"I think we can call that mission a success!" Sam annoucend when the quinjet got back to HQ. They had been tracking down rebels in Somalia and handed them over to authorities. No colleteral damage and no one of them team was hurt.

So yeah Natasha had to agree that it was a success. She landed the jet on the airfield and followed the others out to the armory where all their suits and weapons were stored. She handed her batons and Glocks over and left to get a shower. Wanda was already there and humming a song in the stall next to her. Natasha didn't have a problem to shower where the guys showered but since Wanda joined they had their own shower quarters because Wanda had a more conversative upbringing and they didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable.

Natasha rinsed the dirt and sweat off her body and out of her hair and changed into a shirt and one of her beloved yoga pants. Wanda was already done with blow drying her hair and waited for her.

"I think the guys want to watch a movie in the lounge. You wanna come? Sam wants to introduce Bucky to Top Gun." Wanda gave her one of her smiles and slid her jewellery back on.

Nat had to suppress a smirk. "No, thanks. I need to look over some files with Cap."

"You two always work so hard. I kinda feel guility that we don't help you with the paper work."

"It's okay. That's a part of leading a team." She grabbed her phone out of her locker. "I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast."

Steve was already in his office and sitting at his desk when she got in. The blinds were close and he had his desk lamp on.

"Hey."

"Hi Nat." He smiled briefly at her and looked back at the file on his desk. " Looks like we captured every important head of that rebel group."

"That's good." She walked over to him and he pushed his chair back from the table.

She sat down on the desk and Steve got up and pushed her legs apart to stand between them. "Hey." He whispered huskily. God, his voice was so fucking sexy.

She grabbed his hoodie and pulled him down to kiss him. He placed his big hands on her waist to press her body against him. "Oh that's so much better than Top Gun." She gasped out when he began to trail wet kisses on her neck.

He chuckled against her skin and began to remove their clothes.

"Are you seeing someone?" Rhodey asked her when they were on their way back to the Avengers compound after a meeting with General Talbot who was bitchy because he had hoped to finally meet Captain America but Steve tried to talk Tony out of recruiting Parker for the Avengers. That kid still went to high school!

"Why? You asking me out?" Natasha laughed and pulled her blouse out of her skirt but she still didn't feel any better. Why were suits so fucking uncomfortable?

He shook his head in amusement. "No, no. I have a friend who might be someone for you."

She raised an eyebrow at him. She wasn't looking for anyone because she was already seeing Steve but that was their little secret. "Really?"

"Yeah. We served together. Great guy and good looking. Name's Josh Weisz." He pulled his phone out of his suit pocket. "You wanna see a pic?"

She shook her head. "No thanks. I'm not looking for something right now. I already have enough on my plate babysitting you guys." She smirked at him.

"I guess you do." He laughed and put his phone back into his pocket. "Lemme know if you change your mind."

I won't, she thought to herself. She liked what she had with Steve way too much to look somewhere else.

Back at the compound Rhodey went to the gym and she left to get to her quarters. Every Avenger had their own apartment except Steve who shared his with Bucky. Which meant that they always met at her place. She entered her security code and let herself into her apartment. The smell of baked goods greeted her. She walked into her kitchen and Steve was there and putting dishes back into her cupboards.

He turned around when he heard her high heels on the marble floor. "Hey." He beamed at her and her heart was fluttering in her chest.

She walked over to him and pressed her lips against him. Steve returned her kiss hungrily and lifted her onto the kitchen counter. "How did it go with Tony?"

He pushed her skirt up and growled when he saw that she was wearing stockings. She found out pretty early when they started this that he had a thing for stockings and garterbelts and she wore them often to drive him wild. He played with the lace of her stockings. "Well, he dropped his idea of home schooling him here but he wants to have a summer camp for Peter. He even started to look for bunk beds online."

"That's Tony." She rolled her eyes.

"How did it go with Talbot?"

