To Find Love: Romanogers One-Shots

It's All Uphill From Here: Part 4

Warning: heavily implies sexual assault, but only once near the beginning.

The last year of high school starts off rough. Natasha had spent almost every day and night at the Rogers' house and her mother had decided it wasn't a good thing. Fortunately, Natasha was nearly eighteen years old and Ms. Rogers had stood up to Ms. Romanova in Natasha's defense. The short argument had ended when Sarah threatened to call the cops on Svetlana's negligence unless she promised to leave the two kids alone. After that, Natasha had officially moved into the spare bedroom.

On the first day of their last year, Alexei is out of jail. He manages to approach Natasha during the one class she has without one of her three boys and pulls her into an empty room. If the teachers notice either of them missing from first period, none of them say anything. It isn't until second block when Sam notices she isn't in class that their disappearance is noticed. Steve gets a text in the middle of his English class from Sam only to get one a second later from Natasha.

"Can I use the restroom?" Steve asks. The teacher eyes him suspiciously, probably aware Steve has his phone out, but Steve leaves before he's stopped.

He runs into Sam in the hallway and the two run to where Natasha had said she was. Steve doesn't allow himself to panic as he opens the closet door and sees Natasha in a heap on the floor. Her hair is a mess and her shirt is on crooked. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened when she looks up and reveals a giant purple hickey on the side of her neck. Steve drops to his knees in front of her and wraps his arms around her protectively. Sam stands guard in the doorway while Natasha cries and Steve tries uselessly to comfort her.

"Natasha, what happened?" Steve asks, mentally preparing himself for the answer he knows he's going to get.

"Alexei," is all she has to say for Steve to hate himself. If he hadn't been so confident things were going to be better this year, he would have remembered the look on Alexei's face when they'd walked into the school building that morning. He would have made sure she was safely in her class and laughing with Maria before leaving to his own. Instead, he had just waved then left for his math class.

After Natasha had stopped crying, Steve and Sam took her home. Bucky calls during third period, demanding to know where they were at. Sam walks out of Steve's bedroom where Natasha was no more than a head poking out of a blanket in Steve's lap. They hadn't parted since the first moment Steve had hugged her and Sam was pretty sure they weren't planning on it. It doesn't matter because when Bucky arrives thirty minutes later, he's carrying enough candy and soda to last even the four of them a day or two.

"How ya feelin', Nat?" Bucky asks Natasha, handing her a package of Sweet Tart ropes candy. She takes it from him and shifts so she's sitting upright beside Steve instead of lying on his lap.

"Horrible," Natasha mumbles, curling closer to Steve. She grimaces but none of the boys say anything. Instead, Bucky gives her a soft smile and hands over her favourite soda.

"You know," Bucky begins, "There was this one time I thought it would be funny to prank Mr. Taylor. Yeah, turns out it wasn't a very great idea because I..."

Bucky launches into story after story about the times he'd tried pranking all his least favourite teachers. The group is familiar with some of them, but the distraction works and pretty soon, Natasha's laughing along with them just as carefree as if it were a regular study session.

* * * * *

Winter comes and Sam bets Bucky had can't use a baking sheet as a sled. It's Christmas break and they're all a little worn out from extra homework the last few days of school, so no one objects to the bet. Steve brings his own sled and Sam brings the baking sheet. As it turns out, Bucky brings his own as well so they arrive at the sledding hill with one sled and two baking sheets. The snow is too fluffy for the baking sheets the first few times, so Steve paves the way by doing a couple of runs on his real sled. Once the sledding trail is fully formed and ready to use, Bucky sets down his baking sheet and gets ready.