"Of course I still think of you," she said, with a kind of indignation that came out in both her voice and the flush of color at her collarbone. Such an annoying tell and one that she'd never been able to eradicate; Natasha could keep the world's most neutrally stone-solid poker face, but when she was indignant, her skin would always flush with it just along her collarbone, though at least it would never spread too much higher. Another thing she used to be better at controlling but hadn't had a lot of call to hide over the last few years.
But surely he couldn't think he was the only one who wondered what they could have been. What it would have been like if they'd met in some easier world, or if he'd remembered sooner, or if she had ever given him an opening to tell her that he did, if if if if. So many things dulled around the edges, but love was never something that put up a fight about having the rust removed from it.
And then James Barnes was kissing her.
James Barnes was kissing her, even though she was so much older now than when they'd met and there were lines around her eyes that had never been there before. James Barnes was kissing her even though she had jumped from a cliff to save the only other person she'd loved with no intention of survival. James Barnes was kissing her even though the world had ended and she had watched it claim him as one of its casualties. James Barnes was kissing her even though he'd shot her through the gut and left her to bleed out in the dirt. James Barnes was kissing her even though she had seen him with the metal bite between his teeth and his tortured eyes fixed on hers as though he was trying to scream I won't forget, I will not, come find me even as though both knew it was useless, he would, he would, she wouldn't.
Her fingers twisted and curled in his shirt, gripping the fabric so hard that she was almost surprised that it didn't tear; as it was, it would be hopelessly loosened and wrinkled later. How could she have done anything but fall into it, let it be what it was, it was a kiss that she did not realize she had spent twenty years of her life waiting for him to come back and claim. Should she feel guilty? Did she feel guilty? Was it a dead woman's right to maybe be a little selfish about things like this?
She didn't know, but when she finally had to draw back from his mouth, her eyes were wet. Again. The overspill of emotion was going to get so old, and she stroked her hands against his chest, once. "I remember that," she told him. If not the first person she had ever kissed, he was the first person she had ever kissed because she had wanted to kiss him, but he knew that. The idea of kissing as its own pleasure, that had been something she'd learned from him.