On Your Desk

Luck

Summary: The reader is content in her relationship and her sexuality, but when a coworker brings up some painful questions, she has to wonder if Bucky and Yelena are missing something vital from their relationship because of her.

Pairing: ace!Reader x Bucky Barnes x Yelena Belova

Word Count: ~7.3k

Warnings: poly relationship, mentions/discussion of sex (not smut, no description), angst (happy ending), acephobia, biphobia

A/N: This turned out to be an incredibly cathartic and personal fic for me to write. I would love to hear any feedback and hope you enjoy it!

There was something about the way people looked at her when she told them, that made her keep the secret for years. 

She knew she was different, and sometimes she felt broken for it.

She didn’t know how to explain it, and so for years she had kept it a silent secret, hiding the truth of her singular nature, her virginity, no matter how socially constructed it was, and her solitude. 

But Y/N was comfortable being ace, content and happy.

And until Bucky Barnes had come into her life, she had been convinced she might simply be alone forever, content that it might be that way. But Bucky had been understanding in a way that no one else ever had been or tried to be. Their relationship had come on slowly, like waves against a craggy shore. Bucky needed something slow, something that might have seemed agonizingly slow to anyone else. 

But she had enjoyed it, had liked hand holding that turned to cuddling that turned to kissing. And so when Bucky brought up sex - she felt comfortable enough to tell him the truth. 

She’d panicked a little, worried he wouldn’t get it, would write her off the moment she said it. It had happened in the past with people she thought she could trust. 

He’d listened and understood and told her it didn’t change anything. Bucky had been thoughtful, listened carefully to her explanation that she didn’t feel sexual attraction. He’d been prepared to figure something out when she told him she could have sex with him, would enjoy it too, she just wouldn’t ever suggest it. It wasn’t a need for her, like it might be for him. 

You just have to tell me what you need. 

And it worked, because working through needs and wants and freedom was something Bucky had been learning too. That this choice was always his to initiate seemed not only to work for him but encourage him.

Y/N met Yelena at the strip club she worked at as a bartender. Yelena had been chasing someone in the club, smashing glass and knocking over tables, arsenal of weapons strapped around her small body. Y/N felt a connection with her almost immediately, and not just because she’d stopped a man from stabbing her. 

Somehow she had fit between her and Bucky so well, it was like Yelena had always been there. 

Yelena vaguely knew of Bucky, knew that Bucky had known Natasha at some point, however blurry and distorted those memories might be. 

Introducing them had been easy, and falling into the current relationship had been even easier. 

She didn’t question why or how either of them had accepted it, each of them wanting it as bad as the other. She didn’t consider why it worked, why they accepted it. Never questioned if something might be missing. 

The relationship worked. 

That was all that mattered. 

~

It was usually a mistake to try to explain her relationship to people who did not know her well. Not only was she in a poly relationship, but she was also asexual. 

It confused people. 

“I mean,” the new hire Y/N’s training starts to ask, tilting her head to the side. “How does it work then? Don’t you hate sex? Oh, they’re asexual too, then?”

With her back turned she rolls her eyes and finishes polishing the glass in her hand, “They definitely don’t hate sex. And I don’t hate sex. It's just not a need for me. I could go forever without it.” 

“Oh,” the woman says, eyes trained on the currently empty dance stage. “I kind of thought that was the point though. Of being asexual. Hating it.” 

“Like anything, it's a spectrum. Some people are sex repulsed, some don’t mind the idea if it makes their partner happy. And anything in between. It’s individual.” She shelves the glass in her hand, wishing she hadn’t brought it up, had settled on an easier answer to the question so are you seeing anyone?

She should have left it at a simple yes, and fielded all the follow up questions with I’m a private person, sorry. 

But she had liked the new hire, gotten along with her for the past two weeks of her training period. She seemed open, and cool, and was also queer. But she knew better than that, that being queer did not preclude people from having other biases and stereotypes. 

“So you do have sex with them? How often?” 

She stiffens. 

It's not something people who don’t fall onto the ace spectrum get asked. The question hurts, reminds her of all the little holes inside her, all the things that she thought were broken about herself for years. 

She tries to laugh it off, finally turning to meet her eyes, “I’m not answering that, sorry.” 

The giggle that escapes the new hire, Lisa, makes her cringe, so she sets about turning all the liquor bottles so their labels face outwards, anything to avoid looking at the other woman. 

“Clearly you’re attracted to them-,”

“Yeah, I am,” she tries not to snap. “I can tell when someone is hot but that doesn’t mean I want to fuck them. That’s what asexuality is, lack of sexual attraction,” she tries to explain patiently. “I’m more attracted to personality anyways-,”

“Then what’s the point?” Lisa cuts her off. 

“Of what?” She asks leaning against the counter as one of the regulars approaches the bar. Lisa takes a minute to flirt for a tip and make his drink before sending him off again. 

“Attraction I guess?” She turns to her, crossing her arms and raising a brow. “Like, if you don’t ever really want to have sex with them, then what’s the point?”

She doesn’t know how to respond and so she shakes her head and turns away, wiping the counter down. 

The point? She loves them. She’s attracted to them in every other way, was happy to make sure all their needs were met. And it worked well, she thought, that Bucky and Yelena had each other too. 

Luckily she’s saved from answering or thinking about it too much as a wave of customers approach the bar and one of the girls takes the first dance of the night. She smiles and chats like she always does, efficient and friendly, harsh when a drunk becomes too much. 

She likes her job, likes the quick pace of it. She likes how she doesn’t have to think, despite Lisa’s words hurricaning around her mind, an endless loop.

It’s a question she had asked herself so many times, while she was coming to terms with what she thought her identity might turn out to be. 

What’s the point of being attracted to someone if you don’t want to sleep with them? 

She still doesn’t really know. She doesn't like the cracked feeling that springs up in her chest at the thought. 

Love, she tells herself harshly. Intimacy and safety and warmth, that’s the point. 

Sex didn’t make a relationship complete. 

She tries to remind herself of all the ways she isn’t broken, of all the ways she’s capable of love, that physical love is not the ultimate expression of love. That she isn’t broken because she doesn’t feel a particular pull to the act.

Bucky and Yelena love her as she is, accept her as she is. 

She’s devoted, she loves both of them in spades. 

Bucky because he’s warm and protective and gentle. 

Yelena because she’s funny and loyal and soft under the shell she wears.

She’ll go home to them after this shift, shower off the smell of the club, slot herself behind them in their king size bed, beam with happiness when one of them would inevitably turn and tuck her closer. 

Certainly she has a type, she smiles to herself.

Loyal and protective with a hard exterior that hides a heart of gold. Not to mention that they’re both formerly brainwashed Russian assassins. The bond she had watched them form over it had been when she worried the most. People with shared trauma either jived well or they decidedly did not. 

Lucky for her, Yelena’s firebrand reckoning with the world for the loss of her years and her sister contrasted well with Bucky’s quiet path of amends, hardly spoken of but which helped remind Yelena to temper herself. 

Lisa does fine during their shift and Y/N thinks that she can probably handle her next shift alone, or at least without training wheels. Their shift ends at midnight, the closers replacing them at the bar. 

She’s glad to be heading home, wants desperately to be away from Lisa and the thoughts that she makes shift around in her mind. She drifts to the dancers’ changing room, where she keeps her bag and coat. The girls greet her as she enters. She knows most of them well after years of running the bar. 

Lisa follows, the conversation between them now pleasant, about how she’d done well and could fly solo, about the customers.

She thinks the conversation between them earlier was a fluke, a little misunderstanding that they didn’t have to talk about anymore. 

But as she’s shrugging on her coat, Lisa turns and says, “Like, sorry for bringing it up again, but I was thinking - isn’t one of your partners a girl? Do you prefer sleeping with her? Have you heard of compulsory heterosexuality? Maybe-,” 

This was the worst part of it. The boxing in, the suffocating labeling that people tried to foist onto her. The assumption that she hadn’t already thought of that, that she’s confused and that a veritable stranger knew her better than she knew herself. 

“No,” she says simply, cutting Lisa off. “It’s not that. It’s not them, it's me.” 

“So then you’re bisexual.” 

The word almost sounds dirty coming out of her mouth. 

One of the dancers notices. “Hey,” Nicole, one of the veteran dancers snaps. “Fuck off. There’s nothing wrong with being bisexual.” 

“Of course not,” she answers in a tone that suggests there is. “I’m just trying to get an understanding of Y/N’s relationship.” 

“It's not yours to understand,” Nicole says, standing to join Y/N, looping their arms together. “Fuck off, new girl, before I drag you out of here.” 

Lisa looks shocked for just a moment, before opening her mouth. Y/N continues, not letting the other woman continue whatever thought had occurred to her, “Look, I’m not pressed about labeling myself, or what I feel, or my relationship. I’m attracted to both of my partners, and I don’t feel sexual attraction to anyone.”

Nicole squeezes her hand, reassuring and warm and she’s never been more grateful. She remembers Nicole sitting on the floor behind the bar on a slow night, hiding from the manager and listening to her talk about her sexuality without any judgment, curious and supportive. 

After that night, Nicole got free drinks whenever she wanted them. 

The conversation seems to be over as Lisa shrugs and moves to grab her bag. She’s about to sigh, tension draining away as Nicole pats her arm when Lisa says quietly, “I just wonder what they get out of it.” 

She pauses, Nicole’s fingers tightening against her skin again. “What?”

Lisa shrugs. “Just like, if they fuck without you, and they’re happy…like why do they need a third?”

She blinks, automatically putting out an arm to stop Nicole from lunging forward to throttle the girl. 

“Guess it's good it doesn’t affect you then,” Y/N says stiffly.

“Not trying to be rude. Just saying. Do they fuck without you around?” 

She swallows and answers, not sure why she’s entertaining the question. “They do. I know that they do. It makes sense for us, for our relationship.”

Y/N has had sex with Bucky and Yelena seperately, and on several occasions together. 

But more often than not, they had sex with each other. 

It never makes her feel like she isn’t valued, like she’s the annoying third to an otherwise stable two person relationship. 

Is it possible she misjudged the situation so badly because sex wasn’t important to her? 

But Yelena also has a low sex drive, so much so that Y/N had thought she was ace as well. But Yelena hadn’t wanted to label herself and so she had let it go. 

Either way, she and Bucky needed sex in the relationship where Y/N did not. 

She wants to comment that maybe the conversation is inappropriate for work, but the dressing room of a strip club had heard much worse than this minor embarrassment.  

“You don’t have to answer her questions,” Nicole says. 

“It’s okay.” 

Lisa raises a brow, and Y/N hates that she’s thinking about it now. If there’s something she’s missing. If she’s as incomplete as she’s always feared she was.

No, she thinks viciously, stopping that line of thought. She isn’t incomplete, but maybe she’s wrong for their relationship, if their needs aren't being met. 

Needs could be overlooked in any relationship, why not theirs? 

“I’m just saying, maybe you should think about it. Maybe you should talk about it with them. It's not fair to them after all if you’re withholding something they need because you might be confused.” It hurts to hear but she finds herself nodding anyway. She keeps a hand pressed into Nicole’s arm. 

She decides that that should be the end of the conversation, before the panic choking her bubbles up and sends her spiraling. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ve got a train to catch.” 

