Cold as Ice - WinterWidow One-Shots

keeping 'em on their toes

He's groggy when he answers, but he still murmurs a very happy, very sleepy, "Hi, lyubov."

"Hi." She lets out a long breath, the first one in a long time. "We won."

"Yay." His enthusiasm is colored with exhaustion and she can tell only sheer willpower is keeping him up right now. "That's good for you."

"It is," she agrees with a soft laugh, "and for the rest of the world."

He hums his agreement. Across the room, an agent waves her down and gestures to the case with the tesseract, but the last thing she wants to do is end her call with James so soon. Stark notices and with a nod, takes care of the agent without her having to ask him to.

"I'm proud of you, Natalia," James whispers. His voice is almost too quiet to be heard over the noise of the agents, but she hears him.

"Yeah?" she asks softly.

"Yeah," James echoes. His voice trails off and she knows she should let him go, so she does.

"I'll see you in a few days, okay?" she says. He just hums. "Go back to sleep, James. I love you."

He makes a sound that she assumes is supposed to be an echo of the same words, but he's too far gone for the words to actually form. With a soft smile, she stuffs her phone in her suit pocket and turns to see Rogers giving her a knowing look while Stark looks on with curious amusement.

"Who's the lucky bastard, then?" he asks, his voice as cheeky as his grin.

"Wouldn't you like to know," she taunts in return.

His grin falters and he rolls his eyes, but Thor loudly proclaims that it is time to dine and so they do, deciding to follow Stark's suggestion of a shwarma place just up the street. She doesn't get any more questions about her phone call, but then again, they're all too exhausted to talk in the first place. For now, the topic seems to be dropped but she knows it'll come up again. Especially since she doesn't see herself slipping away from her new team anytime soon.

* * * * *

three

By the time she and Pepper return to the Tower after lunch, they're both laughing and late. Tony is fiddling with something in Pepper's office when they arrive, clearly having waited for several minutes, but Natasha doesn't apologize for the delay. It isn't often she had the time to go out with Pepper and she was going to enjoy the moment when she had it.

"I thought you said you'd be back thirty minutes ago." Tony's brow raises, but Pepper cuts off any whining with a press of her lips to his.

"We were," she says. Glancing back at Natasha, she adds, "Then Natasha's husband stopped by during a mission and we couldn't just leave."

"Husband?"

Tony's only teasing, but Natasha still rolls her eyes. James comes up in conversation at least once a week if Tony has any say in it, but she's turned it into a game to see just how long she can go before Tony inevitably figures out who James is.

"When do I get to meet the elusive husband?"

She isn't going to grace him with a response, but she's saved from having to make an excuse by her phone ringing. It's James, and she answers with a smirk.

"Hello, love," she says, watching as Tony rolls his eyes. "We were just talking about you."

"Fury called you already?" James asks, confusion coloring his voice.

Immediately, her teasing smirk falls and Tony's brow furrows. "No, he didn't." Frowning, she asks, "Why? What happened?"

"I need you to pick me up from HQ," he says, and panic curls around her chest. "Mission didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped."