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Natasha only wakes when there are voices on the landing, and that’s how she knows she’s home. She also knows because of the familiar idiocy of said voices, trying and failing to keep quiet.
“Buck, you need to – ouch, hey –”
“Don’t just stop on the stairs like that, you big lug, I’m the one who should be saying ouch.”
“Not very Winter Soldiery of you though, is it?”
A moment of silence, in which Natasha can imagine James’ stare exactly, moonlight finding his eyes. She presses her smile into the pillows. James evidently forgoes a verbal response for a well-aimed jab, because Steve lets out an undignified yelp before James shushes him, just to rile him up even more.
“You absolute bastard –”
“Nat’s sleeping, Rogers, shut it.”
“Don’t give me that, you and I both know…”
Their bickering fades behind the door of the guest bathroom, which usually means one or both are injured, but not badly enough to be kidnapped by medical. She lets herself drift to the murmur of voices, interspersed with the shuffling of bathroom cabinets, and then the shower running. Not quite military quick but not much longer, so no funny business, then. Interesting. Post-mission decompression can be a volatile thing still, between the three of them. For James especially, but he’s getting better.
A few minutes later, the bedroom door opens and Steve pads in, unabashedly naked and towelling his hair dry until he gets to their chest of drawers and pulls out his sleep clothes. Natasha watches through half-lidded eyes, tracing his outline in the dark before drawling, “No need to get dressed on my account, darling.”
Steve laughs, quiet and delighted, and crawls onto his side of the bed, Natasha rolling to meet him. He wraps her in his arms and squeezes, tighter than usual, and she tucks her face against his chest and breathes in the familiar scent of him, clean and warm and whole. His heartbeat is steady but still a little elevated, and she listens to it slow before she needs space, and shifts accordingly.
Steve loosens his grip immediately but she doesn't go far, just lies back in the crook of his arm, one hand staying on his chest. He hums happily and noses at her, dropping a kiss against her hair. Sam jokes about golden retrievers a lot but James calls Steve a giant cat like this, rubbing up on them for all the touch he can get. She acts like she indulges him, but they all know it’s a mutual benefit.
“Went well, then?” she asks, voice still sleep-heavy. Oh, the luxury of staying lax in the dark, and asking about a mission as if any of them had normal jobs… “Where’s James?”
Steve lies back and exhales, a deep breath out of powerful lungs. “Pretty well, all considered,” he replies, answering her first question. “Different without you, of course, but good practice. Wanda’s getting better and better.” He pauses. “Bucky did meet some trouble though. Minor injuries on his side but collateral was higher than expected. He said he’d take the other room.”
They all sleep separately sometimes, thanks to timing, night terrors, or the simple desire for privacy, which remains a priceless commodity for them all. Sometimes it just gets too damn hot with two supersoldiers in the bed; if one of them sleeps alone it’s no harm, no foul. But sometimes… “Do I need to check on him?” Natasha asks, steeling herself to leave the cocoon of the bed and Steve’s arms.
Luckily, Steve shakes his head and kisses her temple in silent thanks. “Nah,” he says, “he’ll be alright.”
“Well look at you,” she says, voice teasing but hand gentle against his side. “A few years ago you would never have been able to leave him be.”
“Oh shush,” he says, and she doesn’t need to see his eyeroll to know it happened. “God forbid a fella loses his best friend for seventy years and then –”
Natasha raises her hand and pats his mouth as condescendingly as possible. He nips at her fingers before catching her hand and kissing the back of it, one on each knuckle. “He’s come a long way,” he says. “In large part thanks to you. So that’s why I say – he’ll be alright.”
Ugh, sap. That’s why they need him, to maintain sincerity in the face of Natasha’s deflective dryness and James’ alternating sass and silence.
She can tell he’s dropping off already, breathing evening out. It’s a trained habit, sure, but she knows he can relax so fast because she’s here, and their bodies know they are home. A privilege, a blessing, a gift she never thought she’d have.
“Okay,” she whispers, and leans up to kiss the corner of his mouth. She feels him smile even as he sinks into sleep.
She wakes again sometime later, when the bed dips on her other side.
“Sorry,” James says in quiet Russian, because of course he can tell she’s awake. “How’s the foot?”
“Healing,” she responds, turning to him as he settles on his side. “How’s the spare room’s floor?”
