I should be working on Yuletide so of course I dusted off a wip from right after I saw Endgame and finished that instead. 😬

the landscape after cruelty
Avengers; Steve/Natasha; pg; 1,720 words
Natasha makes him forget everything but her for a little while, and makes him remember how good his body can feel, and how lucky he is to know her.

Title/cut-text from "Snow and Dirty Rain" by Richard Siken.

Read it on AO3.

~*~

the landscape after cruelty

Steve's lost fights before but never—never like this. Days later, he's still trying to process it. He stays those first few nights because he has nowhere else to go. They killed Thanos, but it didn't bring anybody back. If anything, it broke them even more.

"The world still needs us," Natasha insists after Tony and Thor go their own ways. Bruce leaves soon after, still trying to figure out how to co-exist with the Hulk. Steve doesn't know what he and Natasha said to each other, but she doesn't seem upset. Not about that, anyway.

She doesn't say, I still need this. She doesn't have to.

"I think that's my line."

Her smile is halfhearted and rueful. "You're a bad influence."

He huffs a soft laugh. "It's been said."

"You'll stay, then?"

He nods. "For a little while."

Steve finds it hard to sleep in a room by himself, missing the sound of Nat's breathing and Sam's nonsense mumbles as he settled into sleep. It reminds him of those lonely days he spent in SHIELD housing in the city right after he got out of the ice.

The compound is silent, and he finds himself following the muted rustlings of Natasha's night-time routine.

"Can't sleep?" she asks. She's sitting on the end of the bed, rubbing lotion on her elbows. Unlike the cheap little amenities in the various hotels they've stayed in together, this lotion has no scent. The bathroom door is open, still warm and steamy from her shower, and her skin is flushed and damp.

He wishes his pajama pants had pockets because he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He hooks his thumbs in his waistband and shrugs. "It's too quiet."

"Yeah." Her mouth curves in a familiar, rueful smile. "Come on." She tips her head at the nest of pillows against the headboard.

His heart aches at the sight, but he climbs under the covers without hesitation.

She fits against him comfortably, and the smell of her hair is soothing, familiar. He drifts off to an uneasy sleep, his dreams full of the flashing blue light of the Tesseract, and the biting cold of the Alps. He wakes sometime around three to Natasha shaking in his arms. He holds her close while she sobs and keeps his eyes squeezed shut, his own tears leaking from the corners.

In the morning, they both pretend it never happened.

It's easy to fall into a routine with her. They were frequent mission partners during his SHIELD days, and then two years on the run as international fugitives turned them into a finely-tuned team. He still expects to turn a corner and see Sam and Wanda, still expects his weekly call with Bucky to hear how the goats are doing.

Rhodey's still around, and Okoye coordinates rescue missions and aid missions with them, but it's not the same.

Natasha stays upstate and runs what's left of the team—they're galactic now, which even after everything still blows Steve's mind—and she's the best person for the job.

"It's because you're used to rebuilding things and making them better," he says as he burns dinner.

"It's because I'm used to starting over with nothing," she agrees with a tip of her wine glass. "At least this time, I have more than that." She wrinkles her nose at the smell of burnt eggs. "Throw that mess out, and bring me the peanut butter." She gives him a sly smile. "Two spoons."

He finds himself smiling back. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am."

He goes back to the city because he needs to feel useful, and he can apply pressure to local authorities who might otherwise take advantage of the situation. He runs a small counseling group of survivors, the one thing he can do to honor and memorialize Sam, and carries groceries for all the little old ladies on his block who've survived, the way Bucky might have once.

He should be better, do more, be used to losing everything, but he can't—he can't do it again. He doesn't know how Natasha does. He goes to see her when it's too much, when he feels like he's drowning in his own self-pity, because she won't indulge it. It's something all the people he's loved have in common.

"Come on, Rogers," she says he shows up this time in a rain-spattered hoodie. "Danvers just saved a city from a wildfire on a planet halfway across the galaxy and you can't even be bothered to shave?"

He laughs softly and rubs his chin. "I missed it."

"Hm." She tilts her head and studies him. "It suits you."

He smiles, warmed by the compliment, and holds up the plastic bag full of takeout. "I brought dumplings."