“Sure.” 

Some of the other dancers approach her as she heads for the door but she waves them back, says she’s fine.

Outside in the cool midnight air, she takes a deep breath, holding in the panic, the anxiety swimming around in her stomach, the worry that her partners were lacking in something vital and she hadn’t realized it. 

A burning shame builds up and cascades over as she stands there with her back pressed against the brick exterior of the building. She feels stupid. 

Has she really spent years coming to terms with who she is for a few awkward questions make her question everything all over again? 

She thought she handled this years ago, had come to terms with her identity. 

Clearly not, if it was this easy to uproot her again. 

But no, she’s secure in herself, as being as she is. The real worry is the thought that she’s hurting the people she cares about, that she’s not good enough for them, that she’s not enough for them. 

Back when it had just been her and Bucky, he had always met her after her shifts and walked her home. 

It had taken him months to kiss her, months after that to ask her about sex. 

Bucky was not from this era, how could he be expected to understand her? Understand this part of her? 

But he had, where the woman inside the club hadn’t even tried. 

“I don’t want you do anything you don’t want to,” Bucky said, licking his lips nervously. “I never want to make you uncomfortable.” 

The fact that he asked, that he was worried at all soothed her. No one else had ever cared enough to ask, to reassure her, to make sure she would always be comfortable too. “I don’t hate it…I just don’t feel a need. I want to, if you want to. It makes me happy to make you happy.”

And it had, and it does. 

She could enjoy it, she just didn’t feel the need, the want.

She enjoyed it just fine once it was initiated, but mostly because the person she was with liked it so much. 

She liked kissing much better, liked cuddling, liked the feel of skin against skin, the warmth and comfort of another presence. 

The remembrance of Bucky waiting for her all those months ago, only makes his absence now more keenly felt, even though he’d not accompanied her home in months. Not since she assured him that she would be okay, that his waiting for her made her feel a loss of autonomy, like her skin did not belong to her.

And so, he had relented, let her download a walk home app, though his worry had been renewed the day she met Yelena. The club smashed to pieces, a knife nearly lodged in her side. She had pointed out to Bucky’s great chagrin that the near death experience had not occurred on her walk. 

Y/N’s  independence is important to her, but her safety is important to Bucky. Now, she wonders if her rejection of his presence pushed him away. 

Did she push people away? 

She shoves away from the wall, hoping that the dancers rip Lisa apart as she walks to the subway station. 

The ride is short but only makes her heart pound harder, watching the late night revelers sway with the rock of the train. Usually, it would make her smile. But tonight as she watches couples flirt and laugh, she feels empty.

It only reminds her of the missing thing inside her, the want that she’s told should be there.

Maybe that missing thing will be enough to drive away the people she cares about most.  

~

The apartment is dark. 

She doesn’t turn on the lights, creeps through the living room on silent feet. In the bathroom, she avoids her reflection, avoids thinking about herself at all as she strips off her club clothes and climbs in the shower. 

Once she towels off and changes, she crosses the hall to slip into bed behind Bucky, who’s normally closest to the door, a protector against the night. 

But when she pushes the door open, she can’t seem to bring herself to step over the threshold. 

They’re curled together. She can see the blonde of Yelena’s hair over the curve of Bucky’s shoulder. Their breathing is steady and even. There’s a space for her, very deliberately left. She aches to fall into it, to press her forehead against Bucky’s back and curl her arm around his side to clutch at Yelena’s fingers. 

Instead, she closes the door, picks up a blanket from the end of the couch, and lays down there instead.

Her skin feels empty, but she tells herself it’s better than feeling too much. 

~

She’s woken by the stroke of fingers against her arm, the top of her shoulder, and then the dip of her collarbone. 

“Did you fall asleep here?” Comes the gentle accented words of Yelena. “That was very stupid of you. You know to come right to bed.” 

She blinks her eyes open, blurry vision taking a moment to clear. 

Yelena’s face is free of makeup, her long hair loose around her shoulders. She reaches out to pinch a piece between her fingers, tugging gently on the strand. “No. You looked too peaceful to disturb.” 

Yelena’s brow furrows, she shoves Y/N’s shoulder. “No. You do not disturb us. Never.” 

She tries not to feel the acid in her stomach curl at the word us. An us she suddenly feels she’s not a part of. “Okay,” she says simply instead, sitting up to take Yelena’s hand between her own. Her gaze is still hard, penetrating, like she can see to the center of her. Yelena opens her mouth but Y/N quickly cuts her off. “Where’s Buck?”

“Sleeping still.” She keeps peering at her, like she could read her thoughts if she looked hard enough. “What’s wrong?” 

She tries to look surprised, but by the way Yelena rolls her eyes it’s a poor attempt. “Nothing, Lena,” she says, lifting her hand to press a kiss to her palm. 

“If you are going to lie, at least be good at it,” she says but doesn’t press further. “No more sleeping on the couch.” Yelena stands and crosses to the kitchen. “Come help me make an American breakfast. I want the whole thing today.” 

“Should we make mimosas too?” 

“Of course,” she shrugs in that very particular Yelena way, with the lift of her shoulders and purse of her lips, brows sneaking up her forehead. 

Y/N feels a pulse of love spike within her, telling her to forget the emotional wariness that Lisa’s questions had inspired. She stands from the couch, stretching before she folds the blanket back into its spot over the sofa’s arm. 

When she turns toward the kitchen, Yelena is eyeing her again. 

Sometimes she hates living with two former spies. They miss nothing. 

She smiles, walking toward the counter where Yelena is cracking eggs into a bowl. She knows that she’s still suspicious by the way she watches her. 

Thankfully she doesn’t say anything else and they fall into an easy routine. 

An hour later they have a complete spread before them, pancakes, eggs and toast, sliced fruit, avocados, bacon and sausage. 

If there was one thing she adored about Yelena it was her tendency to overindulge, filling up all the gaps inside her with things she wanted, missed out on, and wanted to try. 

It led to mornings like these, where they were already tipsy by the time the food finished cooking, where she grips Y/N’s hips and pats flour onto her cheek. 

“Next time you will make biscuits and gravy for me,” she says, pushing her back into the counter, hands cupping around Y/N’s wrists where she braces her hands against the stone. “I have not gotten to try them yet.”

She leans forward and pushes her nose into Yelena’s cheek, “Sure.”

Yelena pulls away to raise her arms above her head and wiggle on the spot, smiling. 

It makes Y/N smile, eases the worries and insecurities swirling around inside her. 

They’re just settling down at the breakfast table laden with food when the bedroom door opens and Bucky emerges, scrubbing sand from his eyes before he takes in the spread. “Hungry this morning?” he asks, voice gruff with sleep and amusement. 

Bucky stops by the table, kissing the side of Yelena’s head. She waves him away, “Ah, stop that. Get a plate.” 

He sends her a gentle smile and moves off to get the plate. 

She tries not to let her heart sink, tries to remember if he’s always missed her at breakfast, had always only given a kiss to Yelena. Bucky knows she likes greeting kisses, enjoys them in fact. 

She keeps her expression carefully neutral, her eyes turned down, as all the light she’d felt cooking with Yelena drifts away. 

A foot kicks at her ankle under the table. 

“James,” Yelena says. “Something is wrong with your girl. She won’t tell me what. She did not come to bed with us.” She loves the way Yelena’s accent sounds when she says the word girl, rounds out the syllables until they're soft and malleable and warm. 

The warmth is slighting undercut by being called Bucky’s girl, like she’s being siphoned off onto someone else, like she’s not also Yelena’s. 

Bucky turns from the cabinet, plate in hand, watching her carefully. “Why didn’t you, doll?” 

Had he even noticed? Would he have brought it up if Yelena hadn’t? 

Something like shame wells up inside her. For overthinking everything over comments made by someone who did not know her, who did not know her people. Y/N wants to lie all the anxieties eating at the inside of her skin at their feet and let them reassure her, but she worries that she’ll see pity instead and everything bad in her mind will be confirmed. “I didn’t want to disturb you,” she says quietly instead.  

Bucky is looking at her closely now too, but he’s not as good at reading her as Yelena is and so he just frowns.

He sits down at that small, worn kitchen table and peers at her. So she swallows and lifts her head, “Nothing is wrong. I really just didn’t want to disturb you. There wasn't any room anyways.” 

“Liar,” Yelena says into her glass, slouched back in her chair, not looking at her. 

“Prove it,” she snips back.  

“So shove us over next time,” Bucky mediates. 

And that dreaded us is back. Us versus her. She feels like an outsider all of a sudden. How did she ever expect to be equal among them when she did not participate equally in the relationship? 

All she can see now is how complete they are with each other, how utterly unnecessary she is.

She tries to stop the thoughts, tries to derail the things making her second guess everything about them, all of the other differences she’d always ignored, told herself didn’t matter. 

It wasn’t only about sex, though that was a big part of it. 

They share life experiences that she will never know, that she will never be able to relate to. Between being literal super people and former assassins, they also bonded through the recent loss of the most important people in their lives. The grief and turmoil they worked through everyday, how could she ever hope to understand, to compare? 

They match and she does not. 

In so many ways, she does not belong. 

When did that happen? When did they stop fitting together?

Have they ever? Was she that oblivious to everything? 

“See she keeps making that face,” Yelena says, not even looking at her as she digs for a stray piece of fruit at the bottom of her mimosa glass with one finger. “Like someone has just punched her.” 

She swallows and tries to control her face, tries not to let the hurt well up into her eyes. 

Bucky reaches out gently, always so gentle, like a giant in a model village. He touches the inside of her wrist, leans forward to lift her hand and press a kiss to her pulse point. 

It makes her want to cry, reminds her of their first couple months together where everything was shy and newly strange in the best way. When she thought everything would work out because Bucky was so old fashioned and slow with romance, that all he had to do was ask her for what he needed and she would be glad to give it. “Sweetheart, tell Yelena what happened so she can beat up whoever hurt you.” 

“Someone has hurt you?” Comes the indignant response immediately. Yelena slams her glass into the table with enough force to crack it.

“No,” she says immediately before Yelena can barrel out the front door and stab the first person she sees. Y/N turns Bucky’s hand in hers to squeeze his fingers. “Really everything is fine. I’m just feeling a bit off.” 

Yelena shoulders loosen and she slouches back down into her chair but you notice the knife in her hand that she had indeed snatched up off the table. Like she really would go fight someone with a dull kitchen blade.

She holds out her hand for it and Yelena reluctantly drops it into her hand. “You would tell me if someone has hurt you?” 

“Yes.”

Yelena relaxes at that. 

Bucky chuckles, lets go of Y/N’s wrist to load up his plate with food. 

She only picks at the food on her own plate, regretting the mimosa already as her stomach tightens and curdles around it. 

Before last night, she would have watched Yelena and Bucky with affection, how he turned toward her fully when she was talking, how they gravitated together, the gentle way Bucky laughed when Yelena exaggeratedly told a story. 

She didn’t feel jealous. 

No, she felt abandoned though everything is still the same, like a ship had sailed without her and she’d been so stupid that she hadn’t even realized it, standing on a shore with an empty horizon. She feels more than stupid, like she’s standing on the shore and the ship had sailed away months before. 

When breakfast is over and Yelena disappears to get dressed, something about meeting up with Kate, which likely just meant breaking into Kate’s place to scare the shit out of her, Bucky helps Y/N with the dishes. 

