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She’s always liked Sharon Carter—Natasha’s been impressed on the few occasions they’ve been in the field together—but Natasha doesn’t really get to know her until Rogers finally accepts SHIELD's offer to relocate to DC and Sharon is assigned to his protective detail.
When she hears the news, Natasha can't decide which is more ridiculous: that anyone thinks Captain America won’t notice he's got a SHIELD operative living across the hall from him, or that Sharon Carter—the woman who spent eleven months undercover with white supremacists—has been assigned the role of the mild-mannered nurse next-door. Over at the Triskelion, the analysts have started taking bets on how long it'll take Rogers to catch on, and, because Natasha’s always felt that the best way to gamble is to make her own odds, she takes it upon herself to make it as difficult as humanly possible for Sharon to maintain her cover.
She starts small, asking Steve if there are any romantic prospects on his horizon. It’s not even a ploy, really—or not only a ploy. It’s high time he expanded his social calendar beyond jogging and black ops. She worries about him. Not a lot, but she does worry.
He looks up from the map he’s been consulting with a wry expression. “You gonna volunteer to write my OK Cupid profile?” He says it in a way that makes her wonder who else has suggested this before her. Her money’s on Stark.
“Maybe you should start a little closer to home,” she suggests blithely. “I mean, I hear people did manage to meet one another somehow or another before the advent of the internet. Anybody good-looking in your building?”
When he admits, stammeringly, that the blonde who lives across the hall from him seems nice, it’s almost too easy.
After that, she takes to walking Steve to his door when she drops him off after missions, inviting herself in for a cup of coffee or a fresh butterfly bandage, just in the hopes of running into Sharon in the hall. When she finally gets her wish, Sharon gives her a still, challenging look that says, I know what you're trying to do here and it's not going to work, and Natasha can feel the smile tugging at her lips despite her best efforts.
She starts texting Sharon, too, under the logic that if she can’t clue Rogers in, she can at least try to wear Sharon down until she slips up.
Has he come over to borrow a cup of sugar yet? she writes. And, Ever hear him singing in the shower? Bet he has a nice voice.
Sharon’s answers are dry and a little wicked and Natasha wonders how she failed to notice this. She already knew Sharon to be whipsmart and tough as nails, but how did she make small talk with this woman in the Operations break room on a regular basis for years without realizing she has a sense of humor that sneaks up on you, all sly and dangerous, and leaves you unable to stop smiling for hours afterward?
*
If I hear “Am I Blue?” one more time I’m going to set something on fire, Sharon texts Natasha one drizzly March evening. This man needs to get laid, like, yesterday.
You could put yourself out of this misery, you know, Natasha texts back, followed by a smiley face.
Sharon responds with an emoji Natasha is fairly sure doesn't come standard on any smartphone on the market and which can only be described as "gimlet-eyed".
By the time DC has snapped into sudden and unrelenting late-spring heat, Natasha’s more or less given up on winning the bet, but for some reason she’s still texting Sharon and walking Steve to his door like it’s their first date and she’s angling for a kiss good night. Sharon continues to send Natasha selfies chronicling the crippling tedium of her surveillance detail, all of which feature Rogers going about his business, hopelessly oblivious, in the background.
When Natasha invites herself along to Steve's building's Memorial Day barbecue—or, more accurately, when she forces him to attend and comes with him “because somebody has to make sure you have a good time, Rogers”—it’s less because she’s come up with an ingenious plan to blow Sharon’s cover and more because she’d like an excuse to see her in person.
Sure enough, Sharon is there, looking every inch the girl next door in a flowered sundress and espadrilles that make her strong legs look delicate as a deer’s. Steve introduces her as "Kate", and Natasha thinks the name suits this other version of her, who, unlike the Sharon Natasha has come to know, probably isn’t the sort of girl who stays up until one in the morning arguing pros and cons of various rifle sights over Gchat.
"I love your dress," Natasha says, in her best impression of a normal person. She elbows Rogers. “Isn’t her dress cute?”
“Uh,” Steve says, his throat dry, and actually Natasha can sympathize, because something about the shape of Sharon’s shoulders in that dress makes Natasha want to draw her lips along the line of her clavicle and bite down.
Sharon smiles sweetly and says, “Thanks, we should go shopping some time!” in a way that gives Natasha a new level of respect for Sharon’s commitment to her cover identity.
Except a couple of days later, Sharon texts her a photo of her closet, along with the message, All I own is J. Crew suiting separates, send help.
Natasha can’t help shaking her head at the image of Sharon’s closet, crammed full of navy pinstripes and sensible grey wool. You’re asking ME for an assist on this? she types in response. Because, seriously, the only reason she manages to get dressed when she’s not on a mission is that she’s worked out a foolproof uniform of jeans/neutral T-shirt/leather jacket.
But somehow they still wind up at Tyson’s Corner the next weekend, trawling the high-end chain stores for something that doesn’t scream “smart-casual spook”. And when they eventually decide to take a break for frozen yogurt, it occurs to Natasha that this must be what it’s like to have what some women call “girlfriends“.
She’s never really had many female friends—or all that many friends, period, when she gets right down to it. She’s not the type to make small talk, let alone gossip about boys and manicures or whatever it is women are supposed to do with their friends. Most of her friendships have been built on life debts and good-natured rivalry at the shooting range, so she doesn’t really know what normal people do.
But this is sort of nice—Sharon fishing little chunks of strawberry out of Natasha’s paper cup of yogurt and strategizing about how to sweep the second level of the mall with maximum efficiency. This is almost— Well, she could get used to it.
And then a few weeks later, Sharon kicks down Rogers’ front door to find Fury bleeding out on the floor and Natasha doesn’t have time to lament losing the office pool because SHIELD has imploded and her entire sordid life history is now a matter of public record and she’s got bigger problems to worry about.
*
So, it’s back to business as usual. She kills some people, rescues a few others, racks up a lot of frequent flyer miles. Debts get paid, some with interest.
A couple of months after the Senate hearings finally wind down, she hears through the grapevine that Sharon has taken a job at the CIA. She thinks about calling to congratulate her, but never quite gets around to it.
She’s in Riga when she gets a text that just says, Say what you will about HYDRA, but at least the SHIELD softball team didn’t suck, and she thinks she’s going to laugh, but instead she feels a vicious spike of jealousy, that all those hacks at Langley get to see Sharon every day and probably don’t even appreciate her.
She types and deletes half a dozen responses before she gives up and just sits there staring at the blinking text cursor on her phone’s screen, thinking about Sharon’s darkling smile while an anxious tension winds itself tighter and tighter in her chest.
A couple of days after that, she receives the text, Does this match? followed by a picture of an outfit hanging in front of a familiar-looking closet. The shirt is the one item of clothing they both managed to agree on that day at Tyson’s Corner, a soft blue jersey shell that draped along Sharon’s neck like something out of a classical painting and the memory of standing outside the fitting room, talking to Sharon through the door while she tried things on, makes something close up in Natasha’s throat. She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t delete the photo, either.
It occurs to Natasha that this is a problem of her own making. She’s the one who insinuated herself into Sharon’s life, who lingered outside her doorway and couldn’t resist texting photos of things she thought might make Sharon laugh. She has, essentially, talked herself into feeling this shallow, breathless constriction of her lungs, and it stands to reason that she should be able to talk herself out of it, too, except she knows from long experience that even the simplest programming isn’t that easy to undo.
A week later, as she’s waiting to deplane in Durban, she powers up her phone to find another text from Sharon: Hope you don’t mind that Hill gave me your new number. We should get lunch the next time you’re in DC.
And once again that tightness is back in Natasha’s chest. She thinks about saying no. She really should say no, because her life has gotten exponentially more complicated in the months since Project Insight crashed and burned and nobody deserves to be dragged into the mess she’s calling her life right now, especially not someone whose lower lip she sometimes thinks about taking gently between her teeth.
