She's Mine) Romanogers

Part 10) Get Some ZZZs

Author's Note) I totally messed up and forgot to post Chapter 6) Morning After, and then ended up double posting Chapter 9) This Seems a Bit Fast. I got very confused, but I went back and fixed the order and inserted the missing chapter, so if you want you can go back and read that you can, but you don't need to. Thank you so much to all who let me know about it! Love you guys <3 <3 <3!!!

I missed her so much and yet I saw her all the time, it was weird. I would see her and not talk to her, I couldn't tell how much of this was her trying to maintain cover or if she was actually pushing me away. I would enter the room and she would give a friendly smile, and then be gone within the next five minutes.

In the limited time I did see her, it didn't slip my notice how exhausted she was starting to look. She had large bags under her eyes and her posture seemed tense and tired all at the same time.

It was around five in the morning and the sun was just starting to come up, casting gorgeous rays through the windows of the room I decided I wanted to wake up in. Most of the Avengers would come to this lounge and kitchen in the morning due to the incredible vantage point of the sunrise, but most of them were still asleep at this hour.

I was very surprised to see Natasha already up and in the kitchen. She was leaning over the counter and holding her head, I immediately assumed she was crying and I quickly closed the distance between her and where I was at the door, "hey Nat, what's going on?" I asked, I had made my footsteps louder as I got close just so she knew, as she had gotten more tired she had been more reactive as well, but she didn't respond.

"Nat?" I quietly asked, leaning over a bit to see her face, only to find she was asleep. I would have been worried it was something else if there wasn't the soft hum of her breathing and her expression wasn't the most relaxed I'd seen it since we had returned from our mission. "Oh Nat," I spoke only to myself, I didn't know if I was happy that she was finally getting some rest or feeling pity that she was this tired.

I had no idea why she was so tired, but clearly something was keeping her from sleeping for the past few days. I would have had a better idea if we were still talking, but she wasn't in the mood for that lately. I quietly went about making my coffee, continually checking over my shoulder to see her still asleep.

The door opened, "morning," Clint loudly yawned as he entered.

I whirled around quickly and shushed him, he raised an eyebrow at my response and padded on over. "She's asleep," I explained.

His face flashed from disbelief, to concern, to shocked, "she slept through me opening a door, you rummaging around the kitchen, and us talking right now?"

I was as baffled as he was, Natasha was the lightest sleeper I knew, she would wake up at the drop of a feather most of the time... but clearly not now. I motioned for us to walk over to the couches so we could talk a bit more freely and she could get some more sleep.

"I was going to ask you, she's been training with you and completely avoiding me," I started. I wasn't sure how much Clint knew about what was going on. It was pretty clear that he had his suspicions about Natasha and I's relationship given how well he knew her and that he'd lived with us for the past year, but I still wasn't fully sure what knowledge he was privy to.

"Ya," he rubbed the back of his neck, "I've noticed it in our spars, she isn't thinking clearly, she keeps missing easy punches and tripping on stuff and forgetting things." As I heard that it was hard to imagine, Natasha was usually so sharp, none of that sounded like her.

"Should we move her? I don't want her to pull a muscle hunched over like that. I have no idea how long she has been here," I questioned.

"I don't want to wake her if she needs the sleep so badly she is sleeping standing up, and she'll spook if we do anything," Clint was absolutely right. He knew her probably as well as I did, and I made a decision then and there because I knew I would need help if I was going to get Nat through this.