He leans into her, presses a kiss to her temple. “Whatever it is, we’re here for you.” He nudges his nose against her temple until she looks into his eyes. 

Her heart gives a painful thump as she bumps her forehead against his shoulder. “Bucky, it’s really nothing. I’m just in my head about something.”

“I’m in my own head all the time too. ‘M here if you need me.” 

She smiles, feels just a bit lighter at the way he presses close to her side, keeps contact with her like it gives him strength. 

Yelena passes them on her way out the door, her fingers hooking into Y/N’s  pajama shorts to press a hard kiss against her mouth before she smiles and disappears, Kate’s bow slung over one shoulder and a baseball bat in her hands.

Bucky drops a kiss to her hair, and Y/N watches her lean up into it. 

It makes Y/N smile, and the slam of the front door is almost comforting, the sounds of home. 

Where Bucky is all gentleness with her, Yelena is aggressive, like she wouldn’t always be able to give her love, so she gave it as forcefully as she could while she was allowed. 

But she can’t chase those stupid words away. 

What did they need a third for? Wasn’t she just complicating things for two people who deserved simplicity?

Even though she and Bucky had been together before Yelena came into their lives with the force of a hurricane, maybe she was only ever supposed to serve as the glue that stuck them together. 

She can’t help but feel like she was now the pulled stitch, the last piece of the puzzle that suddenly did not fit.

They would be better together without her, their relationship would certainly be easier. 

~

She avoids the pair of them all week, lucky that her schedule at work kept her away, that Bucky was busy with Sam in Louisiana for a few days, that Yelena was preoccupied with whatever she and Kate were up to, then liberating one the the widows who happened to be in New York. 

But they notice the change in her, because of course they do. She tries to act as normally as possible but Bucky and Yelena notice almost everything, even the slightest difference is something monumental to them. 

They notice that she sleeps on the couch, that she smiles only when necessary, that she’s melancholy, though she tries not to show it. 

Spies. They tend to know more than anyone wants them to. 

Yelena goes so far as to show up at the club, glitter framing her eyes, lips painted red, neon lights dancing around her head as she approaches the bar with a knife in her hand. “Who?”

“What?” 

“Who is hurting you? Who makes you so sad?”

She has to swallow back the burn in her throat as she lies to her, “Yelena, honey, nothing, no one.” She’s grateful that Lisa isn’t working though she’s never brought up the subject of her relationship again. Nicole likely threatened her. “Everything is fine.” 

The look in her eyes says she does not believe her, that she will fight whatever has made the minute changes in you.

“Solntse,” she says. “You know I would kill everyone here for you, yes?” 

She nods and Yelena nods back. 

“You don’t have to be sad alone,” Yelena says, “You taught me this. Remember?”

She had, when the force of her grief for Natasha had almost drug her under. 

Again, she nods, her throat so tight she can’t speak.

“I will leave you now,” she says, watching the other bartender struggle to help all the customers. “Bucky will walk you home. You will sleep with us tonight.” 

She opens her mouth to protest, but Yelena waves the knife at her, catching the attention of one of the bouncers. “No. This is happening.” 

And before she can get a word in, she blinks and Yelena is gone, slipping away so easily that the bouncer looks confused too. 

Sure enough when she leaves the club that night, Bucky is waiting for her at the corner, like he used to every single night. 

He falls into step beside her and wraps her fingers between his own. 

“Mind if we walk or do you want to take the train?”

“We can walk.” 

And so they do, silence stretching between them. It reminds her of the worries stirring inside her, that she’s let fester for the last week. She’d thought that they would ease over time but she had not stopped worrying.  

That she would never be enough, for anyone. 

Maybe for a time, but never for forever.

Bucky is the one to break the silence as they approach their apartment building. “Lena wants to have a movie night. She has the movie picked out.” He pulls her to a stop in front of their stoop, cups her jaw in his hand. “You haven’t been yourself lately. We’re worried about you.” 

She swallows but doesn’t look away from him. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m trying to get over it.” 

“Y’don’t have to do it alone, y’know? We’re here.” 

She turns her head and kisses his palm gently. “I know.”

Bucky nods but looks worried.

When they reach the apartment and Bucky throws open the door, they find Yelena already tucked on the couch, blankets spread over her legs, a big bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. “Heeeey!” she says, dragging out the word and smiling as she excitedly points at the TV. “Movie night! Since you love this couch so much,” she snarks. “Sleeping on it all the time now.” 

Bucky shucks off his jacket as he crosses the room, settling on the sofa and slinging one arm over the back. 

They’re both looking at her now, waiting for her to come inside, close the front door. 

But she suddenly can’t find it in herself to move. 

She stands there like an idiot, watching the pair of them, how Bucky reaches out and presses the tips of his fingers into Yelena’s shoulder, and she can’t imagine how she’s supposed to fit between them on the couch even though they’ve left a clear space for her between them. 

Yelena says her name. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, stepping inside, closing the door gently. “Sorry I’ve been so weird lately. But I’ve been thinking and -,” She looks away from them, down at her toes. “I-,”

“Are you leaving?

The question is asked so gently, softly. 

But Yelena’s voice is hard steel underneath and so Y/N knows that means she’s breaking on the inside. She knows if she looks up Yelena will have that pouted mask of indifference in place. She knows that Bucky’s eyes will be wide, his shoulders stiff. 

Neither of them, for all their training, could hide anything they felt. 

“No,” she says quietly. “I don’t - I’m worried I’m…” she hesitates and then decides to come out with it. “I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t,” comes the fierce reply. “Stop being stupid and sit down.” 

Bucky shifts forward on the couch, “Doll, tell us what’s bothering you.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to break up with me,” she admits suddenly. “Are we happy? Do we work together? I thought we did. I was happy. But -,” she paces, can’t look at them still. “Then I had to explain to someone what being ace means and how it’s different for everyone and then she asked…what’s the point? And I have to ask you that too because I can’t stop thinking about it. What’s the point?”

Silence stretches between them when she finally stops talking. Painful and loud.

The anxiousness that’s been drumming at the inside of her chest all week threatens to burst out of her. 

“Point of what?” Bucky breaks the silence, the timber of his voice crush, weighed down. “Us?”

“No.” She looks up, shakes her head violently, “No. No, not you. I - I love both of you. What’s the point of me? I can’t - maybe I won’t ever be able to put as much into this relationship and maybe it’s selfish of me to ask you to accept that about me. If you need more. And…if you’re happy together and you can meet all of each other's needs then why -,” She swallows and continues even when her voice breaks, “Why do you need me?”

When neither of them answers, she panics, the yawning blackhole of insecurity swallowing her up.  “And I’ve been feeling lately like maybe I was just meant to bring you together. There’s so much the two of you share that I won’t ever be able to understand. Maybe I don’t belong.”

She presses her lips together then to avoid saying more, to avoid sounding even more pathetic than she already did. 

Y/N closes her eyes and leans back against the closed front door, counting backwards from ten, crossing her arms over her chest to keep her ribs from coming undone at the seams. 

“Who made you believe this?” Yelena asks, her voice angry. “I need to know so I can kill them.” When she’s upset her accent deepens, and Y/N imagines the scrunch between her brows but can’t bring herself to open her eyes. 

Something touches her shoulder and she nearly jumps out of her skin. But it's just Bucky, who has stood and drifted over on silent feet. 

“Who?” He asks and there’s a quiet anger in his voice. 

She lets him untuck her arms and guide her to the couch. 

Yelena doesn’t touch her, just sits forward and stares and waits. 

“It doesn’t matter who. She didn’t say anything that isn’t kind of true.” 

“So you believe this is true? You want to take my home and family away from me again because of this? Because of lies from a stranger?”

She shakes her head, “No, Lena, of course not. Of course, I wouldn’t abandon you. I just have to know if this dynamic is right.” 

Bucky squeezes her fingers, heads off Yelena’s fiercely building energy, “‘s not true, Y/N. What this person said isn’t true.” 

“No,” Yelena says, her voice still harsh, but she takes Y/N’s other hand and her grip is gentle. “It is not.” 

She feels so stupid in that moment, her neck and face warm, the people she desperately loves holding either of her hands.

Yelena scoffs, “You will tell me who.” 

“No,” she says, knowing that would literally put someone’s life at stake. 

Bucky takes a gentler path, as is his habit with her. His heart is loyal and soft and breakable. She has to wonder if she’s the one to have broken it now. 

“Remember when you first told me you were ace?” He asks, his thumb stroking slowly over the back of her hand. Yelena’s shoulders drop next to Y/N, and she knows there’s some form of silent communication going on above her head as the pair of them look at each other. 

“Yes-,”

“And I told you that it didn’t matter to me,” he continues. “Yelena said the same thing when we told her, remember?” Bucky waits for her to nod before he continues, “Did we do something to make you think that wasn’t true?” 

“Of course not-,”

“Because honey, this works because of you. You make us complete.” She feels Bucky tangle his fingers with Yelena’s, their hands pressing along the curve of Y/N’s spine. “You belong with us. You give us everything we need. Sex? That isn’t why ‘m here. That isn’t why we're together.”

Yelena is nodding, her head against Y/N’s shoulder. “It is because I love you. We love you.” She shrugs against her, “You give us everything anyways. You always give everything you have. More than that. And its not like I have a high sex drive either.” 

And she knows that’s true. 

Yelena rarely brought sex up. 

Bucky was usually the one to do it, and he preferred it that way, liked the control it gave him over his life. He’d made a point to always tell both of them what he needed, when he needed it.  

She’s quiet for a moment just breathing and letting herself absorb the heat of both of them, letting herself absorb the truths being given to her. “I just don’t want you to miss anything. Or feel like you aren’t getting everything you need. I want to be a part of you.” 

Yelena laughs suddenly, turning her head to press her forehead into Y/N’s arm, nuzzling against her with her eyes closed. “We would be fucking miserable if it was only the two of us.” Yelena is laughing, she can feel her smiling against her arm, “Our life experience makes both of us bitter bitches. We would be miserable without you.” 

Y/N tries not to smile, because it was true. 

Bucky pokes the corner of her mouth. “We get everything we need. Even if we never had sex, we get everything we need. And sweetheart? What's the point? God, the point is that I fucking love you. That you are everything I’ve ever needed and you understood me when no one else was trying to.”

Yelena is nodding again, her fingers gripping Y/N’s. “You make us better people,” she says quietly. “You take care of us. You tell us all we have to do is ask for anything we need and you will give it. And you do. Anything. You give everything.” She pushes her back until her back is pressed against Bucky’s chest, his arms automatically wrapping around her. 

Yelena slips forward, curling into her embrace. She’s overwhelmed by their presence, by their renewed acceptance. Bucky holds both her hands while Yelena tips her face up to kiss her carefully. 

She wants to cry for being so lucky. She cups Yelena’s jaw, kissing her back with the fierceness she knows the other woman craves.  

It had never been this easy before, with anyone else, of someone saying, I see you and it's okay. I love you as you are. You are enough. 

“I’m not broken,” she says out loud, because it's important in that moment. “I won’t change.” 

“We know, solntse.” 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“We know that too.”

Bucky kisses the side of Y/N’s head, let’s Yelena lean up and kiss him before he asks, “Now, who made you believe you were?”

