steve rogers might be in the (wrongbusiness) wrote in multifariousic, @ 2015-07-26 22:47:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !thread, natasha romanoff (nataliaromanov), steve rogers (wrongbusiness) |
Who: Natasha Romanoff & Steve Rogers
What: Doing things, getting engaged type things
When: Sunday morning
Where: Their room
Rating/Warnings: It's a little ridiculous, actually it's a lot ridiculous
Status: Complete!
The past few weeks had been a bit crazy - well, crazy was probably an understatement - but it had started to settle somewhat. Which of course meant that something else was probably just around the bend. For the moment though things seemed settled, Natasha was back from her mission, James had taken up residence in the floor below and Steve had gone back to his routine of a morning run. It was that which he was just returning from as he walked back into the floor he shared with Natasha. He tugged the buds from his ear as he kicked his shoes into the closet by the door. His gaze was down as he walked further in, turning off his iPod. “Hey, Nat?” he called out as he walked through the floor. “What do you want for breakfast?” He’d left her half asleep in the bed before his run and figured she was probably awake and hungry by now. Not getting a reply he moved into their bedroom and paused in the door as he saw her sitting in the middle of the bed. Holding a ring box. Steve swallowed hard and moved into the room. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was even going to say. He’d meant it when he said to Bucky he’d just kind of bought it without any plan. Steve knew what he wanted, had for a long time now, and knew that wasn’t changing anytime soon - but he also knew actually proposing to Natasha anytime soon might have seemed rushed and over the top. He hadn’t even been looking when the ring had caught his eye. He’d noticed the little arrow necklace she’d wear sometimes, the small moments of sentimentality that most didn’t think she’d have. So when he passed by the window of a jewelry store and gave a quick side glance to the display he had immediately been stopped by the circle cut diamond ring. He stopped and as he had stared at it he realized if he was going to do it, this was the ring. The perfect circle reminded him of the shield he’d fallen in love with her behind, and before he knew it he’d bought it, stuffed it in his pocket and then hid it in his sock drawer because it was so cliche it was probably the safest hiding place. Apparently, he had had been wrong. He moved to sit on the bed in front of her. “So - “ he started. “Breakfast?” he asked casually though he knew there was no way in hell that was going to work. Natasha wasn’t getting used to being a mom, not at all, but she was accepting it. It wasn’t as if James asked for a lot, he was already seventeen years old and managed to take care of himself just fine, and she shouldn’t have been surprised. Her own child was raised in an apocalyptic wasteland and dealt with it better than she herself did, and for some reason that made Natasha proud. Go figure. What James’ arrival did do, however, was make Natasha feel even closer to Steve than she had before, something that she didn’t even know was possible. It would have been easy for him to have pulled away from Natasha after James showed up, but he only tried harder to bring the three of them together, despite Natasha’s original terror at the idea. He managed to make her into a stronger person, but in a way that Natasha wanted to be, and no one had been able to do such a thing before. Something earth shattering happened and yet they were okay. And it was because of Steve. However, that didn’t prepare Natasha when she found a little box in Steve’s drawer while she dug around for a pair of his boxers to wear around their floor. And it certainly didn’t prepare her for the fact that there was a ring in said box, and the ring was definitely an engagement ring. Her first reaction was to call him and demand an explanation, and her second reaction was to call Sara and Alex and run away for a few hours to try and figure out exactly what she was going to do. But panicking or running away wasn’t going to get Natasha anywhere, not this time, and the last thing she needed to do was make Steve think that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him. Because she did, there was no question about that in her mind, but finding a ring made it so real. She briefly considered putting it back and pretending that she had never found it in the first place, but Natasha couldn’t pretend. Not about something so serious. Instead she sat on their bed and waited, staring down at the ring every now and then and hating the way it made her stomach flutter with both anxiety and something much nicer that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She looked up suddenly when she heard his voice, and she waited for him to walk into the room before raising an eyebrow at his repeated mention of breakfast. She held the box up. “Your sock drawer? Really?” She didn’t even acknowledge his mention of food. A few seconds passed and she pressed on dryly, trying to put humor in her voice. “I’m guessing this isn’t for Bucky?” “I’m sure half the internet would be heartbroken to hear me say this, but no,” he retorted just as dryly. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to say right then. He hadn’t entirely planned on going through with it for a while at least. Steve knew he sometimes still defaulted to a line of thinking that most would consider old fashioned. While he knew he wanted to spend his life with Natasha and had no problem with declaring that to the world, he also knew Natasha wasn’t so quick to putting her heart on her sleeve in the same way. So yes, he had a ring, but he didn’t exactly have a plan. Especially once James had showed up it seemed like waiting was even more so the right thing to do. The last thing he had wanted it to come across as was him trying to force them into some picture perfect ideal of a family when they, all three of them, were still trying to sort it out. “Natasha...” he started, but trailed off. He leaned forward and slid a hand behind her neck and kissed her gently before he pulled back and dropped his hand to her knee. “I love you - I’ve been in love with you for longer than I even realized it. You're my friend, my partner, Nat - " he paused for a moment. "You're everything. I woke up in some future I never thought I'd see and one that I never thought would feel like home. Until you. You saw me, Natasha, and that changed everything. We both know what it's like, losing each other - how much it hurts to keep going