"You might just be my favorite." The glint of her necklace gives the lie to that, but Steve doesn't call her on it. He hasn't heard from Clint, but he suspects she has. He doesn't ask.

"I guess I have to bring dumplings more often." He sets the bag on a clear spot on the table, glancing over the maps and reports that litter it before unpacking the food.

Over dumplings and kung pao chicken, Natasha picks his brain about a variety of missions. It feels good for a little while, as long as the beer and the fried rice last, anyway.

"Hey." Natasha sets her empty bottle down and grabs his hand. "Don't."

He shakes his head. "Nat—"

"I'm right here, Steve. You're not alone."

He forces himself not to flinch at the hurt in her tone, at what she's not saying, because she's right. She's here, and so is he.

He turns their hands over so he can hold hers, small and callused and so strong. Her nails are bare of polish, which is new—even when they were on the run, her nails were always neatly manicured, even when she had to do it herself. There's a hotel room in Viedma that probably still bears the streaks of We Seafood and Eat It on its bedding from when she and Sam tussled like children over her painting his toenails.

Her roots are showing and he's surprised to discover she's a natural redhead. It feels like he's seeing her—the real her—for the first time, though he knows she's let him in further than almost anyone else they know. He might be letting himself go, but he thinks that for the first time in her life, Natasha is just letting herself be.

"You're the best, Nat. You know that, right?"

She gives him a mischievous grin. "It's been said."

That night, he uses the bathroom in his own suite, but doesn't even try to pretend he's going to sleep in his bedroom. It's earlier than they usually turn in, but she's waiting for him, dogeared copy of Persuasion in hand. She smiles when she sees him and he can't help but smile back. She turns the light off when he gets into bed and he manages to fall asleep without the usual tossing and turning with her beside him.

They're both startled awake just after midnight by a loud boom of thunder, almost directly overhead.

He finds Nat's gaze in the darkness, illuminated for a split second by lightning. "Do you think—?" She shakes her head, and the small spark of hope fizzles out. He flops back against the pillows and puts his arm over his face. There's another crack of thunder, another flash of lightning, and then the sound of heavy rain against the windows. He sighs. "I don't know how you do it."

"Don't you?" She rolls onto her side, props herself up on an elbow. "Someone's got to, and right now, that someone is me."

"I wish you didn't have to."

"I know."

He shifts to face her, using his free hand to tuck her hair behind her ear and then skim the tips of his fingers over her cheek. She turns her face into his palm and presses a kiss to it, her lips warm and dry. He feels it jolt through him like he's been struck with lightning from the storm raging outside.

Steve's never let himself want her—there were always other priorities, other people, and he'd needed her to be a friend more than anything. He still needs her to be a friend, but all that other stuff has gone away.

"It's just us, Steve," she says, as if she can read his mind. She slides a leg over his hips so she's sitting on him. "It doesn't have to be anything more than that."

He swallows hard. "Okay." He cups her cheek and tugs her down into a gentle kiss. "You said I needed practice," he reminds her.

She laughs against his mouth and it's the most alive he's felt in months.

Natasha is soft and warm and strong as they kiss and touch and move together, and it's easy to stay in the moment here with her, to not think about the other people he'd never gotten the chance to do this with, to not think about everything they've lost and how badly he's failed at picking up the pieces.

She makes him forget everything but her for a little while, and makes him remember how good his body can feel, and how lucky he is to know her.

When they're done, he buries his face in the sweaty skin of her neck and breathes her in deeply. "Thank you," he whispers into the dip of in her clavicle, and enjoys the way her little laugh in response vibrates through him.

"Any time," she says, running her fingers through his hair before dropping a kiss on the top of his head.

They don't have sex every time he visits the compound (or on the rare occasions she comes to the city to see him) but they do it often enough that it grounds him, makes him feel less alone and more like he's found a place even in this terrible future, as long as Natasha is here with him.

After five long years, when Scott Lang shows up with his crazy time travel idea, they have some small sliver of hope, and Steve's going to cling to it with all his might. He doesn't think he can take another loss.

end

~*~

Feedback is adored!

~*~

Now back to Yuletide!

~*~