She sighs, brushing a strand of Yelena’s hair behind her ear. “I’m not telling you. It would put that person in serious danger. I’m pretty sure Nicole kicked her ass already anyways.” 

“Remind me to buy Nicole some flowers. We can invite her for dinner and she can tell us.”

Lucky, she thinks again, so lucky, to have found two people who so completely understood her, who accepted her without question. Two people, who only asked for what she was comfortable to give. 

Yelena fits herself against Y/N, tucking her head under her chin while Bucky wraps his arms around both of them. 

“What movie did you want to watch, Lena?” She asks, curling her hair around a finger, touching the corner of her jaw. 

Yelena looks up, her eyes going to Bucky and then back to Y/N, “You pick.” She settles back down against her. 

So she clicks on something random on Netflix and calls it good enough, knows none of them will be watching it anyways.

She pets Yelena’s hair, feels Bucky’s fingers against her arm, occasionally twitching out to touch the top of Yelena’s head. 

“It was Lisa wasn’t it?”

She sighs and Yelena laughs, knowing she guessed correctly. “I’m going to hide the knives.” 

“Like I need a knife.” 

“Don’t kill her.” 

“Ah, no, of course not,” she says, shrugging. “Maim, maybe a little.”

kotenok part. twelve

while you and natasha share a moment of serenity with each other, it’s interrupted when you argue about the conflicts in your relationship.

older!natasha romanoff x younger!reader

kotenok masterlist

You wake with your head buried between her neck. Natasha smells like lavender, honey, and vanilla all at once. With her hair strewn across her pillow, crimson red locks, curled into little ringlets, they make way for the features on her face.

The way she scrunches herself nose in slumber, pink lips parted as she breathes, and the freckles say a quaint hello as the sun shines softly on the both of you.

It’s small.

The days like these where New York city isn’t in a cloud of pent up rain and thunder, the days where the sun is out to play, shows off for a daring sunset when it hits eight o’clock right on the dot.

The days where you get to wake up with the love of your life in your bedroom with your head buried in the crook of her neck.

You’re the first one to stir awake. Your limbs aching from prior activities from the night before. Only then, which to remind you of the purpling hickeys left on the skin of your inner thighs and thin parts of you neck.

A thumb rubs along the bruising colour on your leg, hissing when you realize it’s still fresh as a wound. You don’t mind it, it’s all what makes you owned by Natasha and you’re proud.

But as the chilly air of the AC hits you awake, you sit up against your body’s aching will and a yawn washes the sleep away.

Natasha is next to wake up. Her arm moving over to your side in instinct of searching for you. When she fails and feels your side empty, but warm, her eyes flutter open to find you staring at her with swollen eyes.

“Morning.” You beam at the older woman with a looped smile, which she returns in the process. But when the slumber in her slips away and Natasha leans her head against your back, you feel her warm breath fan against your skin.

Her arm circles against your tiny body and tugs you close against her front. The older woman has no trouble dragging you against her for the sole reason she overweights you in size.

When you melt against her front, feeling her mock your actions as she buries her face against your neck, your body loses all control in an effort to just feel your lover.

“Good morning, moya krasivaya devushka.” She whispers it like a nun in prayer, like you were the only thing she believed was worth worshiping.

And despite the language barrier, you welcomed her embrace and smiled through it all.

“I have no clue what that meant, but good morning to you too.” The redhead hums against your skin, her pale slender fingers drawing circles against the skin that protects your ribs.

She makes another noise of content, this time, pulling her head away to pepper open mouthed kisses on the paper thin skin of your pulse. You jerk slightly in response, but found pure and content comfort in her touch and hold.

The older woman held you like that, breathing in and out as her chest presses against yours. With the curve of your back pressed against her chest, her lips on your skin, gentle sayings were whispered along the way.

“I love you.” She tells you, and Natasha makes you feel it every day of your waking moment.

You smile in return, your head lulling back against her shoulder. The action makes the older woman pause and sigh. “I love you more.”

When you and Natasha finally find the energy to slip away from bed and enter the common room, the two of you are greeted by your friends. Steve is bright and awake, covered in his gym clothes, you have no doubt he just came back from running with Bucky.

Natasha has her hair in a braid, settled to one side, she dawns black leggings with a zip up hoodie that looks too small for her. You gave that to her, the grey hoodie from Lululemon that was a size too big for you, was then rewarded to your girlfriend when she said she was a size four while you were a zero.

She makes oatmeal for the both of you. Raisins in yours and she likes hers bland. Wanda enters the room, and when she does, awareness of her presence is inevitable. But she gently smiles when she sees the two of you.

Suddenly, it’s not all too bad.

When the two of you sit on the barstool next to each other, Natasha plans the day ahead.

You stand beside the older woman as she signs the receipt, with a big purchase like that, Natasha doesn’t even blink an eye at how the total exceeds two zeros.

You pursed your lips in tow, biting your tongue after to let the question from slipping from your lips. But just as Natasha finishes with the sales associate, the redhead looks up from heavy red lashes and stares with striking emerald eyes.

“What’s on your mind, darling?”

The sales associate disappears the moment the bag is in Natasha’s hand. She doesn’t bat another eye at the employee despite being well aware of his knowing look towards the famous Avenger.

It’s the first time Natasha calls you by such name in public and especially around people. As you stare into her gaze, the smile on her lips present and deepening the smile lines and wrinkles, you know it’s genuine.

You shake your head, smiling as you flush under her gaze. “Nothing. I love you.”

Her brows raise a bit. Her lips purse just as yours did, the only difference is that she’s forcing a smile away. Her pale cheeks are red now, you almost feel bad for making such a sensual woman blush within a simple advocation of admiration.

But she expresses back with a hand reaching out to yours. She squeezes your hand, and then she lets the grin rip all over her face.

Only then, you remember the very first time you’ve loved a girl. The brown headed girl, with the pale skin sprinkled with freckles, and her striking green eyes.

You don’t remember anyone else to love after her. She was only there for a brief moment in your life, a few years or so, sat on different sides of the steel bars, and only then, you remember what it is to feel in love.

You know, and you remember because as you stand there with a smiling Natasha Romanoff, you feel it in the bones that were once broken and bruised, now healed and kissed by none other.

She cocks her head this time, curious and concerned for the sudden silence on your end. And this time, she reaches out with a touch of comfort on the pads of her finger tips.

“You sure?”

You balance the weight of your body on your right feet, shoulders sagging as you blink naively at your lover.

“Did you see the smile Wanda gave us today?”

Natasha is the type to suppress her emotions. The type to have been trained to do so for her whole life. And with that training, comes a time of need. In this moment, you can’t read her.

Your shoulders sag and you purse you lips, waiting for her answer if if it were going to burn you.

“I did.”

“I’m glad.”

She raised a brow. “Are you?”

You nod this time, a small smile erupting on your chapped lips. “I am.” You sigh softly. “I think... Well, I hope, she’s opening up to the idea of my happiness with you.”

“I hope that’s her intentions.” Natasha stands taller now and the sales associate is long gone, had been since he handed her the bag. “You never know with Wanda.”

“She has been hurt, Talia.”

“As if you hadn’t been.” The redhead scoffs, almost offended. “Do not apologize on behalf of the woman who hurt you, darling. It only makes you look bad.”

You get angry with Natasha for a moment. Your heart aches with a hurt that you’ve haven’t felt.

“I’m not apologizing for her behalf.” You snap back accordingly and this time, Natasha stands to tower your small stature. “I’m merely sympathizing for her pain because I know what it had been like for someone important to me be taken away.”

You go on with a warm face and blurred vision. It makes Natasha look like a white blob with red hair.

“It’s not wrong to care, Natalia. It’s not wrong to care about people who have been hurt. And it’s definitely not wrong to care about someone like Wanda who’s experienced enough torment in their life. I am trying to be better than the people who have made me. But I am sorry if you cannot see that.”

“I’m not blind.”

You huff at your girlfriend’s words and for the very time, your throat aches at the idea of talking to Natasha about such a topic.

“I never said you were.”

“You implied it.”

You shake your head, attempting to remove the impending ache that spread across your temple and your front. You sigh when it doesn’t work and so, your shoulders sag in defeat.

“I’m ready to go home.”

And this time, Natasha doesn’t reply back. She doesn’t snap back with a comment, she doesn’t try to talk back to you with a tone that makes you want to step away.

Instead, she leads the way out of the store, then through the crowded floors of the mall, and then into the parking where a valet driver returns her car. You sit where you’ve always have, next to her, but as the silence settles in her Corvette, you realize how much the argument has affected her.

She even goes to grip the steering wheel with a hold that makes her knuckles white and she huffs. As she stares right ahead of her, through the glass and the line painted onto the concrete floor of the parking garage, she’s the first to break the silence.

“You’re right.” You blink up at her when she says the words and the anger you held for the older woman shatters with a crack. “I suppose I’m afraid of her hurting you the way other have done it. I just want you to be happy and I just want your life to be filled with people who do make you happy. Even if it means rejecting those who fit into mine.”

She goes on. “You’re right that it’s not wrong to care about people but I just want you to be careful about how you care for them. I’ve met the other end of the witch, darling, she’s just not all about the words she speaks. If she wanted, and that’s a big if, she could make you disappear.”

You swallow to speak but apparently, she had more to say. “Wanda... I never loved her. At least not in the way she wanted me to. We both craved something that we couldn’t fully give, I needed a distraction, she gave it, but she expected more and I didn’t. It’s hard enough loving someone who’s twenty years your junior and everyone is chastising you for it but doing it with a failed one night stand who seems to have fallen for you? I’d take you anywhere just to have peace with you.”

When the silence settled back in and she finishes, you reach for the love of your life’s hand with a touch so gentle, she would’ve never even felt it if you hadn’t slipped your fingers through hers.

“Wanda is someone we can’t force out of our lives.” Natasha knows that and you too. “But I want to keep loving you without fear or judgment of others. And if apologizing and catering to her will do that, I’d gladly take the opportunity.”

When Natasha turns her head and faces you, a pink shade to her cheeks, a frown blossoms on your lips.

“I never meant to chastise you for caring about people. I think it’s great that you do, but I worry and I just want you to live your life to the fullest. Wanda has no part in our relationship and I don’t think she should, regardless of what she used to mean to me.”

“I know. I know.” Your response to her apology is one that’s genuine. And as Natasha starts the car and backs out of the parking garage, you hold her hand and squeeze it. You turn to her with gentle eyes and an aching heart.

For a moment, she takes her eyes off the road, it’s empty anyways, Natasha has a sense of a bird, of an assassin. She’s always on guard. And for a second between that moment, her eyes shine with glimmer.

“I love you.”

Her hand squeezes yours, and the air runs through the locks of your hair as the windows come down. Your gaze never leaves your lover and you know, even now and even through the argument, you love her, no doubts, no hesitation, even through the worst of it all.

“And I’m sorry.”

You shake your head at your lover’s words. Despite it all, you know she means well, she means her words and her actions with all the love she has for you.

She’s willing to drop everything for a life of happiness with you and your heart aches at the thought of her selfishness, her willingness to just be with you.

You smile at Natasha when the car stops at a light, your features soft while she replicates your own.

“I know.”