She rolled her eyes again. "He was pissed that he had to meet with us peasants and not you but we managed to get everything done." He brushed his fingers over the inside of her thighs and she sighed happily. "What's in the oven?" Her kitchen smelled amazing.

"Apple pie. But it's not done for another thirty minutes." He grinned at her and then sank to his knees and buried his head between her thighs.

Oh that felt so good. She was sure this Weisz guy couldn't compete with Steve's talented mouth.

Tony wanted him and Bucky to test new training bots and they were punching their way through them in the gym.

Natasha and Wanda left for a trip with Pepper yesterday to celebrate her engagement with Tony. Nat sent him a pretty hot picture of her in her bikini and he could confirm that she did not look terrible in them at all. He desperately wanted to ask her what they were. Were they just hooking up or could he call her his girl? He was so distraced that one bot got a hit on him and he fell to the ground.

Bucky laughed. "Captain America defeated by some robot." He clapped his thigh and told FRIDAY to shut the simulation down.

He got up and walked over to the bench and grabbed two water bottles and handed one to Bucky.

"Thanks, punk."

They sat down on the bench and gulped the water down. They filled out Tony's question for the bot's evaluation on their Starkpads.

Bucky was already done and looking at him. "Hey what's that on your neck?"

"Huh?"

"You got a mark on your neck."

He looked at his reflection in the windows and could see a fading purple mark on his neck. Fuck! Nat left that there yesterday before she left with Wanda and Pepper. But he couldn't tell Bucky because they agreed to keep their thing between them. Well Nat asked him to and he went along with it.

"One of the bots must have landed another hit." He lied and hoped that he was convincing. Didn't Nat tell him ages ago that he was a terrible liar?

Bucky lifted an eyebrow at him. "Is there something you wanna tell me?"

"Nope." He found his sneakers really interesting right now and stared at them.

"You know I can tell when you're lying, right?"

"I'm not lying!"

"Oh Stevie, we both know that's a hickey." Bucky grinned at him smugly. "And I already have a suspicion who left it there."

"You're talking bullshit." He got up and threw his towel around his shoulders. Would Nat end things with him if word got out they were...well what were they exactly? They were having sex and he was in love with her. But did she feel the same or did she just want to have fun?

"Hey Cap!" Sam jumped on the couch next to Wanda who smacked him with a pillow.

Steve was sitting in an armchair and looking at Nat who was playing chess with Bucky at the table and from the tone of their voices they were both insulting each other in Russian but Bucky had this fond and amused look on his face that made Steve uneasy. Did Bucky like Natasha?!

"Steve!" Sam threw the pillow at him.

"Yeah"

"Have you already heard who's gonna move in?"

He furrowed his eyebrows. He had no idea what Sam was talking about. And no one was moving in without his approval or knowledge! "What are you talking about?"

"Sharon Carter is gonna live here. She's gonna be the CIA liasion. Weren't you crushing on her?" Sam grinned at him.

Sharon. Peggy's niece. The woman who he thought was just his neighbour and he tried to like her because he thought that Nat was with Clint. And then Clint suddenly had a wife and kids and the new Avengers moved into the compound and one evening Nat took his virginity and they had been sleeping together eversince.

He glanced at Nat who was still concentrated on her game with Bucky but he knew that she was listening. The Black Widow never missed anything.

"I wasn't crushing on her!" He huffed out and Wanda giggled. He suspected that she knew who he was really crushing on because of her powers. She was giving him these small and knowing smiles for two weeks now.

"You went to get coffee with her!" Sam argued. Yeah, he did because Nat told him to call her and he pretty much did anything she told him to. The correct expression for that was whipped if he wasn't wrong.

"Yeah and we talked about Peggy the whole time." He opened his book to signal that he was done with the toptopic and when he looked briefly over to Nat he could see the corner of her mouth twitching up. And something told him that it just wasn't because she annouched check mate to Bucky.