because we have to, even if it feels like we're just a fraction of the person we were. And I know - " Steve glanced down at his hand, his thumb idly rubbing against her knee for a moment. "I know that there's things we can't control, that we can't choose. But there's things I know I can choose - and I choose to live every day of my life with you that I'm lucky enough to have." Steve gently took the ring box from her hand and smiled a little as he glanced down at it. "This has been sitting in that drawer for almost a month now - " he gave her a smirk, "still think it was terrible hiding spot." He fiddled a little with the box as he continued. "It's yours. And whatever you want to do with it is fine. I don't want to make you answer a question that maybe you're not ready to answer yet," he said and held the box out for her to take. "I love you, you putting this back in a drawer won't change that." He shrugged a little with a soft smile. "Nat, I waited seventy some years to even find you, I can wait for this." Natasha tried to smile at his retort but between the pounding of her heart and the sudden shortness of breath her mouth barely moved. She didn’t even realize that she was clenching her jaw, and her fingers were tight around the box as if she was afraid that something would happen to it. She didn’t want the ring to go away, but she didn’t know if she wanted it to even exist in the first place. If it stayed right where it was, in a box, in her hand, with no commitment attached to it beyond a pretty thought, then everything would be okay. Natasha wanted to stay in that moment for just a little longer. She allowed herself to be pulled in as she returned his kiss, staying still when he finally placed his hand on her knee, and although she had been staring down at the bed her gaze snapped up to study Steve’s face when he began to speak, the expression she wore nothing less than bewildered. Natasha didn’t exactly know what she had expected when Steve found out that she discovered the ring; perhaps friendly banter. Awkward laughing and an explanation that she couldn’t possibly think of herself but would make complete sense when he shared it with her. But none of that happened, Steve was pressing on and explaining to Natasha exactly why he had bought the ring in the first place, and that was what made it real. The ring was just a thought, but when Steve defended his reasoning for purchasing it in the first place, it became an offer. She was a logical woman. Natasha knew exactly how this looked, and exactly how she should read it; their apparent son shows up and barely over a week later Natasha discovers a ring in Steve’s top drawer. He was progressive, she would never deny that, but Steve was still a man born in an older time, and the concept of him proposing simply because he thought it was the ‘right thing’ to do wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. But he had said that he had the ring for over a month, and one thing that Steve wouldn’t do was lie to Natasha at a time like this, even if it was to save his own ass. Besides, even if he did lie, she would be able to tell. He was awful at it. So when he finished with an offer that left Natasha’s cheeks burning and her eyes moving back down to the box she knew that he meant it, not because he felt like he had to, but because he wanted to. “You want to marry me.” She sounded stunned, a rare occurrence for Natasha Romanoff by far, and her eyes moved back to his face as if to confirm that he knew exactly what this all sounded like. He knew that he wanted to marry her, right? He understood what that entailed? She found no doubt in his face so she looked back down and hesitated before opening the box and looking at the ring once more. She was nervously chewing the corner of her lip in thought as she stared down at it, because Steve was always good at this part. Words and affection. Natasha was the emotionally stunted one in their relationship, she was the one who didn’t know how to admit that she wanted somebody, or needed them. Natasha was the one who hated herself for not being able to live as an emotionless shell, not Steve, but he made that easier for her. If Natasha couldn’t feel whole without something special, she wanted that something to be him, because then it was something that she could trust with her everything. She stayed silent for over a minute as she tried to sort everything in her head, and when she forced the words bouncing in her mind to her mouth they came out wavering and a little shaky. “I don’t think I would be a good wife, Steve. That’s not really what I’m supposed to be, it was never what I was supposed to be.” Natasha wet her lips nervously, her gaze moving back up to him with apologetic eyes as if asking him to try and bear with her sporadic thoughts. “And even if I could be a good wife, which I probably can’t, but even if I could, knowing that I could wake up any day and you could be gone is something I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to get past.” She fell silent, chewing the corner of her lip nervously once more before abruptly starting again. “But I didn’t think that I would be able to care about somebody the way that I care about you.” She shrugged a shoulder sheepishly. “And I didn’t think that someone like you could actually want to spend the rest of your life with someone like me. Because someone like me doesn’t get to spend the rest of their lives with someone like you. We don’t get happy endings. I know that, and I know that I won’t be what you want me to be. But I also knew that you could never love me and I knew that I would never see you again. I’m always wrong when it comes to you.” A smile finally snuck it’s way past her defenses. “It’s one of the reasons why I love you, you know me better than I do. And nobody is supposed to know me at all, but you figure it out, and if you believe something… then I can believe it. So,” she trailed off and moved to take the ring out of the box, slipping it onto her finger and holding her hand out as if to study just how nice it looked on her. “I think I’ll let you take the lead on this one. Because if I disagreed I would obviously be wrong.” Coy eyes moved back to his face. “And whatever vision you have for us, I really, really want it to be right. ...I don’t know if I can keep making you happy, but I know that I never want to stop trying. I love you.” She handed the empty box back to him. “You’re my everything too. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.” Even though there were at least a dozen points he wanted to stop her, tell her she was so completely wrong and this person she thought she was actually was so far from the truth, he waited it out. He waited and he listened as he watched her face closely, the subtle changes, until finally that smile broke through. He visibly relaxed a little at that - and then she was suddenly sliding the ring on her finger and despite himself he couldn’t help the grin that crossed his face. He took the box when she held it out to him and set it down on the bed. Steve leaned across the space between them and kissed her again, his hands moved to cup her face and he broke off only to press a soft kiss to her forehead before he rested his against hers. “You’re always going to make me happy, okay? You’re amazing, Nat, and this person you think you are - “ he shook his head a little. “When I first met you I watched you fight for your friend without the thought of giving up ever crossing your mind, you asked me to launch you at an alien aircraft and saved the damn world.” Steve didn’t want to invalidate where Natasha was coming from when she said someone like her. He knew the things in her past, the things she had done, and what had become harder for him to stomach the more he got to know her, the things that had been done to her. He would never deny her need to hold herself accountable for that - even if her desire to do so was the strongest argument against this person she thought she was. But Steve saw the good in her, always had, and wished she could too. “You’re strong, you’re brave and selfless. You’re warm and caring and so much more giving than you let yourself think you are. Natasha, you surprise me every day in the best ways possible.” He smiled at her. “So why wouldn’t I want to marry someone like you,” he circled back and answered her question. “And if you’re terrible at it,” he started with a bit of a teasing smirk, “well, I’ll put up with it because you’re so worth it.” Steve dropped his hands from her face to take her hand and looked down at the ring now on her finger. They’d kind of done this backwards, but he supposed it was kind of fitting for them. From the get go they had always seemed to make up their own way of doing this. Still though, it was a question that was worth asking. He looked back up at her. “I love you, and if you’ll have me I want to spend the rest of my life showing you just how much and how amazing of a woman I think you are. Natasha, will you marry me?” When Natasha returned Steve’s kiss she tried to convey exactly how she was feeling in that moment, excited and terrified and sure, all things that made her adrenaline rush in a way only Steve could manage. Her hand found it’s way to the back of his neck, tightening a little when he shifted to pull away, but she relaxed when he didn’t go too far, instead resting his forehead against hers and making her scoff when he insisted that she would always make him happy. “Well see about that.” She responded doubtfully, but when he continued a sheepish smile stretched across her face, the mention of the craft that she launched herself onto pulling a little laugh from her. It was the first time that her and Steve had actually worked together to get something done, and she mumbled smugly, “that was the second you figured out that I was too hot to be single and you know it.” She shook her head when he described his vision of her, but Natasha didn’t interrupt him. She wasn’t brave, or selfless. She was barely strong. Everything that Natasha did, she did out of obligation. She did because if she didn’t, she would collapse within herself, knowing that she had stopped working toward cleaning the dirt and blood off of her hands that she felt like she woke up with every morning. But maybe she was wrong about that, too. Perhaps it was silly, but Natasha liked the woman that Steve thought she was. She wanted to be more like her. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, eyes shut as her forehead continued to rest against his own, but they opened when the words finally left his mouth and Natasha found herself grinning once more. She didn’t answer immediately, because even though it was so simple to get swept up in the moment she knew what this meant. She was promising herself to someone in a way that would follow her for the rest of her life. But it was Steve. Natasha closed the space between them and pulled him into another kiss, this time wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him close so he couldn’t move away when they finally parted. Eyes searched his face for a few seconds before she finally nodded, and if he looked close enough he might have seen the slightest hint of moisture in the corners of her eyes. Barely there, though. Non-existent. Natasha wasn’t going to cry. “Yes.” She finally gave him the verbal confirmation she knew he was looking for. “Of course. Of course I will.” He hadn't realized he'd been holding a breath between his question and her answer - which really, was kind of silly given the ring was already on her finger - until he let it out as the word yes fell from her lips after her pause. He grinned - probably like some damn idiot he figured but he couldn't help it. He'd meant what he'd said, he knew there was so much about their lives in this place that wasn't a choice, but the idea that they had in some traditional sense just chosen to make this thing between them as permanent as they could, it was beyond what he had ever dreamed. He'd known for a while now that Natasha was the only person he would ever love. That something between them worked in a way he had never really thought possible. On paper he knew they couldn't look more different, but their differences countered each other and more than that there were so many ways that what made them different also made them the same. Natasha was his home, his safe place to just exist outside of what the world thought and expected of him. The thought of being able to call her his wife, it was one that somehow managed to exhilarate him and make him feel more at peace than he had for ages. He gently ran his thumbs under her eyes - at the things that were definitely not tears and he damn well knew better than to insinuate as such. There was no second thought to whatever plan for this he might have concocted had Natasha not chosen this morning to take a dig through his drawer - whatever he could have ever managed to come up with would have paled in comparison and he knew that somehow this all came together in the only way it should have. "I love you, Nat, so much," he said as his arms moved to wrap around her waist. He easily moved them to lay on the bed. Steve ran his finger along the ring on hers and grinned again before his hands tangled in her hair and pulled her in to kiss her. |