There hasn’t been any certainty for a while in your life but as you look at the redhead, you know you’ll be alright.

Don't Forget Me

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: You wake up with no memory.

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: So i did a little thing and wrote my first fic, It’s based off a a memory loss concept I saw in a show once and it never left my mind. i think it’s such a great story telling device. Tumblr can be so inspiring and the writers that I follow inspire me all the time so i’ll be tagging them at the end of this to show my appreciation of their words Please go and follow them and read their work. They may just inspire you too! Enjoy reading! Any feed back is welcome.

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It’s the coppery scent of fresh blood that alerts all of your senses into overdrive. You immediately raise yourself from small cot you're lying in. You frantically look around to gain some understanding of your surroundings but you don’t make sense of what you see. Dozens of men and women and even a few children surround you. Some are sleeping in cots like your own, others are talking quietly to either themselves or others. Your enhanced senses zone in on mutterings of no sense conversations (which you notice are being spoken in German), the smell of sweat and blood that lingers beneath your nose.

You wipe at it and assume correct. Dried blood rubs off on your fingers and you can feel a deep ache begin to appear at the base of your skull. You have no memory of how you ended up with a bloody nose or how you even got to where you are. The last thing you remember was seeing Natasha and Clint, back to back, fighting off Hydra soldiers on a battlefield in Bulgaria through a window of the warehouse where you were supposed to collect intel about other Hydra facilities around the world. All you remember after that was a bright flash in your eyes and everything went black.

No one seems to take notice of your panicked state but it doesn't quell your fear of your unknown location and loss of memory at how you got here. You notice a sign on the wall and frown. “Die Heilsarmee – William-Booth-Haus, Übergangshaus (The Salvation Army - William Booth House, Transitional House.” A homeless shelter.

You make your way towards a woman that’s holding a clipboard and looks to be taking the names of people coming and going. You greet her in German.

“Hallo” you greet, as kindly as you can. .This woman may have answers. You can’t scare her off with your impatience.

“Hallo. You’re awake” she greets back, giving you a small smile.

“You know me?” you ask, becoming more confused by the second.

“Ja. You came in late last night and I've been keeping an eye on you.”

“Was I alone?”

“Nein. A man dropped you off at the front stairs and instructed that i let you stay here until you woke up. That was,” she checks her watch “seventeen hours ago.”

Seventeen hours ago? How is that possible? You barely a slept more than six hours at the compound and even less when Natasha was next to you. Her own nightmares plagued her more than yours ever did, so when she was next to you'd just pull her against your chest and rub her back to allow her some peaceful hours of sleep. You didn't care if you didn't sleep at all. As long as she was okay.

Natasha. You need to contact her. She’s probably worried sick and when she finds you, you're in for one long ass lecture. That’s if Steve doesn't beat her to it. Wanda will probably beat them both to it though. Your best friend always loved to tease that she’s the better Avenger. You'd always fight her on it, but you knew she was right. After the crimes you committed while under the command of Strucker, ones that made Wanda’s and Pietro’s look like minor inconveniences, you’d say that you deserved the ‘worst Avenger award’. Allowing illegal human experiment to continue after you came out unscathed from the experiments, with a new set of super human abilities similar to Steve and Bucky, you knew you deserved that title.

Being with Natasha however, she never allowed you to believe that. Even if it was a joke with Wanda, she knew that you believed it deep down, so she would always remind you that it wasn't true. When you, Wanda and Pietro defected to S.H.I.E.L.D during the age of Ultron, Wanda and Pietro had each other and as much as you loved them as your best friends, it was Natasha who you found any form of comfort and reassurance from. Because she herself, understood why the demons inside your head didn't just live in the shadows of your nightmares. They lived in any reflection you caught yourself in. She understood that better than anyone, therefore, she understood you. You’ve loved each other ever since.

A hand waving in front of your face brings back to the moment and the woman speaks again.

“Are you okay?” she asks, delicately.

“Yeah I'm fine. Is there a phone around that I can use?”

“Not here. But if you make your way out these doors, along the alley way and out onto the main street, there is plenty around for you to use. Here.” She holds out her closed fist and deposits ten one Euro coins into your palm. You smile when you look back up to her.

“Thankyou” you say, in the most appreciative tone you can muster. She smiles back at you and walks further into the building while you walk out the doors the woman pointed out. Following along the dark alleyway, you can hear what you think is the sound of busy streets and traffic and walk further towards the sound. You stop for a moment and take notice of more homeless people in the alley. Some lingering around garbage cans that are lit on fire for warmth and others sleeping in cardboard boxes. Looking down at yourself, you realise that you’re somehow without shoes, You take the best pair you can find from a man passed out. Also taking his jacket and a baseball cap and leaving him with his blanket, you try to cover yourself as best as you can. You don’t want to be recognised by anyone as an Avenger.

You suddenly find yourself thrown amongst sea of shoppers and pedestrians alike. Bright lights of shops, houses, hotels and restaurants almost blind you and it takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust. Focusing your vision, your eyes flicker to a white street sign with black writing. It confirms your suspicions.

Kurfürstendamm. You’re in Berlin. You’ve been here a couple of time for missions. Both with Natasha, After the first mission you both visited Café Kranzler and had the most delicious tasting coffee you've ever had in your life. That was your first date. After the second, you took her to the small Monbijoupark near Museum Island and told her you loved her. She kissed you so hard that she split your lip.

Dipping your hat and bringing the collar of your jacket upwards, you start walking down the avenue and find a payphone on the corner. Taking the coins the woman gave you, you push one into the slot and call Natasha’s personal phone that only you know the number to. Your brow furrows when you hear that it’s disconnected. You try her office phone. Also disconnected.

“What the fuck is going on?” you mutter to yourself. You try every other number you can think of. Every Avenger and their private phone. Some are disconnected and some are left unanswered. With two options and two coins left, you try the first. You and the twins would leave a message for one another if any one you were ever compromised while working for Hydra and leave a coded message on an answering machine so the others could find you. It was probably the only smart thing Strucker ever taught you. It’s also disconnected

“Fuck!” you yell into the receiver and slam your fist into the wall. It crumbles beneath your fingers but you quickly pull it back and into your jacket pocket to try to avoid further attention. With your last option, last nerve and last chance, you push your last coin into the slot and dial a number that you haven’t called in ten years.

A woman’s voice answers after three rings.

“Dispatch.” You sigh in relief.

“This is Agent Y/L/N, agent number 49912517.” You breathed out the number as easily as your own name. Maria assigned it to you your very first day at S.H.I.E.L.D academy and you could never forget it. “Calling for extraction. Code word: Nelson.”

“Connecting.”

The line rings once.

“This is Fury.”

“I just woke up in Berlin. i don’t know how I got here or how long I’ve been here.” you say shakily, trying to keep your voice as normal as possible.

Fury says nothing. You think maybe he’s hung up.

“Hello?”

“Get to the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf safe house as soon as possible. Do you remember where it is?”

“Yeah, of course” you answer in confusion. Fury had sent you and Natasha to set up the safe house when a Hydra commander wanted to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D four years ago. He should know that you remember it because the two of you and the Hydra commander spent a whole month trapped inside because of the strong Hydra presence in Berlin. You couldn't leave and risk being seen or the defecting agent being killed on sight so you had to wait it out until it was safe to be extracted. Fury essentially lost his two best agents at the time.

By the time you bring yourself out of your memories, you realise that Fury has disconnected the call and you make your way to the safe as fast as possible.

Arriving at a dingy two storey pub, a few blocks away, you walk inside to find the pub empty, except for one person. A man you don’t recognise, sits on a stool reading a newspaper. He pays you no attention and continues reading as you walk up to him and speak.

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses” you begin the code phrase in German, that will allow you entry to the safe house.

“Just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” the man says still not looking at you, ending the phrase and pointing to staircase at the end of the bar, “I will inform your superiors of your arrival.”

You acknowledge the man with a nod and hastily make your way up the stairs and into the room. You lay down on a bed in the corner of the room and close your eyes and go over everything that’s happened in the last couple of hours. You woke in a homeless shelter after sleeping for seventeen hours, in Berlin after being dropped off by an unknown man, with no recollection of how you even got to Berlin in the first place. No one is answering your calls. Not even Natasha, the love of your life. You hope she's okay. You need her to be okay. If you lost her, you don’t think you could survive,

As if on cue, the door opens and Natasha walks through door, keeping her eyes on the ground. It takes you almost ten seconds to actually realise its her. Her hair is longer than you remember, falling past her shoulders. She's not even wearing her mission suit. She wearing what she always called ‘civilian clothes’. A denim jacket, white shirt and black jeans. She’s even wearing sneakers. Natasha doesn't wear sneakers. She doesn't look up from her attention on the ground. But you don’t care in this moment because she is the most beautiful thing you ever seen. You scramble to your feet as fast as possible and throw yourself into the arms of your girlfriend and latch on as tightly as possible, without hurting her, which she reciprocates. Your enhanced senses are overwhelmed with everything that she brings into the room. Her lavender shampoo. cherry blossom perfume. You can even smell her strawberry chapstick. But what overwhelms you the most, is the thunderous beating of her heart.

“What the hell is going on, baby?” you ask quickly, wanting an answer right away. Natasha feels your breath against her neck and shudders at its contact. It’s been so long for her. “I woke up in a goddamn homeless shelter and I have no idea how I got there. The last thing I remember is seeing you and Clint fighting off some Hydra assholes when we were in Bulgaria and then I woke not knowing what the hell was is going on.” You pull away from her wanting to see her face but she still doesn't look at you. You cup her face and bring it up to meet your eyes. Her green eyes, which were always your favourite shade, are now red and bloodshot. She's been crying. Hard. You can tell that she's trying to keep more tears at bay. She takes your hands from her cheeks and lowers them between you. You frown at her actions and she notices but she motions towards the bed.

“Sit down. Please” she says, raspier than usual and you knows it because of the crying. You’ve never seen her like this. She scared but you follow her directions and take a seat. She grabs a chair from across the room and sits opposite you.

“Nat, what is going on? Why are you so upset?” Your tone is almost pleading. Natasha looks up form her knees and looks you in the eye and takes a deep breath.

“That day in Bulgaria, you were supposed to retrieve intel inside the warehouse about more Hydra locations around the world.” You nod, but stay silent. Tears start to stream down her face. “Clint and I. We were keeping the soldiers at bay to give you enough time to grab the intel and get out but-“ A sob escapes her lips before she can finish her sentence. All you want to do is pick her up and hold her tight but you refrain because a sick sense of dread begins to form in your stomach. Whatever Nat has to say, you're not going to like. “The warehouse exploded.” You frown again for what seems like the millionth time today, Even with your superhuman strength and durability, your forehead is starting to hurt. But with the next words that slip out of Natasha’s your frown instantly vanishes. “You were in the building.”

You shake your head in disbelief. That’s not possible.

“We thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.” Nat whispers, as more tears stream down her cheeks. You keep your eyes on her, too afraid to even blink. Too afraid to move a muscle. You can’t even react to her words. The dread in your stomach makes itself a home there and you know it’s not going away any time soon.

What’s she's saying has to be a joke right? This can’t be happening. “Fury asked me to come and talk to you. Even though I'm no longer with the Avengers or even S.H.I.E.L.D, he thought it was safer it you saw someone familiar first.” Safer? You would never.

