes to put the deadbolt on and Natasha takes the seconds of reprieve to quiet her breathing, to still the tremor in her body, though she feels it anyway, a faint vibration in her bones, the sounds of gunfire, men screaming.
The room is pleasantly warm and suddenly she feels very tired. Maybe this is okay, Natasha thinks, closing her eyes.
“Where were you?” Maria’s edged voice cuts through the silence. “I know the assignment went off the rails, you were gone and then you were back, and”—and you didn’t come home to me, Maria thinks and curses herself for doing so—“then gone again, for days.”
Missions go badly all the time, so when Natasha went dark, Maria didn’t worry too much. Days of radio silence, however, of no contact and zero intel wore her down. Sometime toward the end of the first week, she stopped sleeping. The circles around her eyes deepened and she snarled at everyone until Barton was the only person left willing to interact with her, and all he did was silently leave coffee and food on her desk.
Later Maria would think of those twelve days of not knowing as a kind of gray terror, of panic dulled only by sleep deprivation and sheer force of will, the latter dwindling steadily in the face of the former.
Finally, on the night of the eleventh day, a call came in through rarely used channels. The Black Widow was alive and SHIELD agents were dispatched to bring her home. Several more hours passed—in constant radio contact this time—and, blurry eyed, Maria watched the jet land.
Then something happened, or didn’t happen, no one could be sure of anything except that as soon as the doors opened, Natasha took off.
The medic that had accompanied the jet told Maria that Natasha was basically fine, that they couldn’t exactly strap her down to a gurney and it wasn’t worth his life to try. He chuckled as he said this, until the look on Maria’s gaunt, exhausted face sent him scurrying from her sight.
“She’ll be fine,” Barton told her, strains of worry all too visible on his face as well. “Nat can take care of herself, she’s—“
“I know that,” Maria snapped.
Barton just sighed, rubbing the days-old growth of stubble on his chin. “Look, Hill, whatever happened, whatever she’s feeling, when she’s ready, she’ll be back.”
After that, Maria stops fighting Fury’s orders and goes home. Emptied out, alone in the dark, she sleeps until the knocking at the door shocks her awake.
“Where were you?” she asks again, quieter now.
“Mmm,” Natasha looks up, “I like your hair like that, all messy.” She smiles at Maria, “it’s like your sex hair.”
“That’s not funny, Natasha.”
“I’m not trying to be funny, Hill, I just like looking at you.”
Maria can feel herself blushing despite it all.
A beat, a second. She shakes her head, crosses her arms and stands up straighter, almost at attention, grateful for years of habit and muscle memory.
Natasha’s smile lingers for a moment and then slides away, she looks down, as if trying to memorize the wood-grained pattern of the floor. Long seconds pass, minutes, Maria digs her nails into her arms to keep herself quiet, to keep from doing what she really wants and taking Natasha in her arms.
A car horn sounds suddenly on the street outside and Natasha shudders, pulled from her trance. “Things… went wrong,” she mutters, finally, looking at her hands, balled into fists in her lap.
“I know that happens but…my whole team, Maria, every single one of them. And me? Not a scratch.”
“You look plenty scratched up to me.”
“Superficial. Bruises, a couple broken ribs, nothing important. There was so much blood and I walked away from it.”
“Nat,” Maria whispers. Her anger melted away, she wants to step forward, but something keeps her rooted in place, an arm’s length away.
Natasha looks up from her hands, open now, palms up in her lap, her eyes wander the room, seeing nothing in particular. When she speaks again, her voice is calm and steady. “They all died and I lived and I get to come here and be—” loved, she almost says, “—with you,” she trails off, looking past Maria, past walls and windows, into nothing.
“And I don’t deserve it. So I stayed away, but,” a grim smile crosses across her face, “here I am anyway, so that’s another way I’ve failed.”
Natasha looks up and for a minute neither of them speak. Then Maria breaks eye contact and looks away, arms still crossed tightly across her chest.
“I didn’t know where you were, Nat. For so many days, I didn’t know.”
Standing from the stool, Natasha squares her shoulders and, after a brief inner struggle, when she looks at Maria, her face is open.