Except instead she finds herself typing out, That would be nice, and the pressure in her throat eases, a little.
*
Once she’s double-checked all the locks, she takes out her phone and writes, Free for lunch tomorrow? After a moment’s hesitation, she adds, Sorry for the short notice, only here on a 24-hr layover. She doesn’t mention that it would have been more convenient to fly direct, that she chose this route with Sharon in mind.
Sharon gives her the address of her favorite Thai place in McLean and apologizes that she won’t be able to get away from the office for much more than an hour.
Natasha agrees instantly, because a short lunch is better than no lunch, and then spends the rest of the night on tenterhooks, listening for the chime of a text alert that doesn’t come.
The nervous twist in Natasha’s stomach as she walks up to Sharon’s table to next day is probably the most normal thing Natasha’s felt in months.
“Your hair’s getting so long,” Sharon remarks when she sits down, gesturing to the copper-red ponytail skimming the collar of Natasha’s snow-flecked coat.
Natasha shrugs. Ordinarily, that sort of comment would irritate her—as if her hair growing, an inevitable biological process, is somehow a worthy subject for comment—but today she thinks maybe she doesn’t mind because it means Sharon is looking at her, that Sharon noticed.
Sharon isn’t offended by her silence. Sharon is, of all things, smiling, and leaning across the table to brush aside a thin strand of hair, the tips of her first two fingers just barely touching Natasha’s cheek. “It looks nice.”
They order, and the food is good, almost as good as the place she likes near her place in Arlington, and then they get into an argument about heat versus depth of flavor, in which Natasha accuses Sharon of being a food snob and Sharon says Natasha’s probably burned off so many of her taste buds she wouldn’t recognize subtle seasoning if she tasted it.
“Heard anything from Rogers?” Natasha finally gets around to asking as Sharon signals for the check. The last she heard from him, he and Wilson had been in Novosibirsk, following up some unlikely lead on the Winter Soldier, and, really, when Natasha said he needed to get out of the house, this was not what she’d meant.
Sharon laughs lightly. “I think he liked me better when he thought I was a nurse.”
Natasha dismisses this sentiment with a wave of her hand. “He’s just mad he lost out on the chance to hook up with his hot neighbor.”
“Those his words or yours?” Sharon asks wryly, a question Natasha judiciously decides to ignore.
“Besides,” Sharon goes on, “I always sort of figured you and Steve . . .” When Natasha just looks at her, Sharon raises her eyebrows. “You never?”
“Rogers isn’t really my speed,” she says, though she doesn’t mention that Sharon most definitely is.
Sharon has to get back to the office, but they make plans to meet after Sharon gets off work to see a movie at some high-end theater in Sharon’s neighborhood that evening, and Natasha wonders how it can be so easy to just pick up where they left off like no time at all has passed.
The movie is good, or at least Natasha thinks it is, because she keeps getting distracted by the presence of Sharon’s smooth arm right next to hers, tantalizingly close. She remembers more about the sound of Sharon’s laughter and the shape of her profile in the dark than she does about the movie’s plot.
Afterward, Sharon invites Natasha up to her impersonal luxury apartment for a glass of wine and Natasha knows she should probably say no, but she doesn’t want to.
“I’ve missed seeing you around, you know,” Sharon says as she hunts around her dim, little-used kitchen for a corkscrew.
Natasha wants to kiss Sharon, can’t seem to stop thinking about it, and it gives her that hot-cold feeling in her throat. It’s embarrassing, Natasha thinks, to feel this kind of tumultuous adolescent attraction when there are so many other more pressing concerns. Besides which, Sharon is supposed to be her friend, and that’s such a tender, rare thing in Natasha’s life that she doesn’t want to do anything to ruin it.