“I would never hurt you” you whisper and Nat almost misses it, but you know she heard. She may no longer be a superhero but she’ll always your spider. Nat begins to wipe at her face and nods in agreement as what you've said, when you notice it. A gold band sits on her left ring finger. Instantly, the frowns returns because you sure as hell didn't give it to her. The one you have for her sits in Wanda’s draw at the compound. You were planning on giving it to her on your anniversary, which would've been a few days after you returned form Bulgaria.

“What is that?” you ask, afraid of the answer. Your eyes don’t leave the ring. She notices what you're talking about but ignores the questions and looks at her knees.

“Y/N, ever since that day in Bulgaria, you were dead. You died in that explosion.” she says, looking up at you once again. Her eyes pierce your and it almost hurts to look at her but you can sense that she has one more thing to say as she chokes back a sob. “You’ve been dead for nearly three years.”

That's when you allow one single tear to fall.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading to anyone who made it this far. I know it finished on a cliffhanger so it could possibly be a multi chaptered story, depending on how its received. I already have the entire story planned out.

@therunawaykind @8bitscarlet @wolferine @lil-gamer @httpjupiterbby @traveler-at-heart @5-puthyyy @rebeliz777 @wellsayhelloaagin @maximoffsdetka @maximotts @vancityfire13 and i couldn't forget my reading buddy @holiday-house-of-m

Thanks for inspiring me you guys!

- Wolves

Natasha Romanoff ~ Pain

Natasha Romanoff X fem!Reader Smut

Word count: 2,873

Includes: bondage, blindfold, masturbation, spanking, gagging, praise, fingering, edging, strap on, knife play (minor injury), overstimulation and oral

[ masterlist ]

Buy me a coffee ☕

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Even with your sense heightened you couldn't hear a sound except your own shallow breathing. The blindold covering your eyes had left you to rely on your hearing while all you could see was darkness.

Having said that, your sense of touch seemed to have been sharpened, but that may have been down to having no clothes on. Natasha had pulled them all off you what seemed like centuries ago, leaving your skin hopeful to feel her touch.

Your wrists were beginning to sore from the tight rope holding them together above your head. They were secured to the metal bars at the top of the bed and ensured restricted movements from your hands.

Your ankles had a similar fate and were tied down to each of the bedposts, leaving your legs spread wide open for your girlfriend.

You lay on your stomach with your ass in the air and your head to the side, leaving the silky sheets against your cheek. Your girlfriend knew you felt vulnerable in such a position, something that was definetly a turn on, yet had never left you alone in that state before.

You could only imagine the teasing Natasha had planned for you. She knew all of your kinks, as you did hers, and she was more than willing to try most of them. But there was one she had been promising to do for so long you had come to assume it would never happen.

You were interrupted from your thoughts when you finally heard your girlfriend enter the room. The sound of her footsteps was followed by a mocking chuckle that always left you wet and wanti

"Look at my little whore, all tired up and helpless. Ready to be fucked" She spoke in her dominant tone darkly. You could only whimper in response.

"Please." You said, your voice barely above a whisper.

You could hear her footsteps coming closer to the bed before you felt the shift in weight distribution on the mattress.

You could hear her placing multiple objects down onto the bed and your mind wondered with all the possibilities of what those objects were.

You felt your dominant girlfriend straddle your waist and her bare skin against your own, sending electric sparls throughout your body.

Her slim fingers stroked the centre of your neck so lightly if you hadn't known it was her you would have assumed it was a feather.

The slight touch from her fingertips wandered in a straight line up your neck, jaw and chin. She held it lightly in her hand, her fingertips below your jaw and her thumb a centimetre below your bottom lip.

You knew she was prolonging the feeling of you shaking in anticipation beneath her.

Her thumb stroked the area and you responded by parting your lips for her more. You thought she would slip her thumb or fingers inside, as she had done countless times before, but instead she whipped off the blidfold.

Despite this newfound vision, Natasha was still out of your line of sight. Your disapintment was short lived when she gracefully got off your back and sat down in the chair facing you.

The last time you had seen the beauty she was fully clothed. But in that moment she displayed to you her red lingerie that clung to her body perfectly. It highlighted her curves and made your imagination run wild.

The lace bra and panties displayed about as much as they hid and you felt your arousal grow as your eyes wondered over the matching lacy suspender belt and stockings.

You wanted nothing more than to please her and have her moaning your name, but she had other plans.

"Like what you see?" She smirked as she spread her legs to show you just how thin the fabric was and how little it hid the outline of her pussy lips.

She leaned towards you as she captured her bottom lip between her teeth, maintaining her lustful stare. She placed two fingers on your lips and you instantly opened your mouth for her to slip them in this time.

You sucked on them as you stared back at her and swiped your tongue over the length of her slender fingers. She smirked at your eagerness as she pulled her fingers away and resumed her previous position in the chair.

You licked your own lips at the sight and saw Natasha's had wander teasingly across her stockings, thighs and then the wasitband of her panties, her fingers still glistening.

She didn't hesitate to rub the outline of her pussy through her panties, a sight that made your own pussy clench.

You heard her gasp out when she pressed down on her clit and once she brought her hand away you saw the wet patch she had made on her panties.

"Natasha..." you whined, wanting to touch her.

"No begging, or there will be consequences." She ordered again, breathlessly this time as she continued to stare me down. You nodded your head quickly before your gaze dropped back to those panties that deprived you of the full view.

Natasha's fingers slipped elegantly beneath the red fabric and disappeared into her wet folds. You could hear her moan softly as she started to pump two fingers inside herself at a steady pace.

Her other hand reached up to grap her left breast while she continued to finger herself infront of you. You so desperetly wanted to call out to her. To beg her to let you touch her, any way she wanted. But I knew you wouldn't be successful.

Natasha's pace increased as her moans grew louder and her thigh muscles clenched. You could tell she was close and without considering the consequences you called out to her.

"Tasha, please! Let me touch you." You whined and tried to squirm in your position. Your girlfriend's eyes darkened as a result yet she didn't stop.

You watched in awe as she came on her fingers while her head tilted back in bliss. It didn't take long for her to come down from her high and stand from the chair, her legs only slightly shaky.

"I warned you." Natasha spoke lowly as she moved around to the end of the bed. Part of you expected there to be some kind of warning for what followed, the rest of me knew better.

Natasha brought her hand down fast across your ass and you gave a cry of surprise and pain from the sudden feeling. You would have lurched forward if you weren't so tightly held down, but the restricted movements caused you to experience the pain more than you normally would.

"Quiet." Natasha ordered again. You bit your lip hard to supress any noises you would make.

However, this proved futile as the next time Natasha spanked you you moaned into the bed sheets, the sound definetly loud enough for your sadistic girlfriend to hear.

"Alright then, if you insist on keeping that slutty mouth of yours open..." Natasha didn't bother to fnish her sentence, knowing actions spoke louder than words.

She pulled my blindfold back down over your eyes before quickly spanking you again. This time when you opened your mouth to moan your girlfriend forced a breathable ball gag into your mouth and fastened it at the back of your head.

"Open one of your hands if you want me to stop. I won't be mad." She said gently into your ear, making you smile.

How your girlfriend was able to shift attitudes so drastically in a short space of time always baffled you, but your heart melted whenever she showed her caring side. Everytime you had been gagged she said the same thing.

You nodded and kept your hands in closed fists, hearing a chuckle from her in repsonse.

"Good girl." She hummed, returning to her dominant side. Before you could even respond to her praise you felt another harsh smack to your ass that had you crying out into the gag. You even tried to speak into the gag to beg her to touch you, but your pleading was inaudible, something Natasha evidently found amusing.

She spanked you more until you completly lost count due to only being able to think about the intense stinging feeling across your skin, imagining just how red your skin was and knowing Natasha would apply some cream to that when she was done.

Tears streamed down your face and you whimpered from every little thing you felt. The sensitivity of your skin was making you crazy and completly at your girlfriend's control.

You breathed heavily as you rested your head against the bed sheets and was vaguely aware of Natasha's fingers running across your broken skin. The somewhat soothing gesture didn't last long as her fingers soon dropped down to your soaking core.

"You're so wet, y/n." She husked as her fingers glided over your folds, gathering your juices on her fingers.

You whimpered in response to her words and only wished you could move yourself back onto her fingers.

As if she could hear your thoughts, Natasha slipped a single finger into your folds and pushed it entirely inside you. You moaned softly at the single digit, instantly craving more.

"I'm barely touching you are you're already so responsive." She mocked and moved the single finger in at an agonizingly slow pace, you groaned in protest but your girlfriend only snickered in response to your whining.

She kept this up for a couple minutes and just as you were about to huff out in frustration you felt her withdraw and pump 3 fingers into you at a sudden, overwhelming rate.

You moaned and gasped out into the gag as you felt her fingers fuck you at a rough and hard pace.

You so desperetly wanted to ride her fingers but could only strain your thigh muscles against the ropes. You kept your head firmly against the sheets and hands enclosed in tight fists as though you were protecting something sacred in the palm of your hand.

You could feel the heat rising throughout your body and the pleasure building as Natasha mercilessly thrusted her fingers into your soaked pussy that clenched around her perfectly.

Just as you thought you were about to experience an earth shattereing orgasm, Natasha's fingers abruptly pulled out.

You whimpered and whined into the gag in protest and could hear your girlfriend chuckle at your struggles and pathetic attempt to prolong the pleasure.

You could hear her suck on her fingers as the weight shifted on the bed until Natasha was gone, leaving only the sound of her moving.

Once she was back on the bed she leant over to whisper into your ear while you felt the familiar silicone brush your folds.

"I'll say this once: cum without permission and you will be punished." As she said those words you felt a cool piece of metal glide across your skin. Under the blindfold your eyes widened as I realised what Natasha was holding.

The knife, sharpened to perfection, pressed threateningly against your vulnerable skin. You could guess it was about a six inch blade and imagined it glistening in the light in an angelic manner.

Your core throbbed at the thought of it, yearning to feel it press against you to the point where it tears at your fragile skin.

Natasha placed the strap in line with your entrance and pushed the tip forward for your pussy lips to envelope.

As you clenched around the small amount inside you, you were caught off guard by Natasha pushing the rest of it inside you in one hard thrust.

You cried out into the gag, not being able to adjust to the size before your girlfriend pulled out and slammed the toy back into you. You moaned loudly at the ache the strap caused and dug your nails into the palms of your hands.

Natasha continued to pound the strap into your pussy as you moaned and whimpered in time with her deep, hard strokes.

While one hand held the knife against your stomach, the other grabbed a fist full of your hair and yanked it so your head was thrown back.

All of this combined with Natasha mercillessly slamming the strap on into you over and over made your pussy start to clench around the toy.

You tried to communicate with her that you were about to cum, but of course she didn't care.

Your whole body tensed up and your breathing became increasingly ragged until you clenched around the toy again and came hard on it. You moaned and gasped out into the gag, almost forgetting about the knife pressed against you.

You were reminded of it when you felt a sudden, fast jolt from the knife that slashed across you. You cried out and felt your arousal grow again despite the now slow pace of Natasha moving the strap.

Your stomach felt as though it had been burnt and the red hot sting continued to stay. Natasha dropped her hand that was holding your hair and swipped her finger across the cut and hummed in delight.