“Touch me,” she says, and Maria knows how much it takes for Natasha to wring those two words of truth from herself, to lay them bare before her.
Please, Natasha thinks, but bites back at the last moment. So much is exposed already, one more syllable of need might bring everything down. I am a house made of cards, she thinks, watching Maria move toward her, I am paper in the wind.
Maria wants to rush forward but controls herself, steps slowly, tentatively bringing her hands up to cup Natasha’s face, covering her lips with her own, soft and warm, her mouth opening to Natasha’s.
The heat of it, banked fires, Natasha thinks, the lick of flames as Maria deepens the kiss, one hand wrapped in her hair, the other falling to her waist, pulling Natasha closer until they are hip to hip, all blaze and crackling air.
Natasha moans against Maria’s mouth, her grace, her usual dexterity absent as her fingers fumble at Maria’s tank top, slide desperately under the waistband of her boxers. Maria pulls away, her lips so red, Natasha can’t take her eyes off them, even as she leads Natasha to the bed.
Maria’s clothes fall to the floor and despite all her best efforts, Natasha is shaking. Maria is kissing her again, too lightly almost, her lips fluttering across her neck, the corner of her mouth, her fingertips flitting across her skin as if Maria needs to feel for herself that Natasha is whole.
“Stop being so goddamn nice,” Natasha hisses as Maria presses against her, still dropping light kisses down her neck, across her collarbone. Natasha can feel the heat of Maria’s bare skin through all the layers of clothing she’s still wearing and the ache in her ribs meets that other aching, that pull beneath her belly, and it feels so good she hates herself.
“I missed you,” Maria whispers, and Natasha jerks away, grasping instead at Maria’s hips to spin her around, roughly bending her over across the bed.
“You missed this,” Natasha says, grinding against Maria’s bare ass. Maria bites back a moan and inadvertently thrusts back, enjoying the feel of Natasha’s hands pulling her hips toward her.
Allowing herself that moment, Maria then pushes Natasha away and turns to face her. “No,” she grabs Natasha, pushing her onto the bed and climbing over her.
“No,” Maria says again, looking straight into Natasha’s wide-open eyes, “I missed you.” And then, before Natasha can protest again, Maria covers her mouth with her own, kisses her soft and firm and steady, holding her face between her hands until Natasha relaxes against her, bringing up her own hands to run shaking fingers through Maria’s hair.
After a little while, Maria breaks the kiss, her face flushed, eyes dark and serious. “Shh,” she murmurs in response to Natasha’s confusion and begins pulling off her tattered clothing.
Natasha watches, caught in a sort of disbelief as Maria’s hands work gently but deftly to peel off the ripped jacket, the blood stained shirt underneath, the pants covered in mud and god knows what else. Maria breathes in sharply when she finally sees the bruises scattered across Natasha’s ribs, the purple bloom spreading across her hip and down her thigh. She mutters something to herself and Natasha has to bite her lip and turn her head away when Maria runs her lips and fingertips lightly across the tender skin
“Maria,” Natasha whispers, breaking the long minutes of silence, and Maria kisses her again, kisses her until Natasha forgets that she doesn’t deserve it—this sweetness, this life, a bed with moonlight slanting through the blinds, pooling silver in the hollows of Maria’s collarbones.
“Nat,” Maria breathes, “is it okay if—”
“Yes, please, yes.”
Maria reaches her hand downward and Natasha gasps, forgetting again to hate herself for blatant need, because that constant aching emptiness is suddenly full and Maria’s strong fingers move steadily inside her, everything soft and hard at once.
It doesn’t take long and once Maria begins circling her clit with her thumb, Natasha cries out, her body tensing, every sore muscle clenched as she comes and Maria kisses her through it, kisses her until the world promises to maybe feel whole again.
Natasha’s cheeks are wet—she will never admit this—and Maria folds herself around her, solid at her back, face buried in her neck. As her heartbeat slows, Natasha breathes deep, catching the faint scent of Maria’s shampoo, something sweet and tart at once.
Shutting her eyes she pulls Maria even closer and that night, when she sleeps, Natasha doesn’t smell blood anymore.