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Maria knows better, which is partially why she does it. Natasha stands at the observation window, looking down at white wisps of cloud and the city in the distance. They can still see New York, although soon that will change. They’re two floors above the windows shattered by the assault on the Hulk (and by the Hulk next) and it Maria would still have preferred to wait until maintenance teams had guaranteed the structural integrity before stepping onto the deck.
Natasha, of course, could care less; gravity might be a law onto others but Natasha has always taken fundamental physics with a pinch of salt.
“We won.” Maria states from behind Natasha, she does not worry that she will startle the assassin, she had not attempted to be quiet and Natasha would have been alerted to her presence before she slipped in the door. Every now and then Maria tried to sneak up on Natasha, she never managed.
“But at what cost?” Natasha was still dressed in street clothes, she and Barton had only just returned from sending Loki back to Asgard. Maria had not liked the idea of sending the two of them alone but Fury had nixed any surveillance teams. With the World Security Council breathing down his neck and wanting to get their hands all over the Avengers (not to mention still wishing to retain control of the tesseract and Loki) he thought radio silence would be for the best. Loki had been significantly cowed after his defeat, although the gag had certainly helped keep him silent, he could have taught lessons to a serpent in Eden.
“Billions of dollars in property damage.” The numbers were still rolling in but so far the damage was estimated at about $150 billion dollars. Maria knew that Stark was stepping up to pay for some of it (although with typical Stark strings attached) and there were a number of interested parties jockeying for the corpses of the Chitauri and their bio-ships. FEMA had managed to spring into action surprisingly quickly and SHIELD would be getting a few more figures added to their budget.
Natasha tips her head to the side in a way that means she’s thinking about death, about other people dead on the streets below or dying in hospitals, about the SHIELD agents wounded or killed in the attack on the helicarrier. Neither of them mentions the dead, dying, or wounded, neither of them mentions Phil’s body, cold and lifeless in the morgue.
Maria almost makes a joke about losing innocence but for Natasha, who once claimed to have no innocence to lose; it would be salt in an open wound.
“But for everything else,” Maria murmurs under her breath, “there’s Mastercard.”
The light is hitting the window just right that Maria can make out Natasha’s reflection in it. The redhead blinks, once, a sign that she gets the reference but does not quite understand the joke. Carefully, Maria approaches Natasha from behind and wraps her arms around Natasha’s slender waist. For seconds, Natasha is tense, she stares forward into the glass, possibly intending to use the reflection to stare into Maria’s eyes. Second after second, minutely, she relaxes until finally she leans back into Maria’s hold and Maria can rest her cheek against Natasha’s. They stay like that, companionable, and watch the world pass below them.
Eventually Maria slips her hands up Natasha’s body (she has always enjoyed touching Natasha, framing hips and breasts, thighs and shoulders, cupping Natasha’s cheeks and stroking down the elegant arch of Natasha’s foot) until finally she presses two fingers to Natasha’s cheeks and tugs on her lover’s downturned mouth. The smile reflected off the glass is ghastly in its falseness. Maria lets Natasha’s lips turn down again before, with exaggerated slowness, she pushes at Natasha’s cheeks until there is once more a smile.
Natasha snaps at her fingers. Maria lets Natasha catch her right pointer finger, lets Natasha press sharp teeth around the digit hard enough to leave white pressure marks. Natasha, in turn, doesn’t just bite her finger off. Maria reciprocates, she bites at Natasha’s exposed neck, licks and sucks until Natasha turns around and grabs her by her bun. Sometimes, they have sensual sex, or slow sex, sex with candles and foreplay that leaves them languid but not aching afterwards. Today is not going to be one of those times. Natasha pulls her head back by her bun and licks down Maria’s neck. Maria likes to call the hickeys Natasha is wont to leave ‘spider bites’, Natasha will hit her for that, a whack on the ass or, if she is feeling playful, a pillow to the face.
It is not their first time having sex on SHIELD property. There are cameras, of course, and both are well aware of them, they will tamper with the feed later and threaten anyone they need to.
Natasha’s jacket and shirt get tossed aside first before Maria’s zipper is pulled down to her waist. Maria reaches around to undo Natasha’s bra, allowing her access to Natasha’s breasts. She stroked underneath them before sliding her hands up and massaging them. Natasha gasps against the side of her neck, a puff of cool air over wet skin. Maria’s belt is tossed aside and she slips out of the top half of her uniform, leaving it to dangle off her admittedly skinny hips. Maria undoes Natasha’s belt and unbuttons her jeans, they take effort to push down Natasha’s hips and when she kicks them off she kicks off her boots too. She loses height then, Maria is always surprisingly charmed by how short Natasha is.
Which is probably why Natasha takes the chance to push Maria down to the ground and tug her jumpsuit down so it tangles around her ankles.
Later, much later, Maria pushed her hair back with shaking hands into a facsimile of her usually professional bun. She would need to touch it up later, with a mirror and a brush, but for now the messy up-do would just have to, well, do. Natasha was pulling up her SHIELD regulation underwear (specially requisitioned from R&D so as not to leave panty lines, Maria had a few pairs herself) and zipping up her catsuit. Maria watched as the marks she had left (bite marks, hickeys, scratches, and a faint set of finger prints on Natasha’s thigh) as well as the marks left from the battle against Loki (dark bruises across her ribs, upper arms, one on her ass) disappeared under Natasha’s armor.
If that wasn’t a metaphor, Maria didn’t know what was.