You kept your fists tightly closed and wondered if you had drawn blood yourself from how deep your nails were into your own flesh.

"You're doing so good for me." Natasha whispered softly into your ear and started to pick up the pace again.

This time, you were already adjusted to the size of the strap and took it without the feeling of it stretching you slightly.

Natasha's hips moved at a faster rate and every time she filled you up completelt you felt her press against your ass. The knife remained firmly in her hand and on a new area of your stomach, ready to strike the unmarked skin.

Your body trembled from the stimulation to your pussy that made you shake slightly in support of the ropes still binding you down.

You moaned into the gag again as you felt the familiar tug in your lower stomach come back.

You could feel Natasha's grip on the knife tighten as your legs tensed up again and your back arched as much as it could as you came a second time, even more exhausted than the last.

With the orgasm came another cut across your skin, longer and deeper this time. You whimpered into the gag, wishing you could see the marks your girlfriend had made.

Natasha didn't halter her rhythm this time and seemed to instead take her fucking with a new vigour. This time when she thrust the strap on into you you could feel your cum soaking the strap as it pumped into your equally wet pussy, the combination of which was extremely audible and made you gush with wetness even more.

"You wanna cum again, huh? I can hear how wet and desperate you are for me, whore." You moaned in response as your whole body shuddered again, your increasing sensitivity making you all the more vulnerable.

When you came for the third time and felt the sharp blade slice once more, you were so out of breath you needed the gag removed to help you breathe. You opened your hand and felt Natasha instantly stop her movements and pulled out.

"It's okay, you did so good for me." She cooed as she removed your blindfold and gag.

"I'm okay..." You huffed, trying to catch your breath. "I can do...one more." You gasped and felt Natasha untie all the ropes.

"One more? Hmm okay." She flipped you gently onto your back and positioned herself between your legs.

You gazed down in awe at the three cuts across your stomach. They weren't serious and you doubted they would need stitches, yet the bright red blood slowly escaping from the wounds, one of which even trickling down yourside, lit your core on fire.

Your girlfriend grinned knowingly at you as she flicked her tongue against your swollen clit. You gasped out at the sensitivity and rested your head back against the pillow and clossed your eyes in bliss.

Natasha's tongue swiped around your folds, collecting the cum that had spilled out a little prior, befor plunging her tongue inside you.

You moaned out from the sensitivity and gripped her hair for support, encouraging her to tongue fuck you faster.

Her tongue swiped around inside of you perfectly, as though it was the last time she would taste you and wanted to memorize every inch of your core.

The overstimulation meant it didn't take long for your walls to clench around her tongue, pushing it out and leading Natasha to sucking on your clit in response.

"Tasha!" You gasped out as you came hard on your girlfriend's tongue. She licked up every single drop of your cum before leaning up to kiss you.

You kissed her back and tasted yourself on her lips, smiling to yourself at that fact. She pulled back and fell down beside you, looking at you lovingly.

"That was..." She trailed off, unable to find the words.

"Wow-factor." You grinned.

Say you break your ankle. You could know everything there is to know intellectually about the injury. Even with this vast knowledge, you will still experience physical pain.

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.

That is to say: you are not a bad, lazy, or selfish person for struggling, even if you know why you are struggling.

Naughty Girls

You and your mommy, Natasha, have some fun during movie time. Until you misbehave.

Mommy kink, man handling, se*x toy usage (dildo), implied age gap, reader gets penetrated, vaginal penetration, coc*k warming, grinding, thigh riding, sex with clothes on, WLW sex, Natasha gives reader neck hickies, Reader gets called puppy, baby, honey and little girl, reader comes without permission, implied mutual consent, degradation, squirting, light begging, implied punishment, reader misbehaves, implied rules

Hurrah! I'm alive! Thank you for being patient :)💕

You do not have permission to translate and or repost this story thank you :)

Your head felt warm and fuzzy, a tingling sensation rippling up and down your spine. A warm chuckle sounded from beside you. "Is my little girl having some fun?"

The TV was still on, a natural wildlife documentary you had quickly forgotten about. You whimpered softly, still feeling dizzy and near drunk from the cock that Natasha had pushed into you. Warm wet slick smeared over your soft inner thighs, shorts and hoodie uncomfortably hot despite the cool night air.

"My baby still needs to learn some manners apparently." You could hear the smirk in her voice. "Use your big girl words, honey."

---

"Mommy-" you whined softly in frustration, hips grinding down against the sofa covers.

"Please, please."

Her arms tightly wrapped around your waist before you were settled in her lap. Mommy's knee wedged itself between your thighs, smoothly grinding against the dildo's base. Natasha's eyes were bright, pinning you in place easily. She smiled. The flickering lights from the TV wreathed her fluffy baby hairs.

The short rocking motions increased the pressure inside you, silicone ridges dragging and pushing. A needy keen escaped from your parted mouth, head falling back in pleasure.

Natasha apparently wasn't satisfied, pulling you forward onto her thigh. Her large callused hands slayed out over your waist before forcefully grinding your hips in tight circles. Mommy harshly sucked marks into your skin. Your swollen clit rubbed against soaked panties.

"Does that feel good puppy?" The coil in your tummy writhed and twisted tightly, pussy clamping against the toy. Your head felt hazy, hands clumsily fisted in Natasha's shirt.

The pleasure crested and then burst abruptly. You whined and moaned needily as your pussy clenched and fluttered against the toy, wanting more as you tried to grind down on Mommy. A warm wetness seeped out from around the toy.

Natasha's hands tightened painfully around your hips. "Little girl-" Her tone was dark yet amused. "Did I say you could cum?"

Your eyes widened when you realised your mistake. Mommy's smile grew wider.

GL Webtoon Masterlist

Hello, welcome to the post where I share girls love (yuri/wlw) comics you can read on the Webtoon app! Some are focused on romance while others are more plot-heavy.

Links are included. Personal favourites are marked with a heart emoji.

I do not to include webtoons that are discontinued, on hiatus, have not been updated in a long time or have few episodes, but other than that, feel free to make suggestions and I will add them to the list. 

Side note for those who are new to Webtoon, series on Webtoon are divided into canvas and originals. Originals are published by authors that are employed by Webtoon. Canvas series are self-published, so sometimes they update irregularly and might end up being discontinued, unlike originals. Sometimes Webtoon picks up a popular canvas series and employs the author. The series then is re-released as an original.

Hope this helps, please enjoy!

Keep reading

Holy shit. Just saw Shang-Chi and it is IT. Before getting into the Chinese cultural parts of it, I'd like to note that it had a solid plot and wonderfully developed characters. The worldbuilding and CGI and the relationship building was absolutely phenomenal and I was absolutely hooked. The fight choreography was THE best choreography I've ever seen in the entirety of the MCU and the cinematography is amazing.

Now, onto the Chinese cultural references.

My god. I've never felt so seen. As a Chinese woman living in a western diaspora I've genuinely never seen something that so genuinely felt right and that truly felt like it connected to me personally. There were so many little details that I could connect to that made me feel emotional because I've never had any media that connected to me this way. It was so well done and it was so obviously done by people who lived through it.

(minor) Spoilers ahead! Just small details about the Chinese Diaspora experience in the movie.

Some little details that stood out to me included:

The food! All the food shown on screen was Chinese food - be it homemade food or dim sum platters - and those were exactly the types of plates that I grew up eating.

When Shang-Chi took off his shoes to go into Katy's house and she was wearing slippers inside the house

When he was walking through the little Chinatown area and there were the fruit cardboard boxes outside the Chinese groceries and the white sketchy dim sum sign with English on top of the Chinese

Katy struggling with her Chinese as a diaspora kid because she's only a heritage speaker and her first language is english

When Katy was struggling to pronounce Shang-Chi's Chinese name asldhhdjskala I felt that

Katy sticking to her English name despite also having a Chinese name bc she's a diaspora kid and is used to using the English name

Every single one of the magical creatures inside Ta Lo were inspired by Chinese mythology.

THE DRAGON IS A PROPER CHINESE DRAGON

Katy's parents comparing her to others and asking her to "get a better job" with her H. B. from Berkeley (I felt that)

The whole thing about familial expectations and relationships in Chinese families?? Bro. I felt that. Holy shit.

So. Much. Mandarin. I can't explain how happy I am to hear that language. Many western movies have a tendency to mainly use English with an accent but this movie used a LOT of (accurate!) mando and it makes me so happy

The architecture?? The art?? Phenomenal. Amazing. So accurate.

The shrine to the mother and the other deceased looks EXACTLY like every single Chinese cemetery I've been to, down to the photos and the incense and the fruits and all the people paying tribute to it.

The martial arts?? Oh my god. So good. I recognize it. Having trained in it and having watched multiple family members practice varying Chinese martial arts over the years I can't express how fucking happy I was to see arts such as Tai Chi and Wing Chun and Wushu on screen. I could recognize it. The forms, the movements - I can't explain how, but it felt right. It felt familiar. It felt so wonderfully connected to me.

There's probably more but it's late at night so more to come later, maybe. I'm going to just bask in the fact that this was a fantastic movie for chinese representation and I felt so seen. I went to see it with several other Chinese friends and. We came away so happy. We felt seen. We felt heard. I can't express how much this meant to us.

Representation matters.

For that older!Nat request:

Reader is an experiment project of HYDRA and Nat was the one who rescued her but with very little to none interaction with anyone all she retain was her childish qualities.

She'll be very scared of men and wary with others except Natasha. She'll mostly follow and cling to her everywhere and she'll only eat, speak and interact if Nat gave her permission 😬

I really don't know where to go with this lol I just want a shit clingy and dependent reader 🤣 thank you so much!

warning: older!nat, experiment!reader, fluff. SFW

“Tasha?”

Her small voice broke the redhead out of her reverie and when she looked down, found a girl years her senior cuddled up against her arm, her lips turned softly.

Natasha reached out to caress her cheek, her little bunny’s cheek scarred from the abuse she had taken through her youth during her time with HYDRA, and when the redhead touched her, she melted into her hold.

“What’s wrong, sunshine?”

She beamed at the pet name and even flushed in embarrassment. But when she calmed and relaxed, her eyes darted from Natasha to Tony who stood in the hall.

“What do you want Tony?”

“Banner hulked out... Again.”

The irritation was evident in Tony’s tone and Natasha’s was present as she rolled her eyes. She turned to her ball of sunshine, curled up against her arm in the comfort of their couch.

“It’ll be quick. Tony will be with you, okay?”

She shook her head furiously and whined, reaching out to grab the redhead’s muscly arm and tug on it.

“No, please.”

Natasha sighed, she couldn’t bring her girl with her, even if she wanted to. Bringing someone so fragile to a place so destructive, let alone with a Hulked out Bruce? She wouldn’t risk it, even if it mean disappointing you and making you sad for a little bit just to know you were safe.

“You can’t come, sunshine.” Natasha heard her whine, her frown deepening in tow as she shook her head in displeasure. “It’s too dangerous. Please, be a good girl for Tony, okay? He likes you. He thinks you’re pretty cool.”

She gave Natasha a look of doubt. “Really?”

Natasha nodded, beaming with a smile. “Don’t you find her cool, Stark?” When the redhead turned to the playboy, billionaire, she gave him a scowl. “Don’t you?”

