She's Mine) Romanogers

Part 1) The Begining of the End

 "You're going to have to do better than that if you want to beat me," she smirked while on top of me, we were in the sparring ring in the training room, and if we hadn't been, I would have been tempted to do something not entirely appropriate.

She definitely picked up on what I was thinking and quickly got off of me and offered a hand up. I took it and debated pulling her back down to me, but I knew it would only serve to irritate her, which I didn't want to do. I took the help and bounced up, placing a quick kiss on her lips before stepping away fast, just dodging the hand she sent playfully swatting at me. "Steve, not in public," she scolded, not that there was anyone else in the room.

Yes, Natasha and I had been dating for a year now, very secretly. I mean so secretly that when she wanted to spend the night with me she would sneak over in the air vents. It was so under the radar it was closer to the molten core at the center of the Earth than it was to any radar.

She gracefully stepped off of the mat and padded over to her pile of stuff, grabbing her water bottle and taking a few sips. Her non-verbal way of saying she was done training, we were only supposed to train for a half hour today, but she pushed it closer to two hours, and I didn't want her to be alone... okay, maybe I was the one who wanted to spend more time with her.

"Coffee?" I offered, still wanting to hang out.

"Steve, we've already been together all day," she grumbled, "as much as I would love to, we need to go our own ways... as much as I don't want to."

"Oh, come on," I pushed, "it's not weird for two friends to go get coffee after a training session. You're being paranoid," I playfully shoved into her.

"Steve," she scolded, more forcefully this time, "but fine, we can go to the Starbucks a few blocks down."

"Which one, we're in the middle of New York city, there are two hundred and forty one here," I laughed. We had googled it a few days ago when we were procrastinating on getting out of bed.

"We can't go back to the one where we..." she trailed off, and by the rosy color filling her cheeks, I knew exactly which one she was talking about. A fond memory indeed, and I was smiling and probably blushing as well now. By some miracle there was a power outage while we were there, and I took full advantage of it and convinced her that we could both sneak into the bathroom while the cameras were off. I was lucky the power outage coincided with her being a bit more lax with the secrecy that day... and we also had gone a week without having sex at that point. So, we were both very eager for the opportunity.

"How about the one on thirty sixth? We haven't been there together in a while," I suggested. I kept track of these things now. I felt like her spy habits were rubbing off on me, even if it was for the sole purpose of spending more time with her.

"I'll go change and shower and we can head out," she smiled as she started to dab herself off with a rag and collect her things.

"Sounds perfect," I grinned again. She just rolled her eyes at my face and walked out, but I saw her smirk that she tried to hide.

I immediately missed her presence, she just had that effect on me. She made me feel light and happy, and I loved any time I got to spend with her. I hadn't verbally said I loved her yet, but I did. I loved her, and as much as I wanted to tell her, I didn't want to scare her off.

Dating Natasha Romanoff was a careful balance, making sure that I was careful not to scare her away. She had gone through so much in her life, and I tiptoed around the pains, hurts, and triggers as best as I could. She always did the same for me. The last thing I wanted to do was push her into something she didn't like or back her into a corner, she hated being trapped. So I took it slow, took it at her pace. Yes, it was painstakingly slow sometimes, but when her walls came down for me, it was so rewarding. I loved getting to know her more and getting closer to her, it was more than worth the wait.