Till death do us part.. or something like that.
She'd always known she was missing some parts from her past. She'd never cared, it wasn't something she wanted to relive. That was until her past made its way into her present in the form of a very handsome man.
She'd been looking everywhere for him for the past hour, finally giving up and accepted that maybe he wasn't even up. She made her way to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, and there he was, sitting on the counter with his back to her, in his usual long sleeve shirt and glove.
It'd been two months since he'd come back from Wakanda and moved to the Tower, and they'd barely spoken. She could've taken the fault for that, but actually, it was him who'd been avoiding her. Rationally, she knew he'd tried to kill her a fair ammount of times, and that she shouldn't care if he didn't want to be near her, but for some reason she did. Especially after what'd happened last night.
He'd been staring at her from across the room all night. That wasn't too weird, after all she was a spy, and even if he always stayed as far away from her as possible, she'd noticed the longing glances and the way her heart fluttered at them. She'd ignored them. He was very attractive, and maybe that was it. But then, a little before the party had ended, and when -thanks to the inhibitor Bruce had developed- he was a little drunk, he'd approached her.
"You called me Natalia" she said from behind him, and he jumped. Literally jumped.
"Jesus Christ Romanoff" he hissed, a hand in his heart to try and slow its beating, "you can't sneak up on people like that! And what are you talking about?"
Well, it was the longest sentence he'd ever said to her. Progress.
"Last night, when you came to talk to me, you called me Natalia."
His eyes narrowed and he looked around, maybe a little nervously, she thought, even if his handsome features were as stoic as ever.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, but you do, Barnes" she smirked, and he gulped.
"I really don't. But it's your name, isn’t it? It's normal for people to call you that."
"Ah, but that's the thing. The only person in this place that knows that is Clint, and apparently you. And I perfectly remember that when you moved here, Steve introduced me as Natasha. That's the name the rest know. So how would you know that my real name is Natalia?" she didn't wait for an answer, instead poured a cup of coffee and refilled his, talking with her back to him. "I've been thinking about it all night, and there's only one possible answer I can come up with" she turned around and handed him the mug, "we know each other from the Red Room."
"I remember your name from the file I was given when I was sent to kill your engineer in Odessa" he said, masking his panic with a long gulp of coffee.
"When that happened, I was already part of SHIELD, Barnes. I was already Natasha Romanoff" she smirked again, "but it's okay, it doesn't really matter."
She winked at him and left. He shook his head once she was out of eyesight. What a fucking lame excuse, Barnes.
She didn't approach him until three days later. She wasn't scared of him, but he was still volatile, and she didn't want to push him to the edge.
It was like two in the morning and she had already given up sleeping, so she'd gone to the gym, but someone was already there. She peeked inside. Of course it was Barnes. She entered slowly, making her presence known before speaking. His eyes fluttered to her then back to the bag he was punching.
She stared for a few seconds. He'd taken off the glove and he was in a short sleeve shirt, tighter than Steve's suit, that defined all of his muscles.
After a minute, he stopped and looked at her defeatedly, as if expecting another interrogation, but she smiled softly. His heart jumped, not that he would ever admit it.