But the thing is, if Natasha cares about someone at all, chances are she loves them deeply—it's always been zero or sixty with her, no in-between. With Clint and Steve, with Coulson and Hill, even with Fury, she's always been aware that "I'd take a bullet for you" is only a hair's breadth away from "I wouldn’t mind seeing you without your pants on”. Not that she necessarily has any desire to act on the attraction in every case, but it’s there, and because she’s carrying her own unique blend of emotional damage, what both those sentiments ultimately mean is simply, "I trust you".
Somewhere along the way, without Natasha noticing, Sharon went from being someone she knew to someone she could care about, someone whose wry laugh makes her chest warm and tight and whose searching fingers suggest a shiver low down in the pit of her stomach. This feels to her like a weakness, a vulnerable spot in her carefully tended defenses. Natasha’s slept with a lot of people, but she hasn’t cared about very many of them, and she’s not exactly sure she trusts herself to feel this way—isn’t even sure she knows how to do it properly.
Sharon turns around to face her, having finally found the corkscrew, and her face breaks open a little in an expression of surprise that makes Natasha wonder what she must look like. “What?”
“Nothing,” Natasha starts to say, “I—“ It’s just that, standing here looking at Sharon, barefoot in her kitchen, the waves of her yellow hair loose and a little frizzy at the end of the day, Natasha is stunned by how close they are after all this time apart, by how easy it would be to close the distance between what could happen and what hasn’t happened yet. “I was just thinking about kissing you.”
For a moment, Sharon doesn’t move—Natasha is waiting, waiting to see what she’ll do—and then, slowly, she sets down the corkscrew on the kitchen counter and says, “Do you think about that often?”
“Sometimes,” Natasha answers, doing her best to keep her expression neutral.
“Because I do,” Sharon says, stepping out of the kitchen and into the dining room where Natasha is currently gripping the back of an expensive-looking chair.
“I—didn’t know that.” The words sound weak even to her, as a dizzy heat flares across Natasha’s chest, carrying along the plane of her stomach, right down to the points of her hips.
Sharon smiles. “That’s what happens when you don’t tell someone something,” she says, and then she kisses her.
Sharon’s mouth is soft and she’s sliding a warm hand along Natasha’s hip to pull her closer. They stay like that for a long time, Sharon’s hands at her hips, Natasha’s threading into the golden silk of Sharon’s hair. Sharon tastes sweet, like soda syrup from her drink at the movies, and her teeth are slick as pearls against Natasha’s tongue. This still feels like a weakness to Natasha—something that could be exploited, that puts her at risk—but she can’t think of a single good reason not to fit herself up against Sharon’s front and kiss her just like this.
Eventually, Natasha says, “I have a red-eye to catch in, like, three hours,” and Sharon nods, a little breathless, and says, “OK, I’ll walk you to the Metro.”
For the whole ride home, Natasha keeps expecting something terrible to happen—what, she’s not quite sure, ninja assassins to rush the Metro or an alien invasion, something—but all that happens is that she misses her stop because she’s too busy thinking about how supple Sharon’s mouth felt against hers and has to double back.
A couple of hours later, she’s on another plane, this time to Smolensk, but when Sharon texts her to say, Let’s do that again, she doesn’t hesitate, just texts back, Yes.
And so things go on like that. Whenever Natasha can make it to DC, she and Sharon will get together. They go to the movies and talk shit about Rogers, but then later Sharon will ease her down onto the couch and make her come over and over again until her orgasm isn’t rooted in any specific sensation anymore but just breaks across her entire body like some incontrovertible fact. Other times, they order in and Sharon works at the dining room table while Natasha curls up in a chair watching science documentaries on Netflix until one or the other of them is ready to go to sleep.
Sometimes Natasha worries that this can’t be something she’s allowed to have, but then maybe it’s not either-or. It still keeps her up at night, this sense that the world is too dangerous a place for something as simple, as unaccountably right, as Sharon snoring lightly next to her while she checks her email on her tablet, but against all odds, here they are.