He and Nat were raiding a lab for a biohazard virus that a HYDRA splinter group was developing. Tony and Buck were with them and dealing with the HYDRA soldiers upstairs.

"I think that's it!" Natasha pointed at some kind of glass showcase with a vile in it.

"We found it." He informed Tony and Bucky through the comms.

"Roger that." Bucky replied.

"Maybe it's sex pollen!"

Nat groaned. "There's no such thing as sex pollen!" She looked at him like can you believe this guy? and he smiled at her. They still hadn't put a label on their relationship but Nat told him that she was only interested in him and that was enough for him for now. It had to be. He knew he should be happy that she even admitted that to him.

Suddenly the glass burst and the vile was broken. Someone fired a shot at it. "There's a sniper somewhere in the labs." Gas was surrounding him but he didn't feel anything. Maybe this virus was a bust and they came for nothing.

Then there were choking noises and he looked at Natasha who sank to her knees and wrapped her hands around her throat. She stared at him with big eyes and he felt hot and cold at once.

"Natasha?" He picked her up and ran to get her out of that lab.

She tried to answer him and only gasps left her mouth. She couldn't proberly breath and he feared that she would suffocate.

"Nat's hurt." He yelled and suddenly Tony flew down the hallway and took her from his arms.

"FRIDAY, scan her!"

"Her airways are swallowing and her lungs are filling with fluids."

Oh god both could kill her. Tony took with Nat off to get to the quinjet where they had medical supplies. He prayed to anyone listening that they could save her.

Het met Bucky outside and they both ran as fast as they could to the jet that was hidden in stealth mode in the forest a mile away. Before they entered the plane Bucky placed his hand on his shoulder. "She'll be okay. She's tougher than all of us combined."

"I..." He couldn't say it.

Bucky smiled at him. "I know, pal. It's written all over your face everytime you talk about her or she's in the room."

They walked up the ramp and Dr. Cho was on the screen and instructing Stark what to do. Natasha was out but stabil for now and they flew her to the next hospital were she was treated.

She would fully recover and he thanked Thor and every other deity for it. He didn't know what he would do if he lost her.

She hadn't been this close to death in ages and it changed something in her. Wasn't that what near death experiences did to people? They changed their diet, made up with someone or quit their job to chase after some dream?

Well, she wanted to do something she never did before. And it was the scariest thing she would ever do. She would tell Steve that she was in love with him and would offer him her heart. She knew that he wouldn't be sleeping with her for months if he didn't have some kind of feelings because he wasn't the guy to have meaningless sex but there was still a big chance that his feelings for her weren't love.

She got discharged from the hospital and was back at the compound. It had been quiet for the last two weeks and they didn't need to assemble. She tried to use that break for ways to confess her love but everything she came up with was either way over the top or just dumb. And there was still her fear of reaction.

She ran a few miles on the treadmill and came to the common kitchen to make herself a smoothie. Steve was already there and eating sandwiches. The amount of food both he and James ate each day was insane.

"Hi." He beamed at her and put the rest of his sandwich down.

He had mustard on his chin and she walked over and wiped his off his face. He looked confused and then smiled when he realized what she was doing. "Thanks,Nat." He looked around and then sucked her finger into his mouth to lick the mustard of.

God, he was so sexy. And cute. And funny. And kind. And stubborn. And smart. And so so sweet and good to her. "I love you." It just slipped out. That was not how she wanted to say it. Fuck!

Steve looked surprised and she tried to get ready for his rejection. But then his whole face lit up and he beamed at her. "Really?"

"Um, yeah." She smiled shyly because she got hopeful. "Should I say it again? I should say it again."

"If you want to." He smiled. "I want you to."

She nodded and hoped her voice was full of her love for him. "I love you, Steve."

"I love you, too. I have for a long time now." He cupped her face and kissed her.

This evening she took Steve's hand before they walked into the common room and snuggled against his side while they watched Stranger Things with the rest of the Avengers.