“You’re mean,” he says, and she finds his pout with her fingers before she turns his head to kiss him. He sighs into it, metal fingers running up and down her arm before shifting up to brush her hair back from her face. She waits, watching him watch her. Finally, he says, “Someone snuck on me in my sniper’s nest. Small, fast, silent.” She realises they’ve curled towards each other in a way she remembers with her body if not her brain, faces so close in the dark they barely have to whisper. Once done to avoid detection, now done to not disturb the sleeping giant to their right. James’ hand brushes past her neck. “Reminded me of you.”
Natasha bunches her fingers in the worn softness of his shirt. “How romantic,” she says, keeping her voice light. “Which version of me?”
Perhaps not light enough – his fingers tighten fractionally in her hair before he deliberately lets go and and lies back, movements slow and painfully telegraphed. It’s how he used to move when he’d first come in from the cold, like a caged predator waiting to be put down for one wrong move. It has her propping herself up on one elbow and putting a firm hand on his chest. “James?”
He stares up at her for a long moment before muttering, “You’re worse than Steve sometimes, you know?”
Natasha prods him in the ribs. “How dare you?” she says, “And answer the question.”
Maybe she is worse than Steve about this, but ‘this’ includes her life – or lives – and she can’t help but dig her heels in at that. Even if she never remembers it herself, she wants to know. And for better or worse, the only person left to tell her is James. Plus, she knows her frankness in asking helps him too, despite Steve’s wincing; helps James face the guilt he still harbours and tries to hide. Hyprocrite. Who’d betrayed who, during which decade, under which owners – what did it matter when they are here now, with a joint light to boot?
Finally, James replies, “I don’t know. When you were younger – little, I mean. In training. Not skilled enough yet, and still…” His hand finds the mark on her left shoulder. “I snapped her neck and then went right back to my scope. She lay next to me for the rest of the mission and –” His fingers press down on scar tissue. “It could have been you, Natalia. So many times, it could’ve been…”
“Yes,” Natasha says, because it’s the truth. That’s when her patchwork memory of the earliest days sways in her favour – she can accept the facts like lines in a report, rather than a stab in the gut. She tucks herself against James’ side and continues, “but it wasn’t, and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t take us away from each other, not in the ways that matter.”
“How romantic,” James parrots her, dry but with the same underlying weight.
“Neither of you are romantic at four a.m., Jesus,” Steve says from beside them, in accented but comprehensible Russian. He is still too smug about learning the language without them realising until it was too late. “I knew there was more to your report, Bucky.”
“Yeah yeah, you want a medal for it, pal?” James gripes, switching back to English in well-trodden annoyance. “Go back to pretending to sleep, Natalia and I were having a moment.”
“Can Natalia and you have this moment in the morning, maybe?” Steve says, because he has a notable amount of experience in night time spirals versus constructive conversations in the light of day. “Over brunch, perhaps?”
Natasha keeps herself turned to James and says in Mandarin, “Maybe he has a point. You know how much Steve needs his beauty sleep.”
James snorts. Steve grumbles, “Very funny, I still get the gist,” because his Mandarin isn’t quite there yet and he’s a sore loser about it.
“Another medal for the good Captain,” Natasha says, and then wheezes when Steve retaliates by rolling over and squeezing her up in a hug again, reaching around to grip onto James as well.
“Goddamn octopus,” James says, squeezing back, and Natasha shoves at Steve with her good foot until he acquiesces and lets go again, satisfied.
“I was having a perfectly peaceful night before you two came home,” she says, but there must be something dastardly in Steve’s embrace, because she can feel her eyelids getting heavy again.
Beside her, James yawns. “Funny, that’s what Ma used to say.”
Silence. And then Steve cracks up, burying his laugh into Natasha’s hair as she struggles to retain her composure and James flails without moving and stutters out, “I meant – I didn’t mean – stop laughing, punk, I just remembered, is all.”
“How romantic,” Steve parrots them both, and two sets of hands reach over to smack him. He takes it in stride and sighs contentedly, apparently satisfied with his shit-stirring for the night. Another reason they need – love – him. So they don’t get lost in the night, amongst ghosts neither of them want to confirm nor deny.
“She did used to say that,” Steve says after a moment, because he is James’ anchor here, just as James is hers. Steve’s hand finds Natasha’s in the dark and squeezes. “She would have adored you, Nat. Thought you too good for either of us and done her best to make it worth your while.”
She squeezes back, no words needed. On her other side, James breathes out with a hum, and she finds his hand and completes the chain. After a few more breaths, he’s asleep; Steve has done much the same. Natasha lies between them and just lets herself feel: warm and safe and content. They’re home now, Mrs Barnes, she thinks, and follows her boys into sleep.
~*~