“Of course, I do!” He neared the couch but just stayed far enough that Natasha’s girl wouldn’t crouch in fear of him. “I won’t be a bother. I’ll be like you! I’ll do whatever Natasha tells me!”

The redhead gave him a shove to his shoulders and when she felt the grip on her arm loosen, she was able to slip out to stand in front of you.

“I love you, okay? I will be back, no more than half an hour. That’s thirty minutes, sunshine. Starting when I walk down that hallway,” she points, “you’re gonna count for me, alright?”

She nods. And Natasha grins, leaning to kiss her sunshine on the tip of her nose. A giggle erupts and tickles the redhead’s nose, making her scrunch.

“I love you too.”

Casual dating

Pairing: Natasha x reader

Word count: 2795

Genre: fluff/a lillllll bit of angst

Request: yes

Warnings: slight mention of eating disorder + over exercising

A/n: I HAVE RETURNED. Just when you thought you had gotten rid of me I jump right back like a boomarang. Fun fact, we had a boomarang and I wasn't allowed to throw it because it was 'decorative' or something so I pushed a chair over to where it was hung on the wall, smuggled it out to my garden and threw it. It didn't come back to me but its probably because my technique was off right? It also has a tiny dent in the back where I threw it too hard and it bounced on the apple tree.

You and Natasha were casually dating. It's what you had both agreed because why put a label on something when it might not even last due to busy schedules? It was a mutually shared idea that had popped up on the second date.

The two of you were sitting, eating candy floss with a large stuffed bear sitting between the two of you.

"Nata-"

"So I've bee-" You both started to speak at the same time, laughing gently when you realised what you had done.

"You go." You said.

"No it's okay. You go first."

"Okay... How do you feel about all this?" You waved your hand between the two of you, accidentally hitting the bear over the head.

"It's nice. It's good." Natasha said. "I don't think I want to..." She trailed off, biting the inside of her lip as her eyes darted about slightly. She was nervous.

"Label it?"

Natasha's eyes were drawn back to you, her head hung a little in shame as she slowly nodded.

"Thank god." You breathed out, tension releasing from your shoulders. "Me neither. I'm happy with just casual dating."

"Exactly!" Natasha was a lot more animated once she realised her views were shared. "Besides, I'm an avenger and you're an agent, it's easier if we keep it casual so we don't feel pressure to constantly be with each other."

"I'm so glad you said that! I've been stressed about this since you first asked me out on the first date." You smiled easily, the both of you content to not force yourselves into a relationship.

~~~~~

That was 3 months ago and in that time you had been on one other date. Sometimes you wondered if the reason you were both so happy to not get into a serious relationship all those nights ago was because neither of you had anything to base a stable relationship off of. Your parents were emotionally distant and so you became hyper independent from a young age. Of course it was nothing compared to Natasha's experiences in the Red room but it certainly wasn't a walk in the park. In fact, if you really thought hard, you couldn't think of one real relationship you had been in. Sure you dated, had sex, and led people on for a mission but you had never had someone to call your own, never had a significant other. Hell, you didn't even really know what your sexuality was because of the lack of real relationships you had. While you had only had one other date with Natasha, it didn't stop you from being tangled in each other's limbs at least twice a week. You had a free day and you were sure Natasha did too so you sent her a quick text asking if she wanted to go out that evening, or even afternoon, before getting back to training.

You had finished your training session 3 and half hours later and still had no answer. You figured you must have read her schedule wrong which was entirely possible considering you literally just glanced at it. You chugged some water as you made your way to the showers. It was there that you saw a flash of red hair and you followed it.

"Hey Nat."

"Y/n"

"Did you get the text? I was wondering if you wanted to go out on another date tonight."

Natasha let out the tiniest sigh and you watched her tense up. You thought that she probably didn't want you to notice but you did. You bit the inside of your cheek, maybe you were being too needy. Yes. Definitely too needy.

"Actually never mind! Enjoy your shower." You spun on your heel and got into a shower.

~~~~~

You thought about the interaction the whole way home, hearing your phone buzz multiple times but ignoring it because you were a nice, safe, driver. Well that and because SHIELD had fitted a black box into your car after you got one too many speeding tickets. Those totally weren't your fault though, you had to save the cat. The fines for knocking off the occasional cyclist might have been a little more your fault. You grabbed your phone as soon as you were parked and saw that the messages were from Natasha and they weren't all that nice.

The other spider: we literally just went on a date a few weeks ago

The other spider: I thought this was supposed to be casual dating

The other spider: cause this doesn't seem very casual to me.

You felt your chest tighten unexpectedly as your eyes began to burn the tiniest bit. You clenched your jaw. You survived two parents who didn't want a child and multiple near fatal injuries.

Y/n: You're right. I'll see you Monday.

There was no way you were spending your Friday night in.

~~~~~

One of the benefits of being a super secret agent, was the lean body you were forced to have. Now, don't misunderstand, you hated working out with a passion. It often reminded you of a dark time in your past where you would over-exercise and under eat because all you could see in the mirror was someone that wasn't really there. It wasn't even that you thought you were overweight, you just wanted to see how slim and muscular you could go.

Still, when your physique meant you could get a date in less than 12 hours, you were inclined to be a little kinder to yourself. His name was Dave? Darron? Derrick? It didn't matter. He was hot and you were bored. You had arranged to meet at a small diner you had never been to before. Yes, you knew it was a little more dangerous but you had most likely killed men bigger than him with little more than a lanyard so you figured you were pretty safe. The date itself was rather boring but it did the job and got you out the house. The was nothing particularly wrong with the man, if anything he was rather sweet. He didn't seem to realise his good looks and you wondered if he had only recently grown into them. He was the perfect gentleman and in a different life, you could see him making you happy. Seeing Peter and MJ was rather cute too. Peter blushed profusely when he saw you there too but you just laughed, patting him gently on his back when he made you promise not to tell Mr Stark.

You left the diner with no intention to go on a second date.

~~~~~

It was Saturday evening, two weeks after the date with Darren? and you were bored again. Natasha had been on a mission all week and so you sent her a text, asking if she wanted to have a chill drive-in date. You added on the end that there was no pressure if she was too tired.

You were left on seen.

You weren't too sure why you kept trying with Natasha. If it had been anyone else, you would have gotten the message and fucked off. Maybe it was because Natasha was a woman? Maybe you were only attracted to women. With this newfound need to test out your hypothesis, you got back on your phone.

This time, it took you 5 hours to find someone to go on a date with. The sayings weren't wrong, lesbians really do move fast. You were dressed up and ready to go, having both decided to meet at a local coffee shop only a few blocks away from the SHIELD agency. This was done strategically as you were technically supposed to be working but it was your lunch break so fuck 'em. Sophie? Sandra? Sapphire? was nice. She laughed at your jokes and told jokes that made you laugh too, she insisted to pay and pouted when you snuck your card over the card reader. You were having a fun time and didn't notice a pair of green eyes burn into you. You cut the date shorter than your counterpart would have liked but you were already running late for work.

Perhaps it wasn't the gender, perhaps it was the fact none of them were ex-assassins with fiery red hair and a personality to match. Perhaps you couldn't remember any of their names because they weren't called Natasha.

Once again, you had no intention of going on a second date.

~~~~~

The change in Natasha was noticeable. Perhaps only noticeable to Clint and possibly Tony, but it was noticeable. She was quieter but not in her normal brooding spy way. She was a loud sort of quiet. The kind of quiet you are when you have millions of thoughts buzzing about your head. Natasha had many more than millions of thoughts and none of them were nice. She knew what casual dating entailed and she knew you were more than within your right to date someone else, as was she, but the burn when she saw you with Sophia made her feel sick. Natasha didn't like people eating her cereal, she didn't like people stealing her weapons and she most certainly didn't like people having you. As a person who grew up with barely any possessions, it had made Natasha jealous and possessive. Normally she could hide it. Normally it was over normal things, like socks. But normally, it didn't involve people. She was confused. She was overjoyed when you felt the same way about casual dating but seeing you with someone else made her feel a possessiveness that she hadn't felt since Stark had tried to take the last serving of golden boulders. She knew you weren't a cereal, that you were a person but when she saw you with someone else, all she could think was how much you were hers.

~~~~~

You were invited to a Stark party by an anonymous source. You had little to no idea who it could be. If it was Natasha, she would have just texted you and you weren't very close to any of the other Avengers. You didn't really care though, just happy to let loose as everyone knew that Stark's parties were infamous for their freeing atmosphere.

Turns out, the anonymous source failed to mention it was a rather intimate party with only the core Avengers, Maria, and Carol. You wondered, as you scanned the room quickly, whether or not it was too late for you to sneak back out. Unfortunately it was as Peter spotted you and enthusiastically waved you over to the group.

"Y/n! You made it!" Peter's exclamation made Natasha's head snap around.

"Shouldn't you be studying for a test?"

"Shouldn't you be going to less shady places for dates?"

You raised an eyebrow. Oh. So spidey boy wanted to play did he? You gave him a smug smirk and watched as he realised what he had just said "And how do you know about the shady places I go on dates young Peterson?"

"I- um- well-"

"How many other 'dates' have you been on?" Perhaps if Natasha was in a better state of mind, she would have asked it with a faux nonchalance but she was far too hurt for that.

"What's with the inverted commas? They were dates." You were a little upset that Natasha didn't think you were going on real dates.

"Sure."

"What, don't believe me?"

Natasha let out a short breath of air "No."

Your jaw clenched in a way that Natasha found delicious and she found herself momentarily forgetting why you were arguing until she then remembered that others may have seen your clenched jaw and thought the exact same thing she just thought. It made her blood boil ten times hotter than it already was.

"I thought you guys were dating?" Steve said, confusion written all over his face.

"Casually. Although right now, it doesn't seem very casual to me." You threw back the words that Natasha had texted you all those weeks ago, putting a little bite into them.

Natasha visibly tensed up as she realised just how neglectful she had been. She thought back to all the times you had asked her out and it made her feel sick. Her face slid from shock, to realisation, to guilt, to sadness all within a matter of milliseconds before finally resting on careful neutrality. "Well maybe we shouldn't casually date anymore."

"Just what I was thinking." You were not, however, thinking the same thing. Natasha meant it as 'we should stop casually dating so you can be my girlfriend and I can leave my mark all over you so no one ever even thinks of you without realising you're not single again' and you meant it as 'we should stop casually dating because you're slowly ripping out my heart and it's scaring me because you don't feel the same way I do.'

Normally, Wanda kept others thoughts from wandering into her head but she was a little more than slightly tipsy and both your thoughts were very loud.

"Wait nooo." Wanda's words slurred together as she grabbed your wrist, stopping you from getting up. She tugged you, trying to get you to lean closer but underestimated her strength, causing you to fall into her.

Natasha let out the most animalistic sound you had ever heard from a human. You had never heard anyone growl before and Natasha had never done it before but she was too mad to even realise what she had just done.

"Relaxxxx. I'm fixing it." Wanda waved Natasha off "Who do you think invited them anyway?"

You looked at Wanda in confusion. "But we don't even know each other."

"No." Wanda giggled. "But Peter and Clint were worried and Tony was sick of walking on eggshells around Natasha and Steve was tired of not knowing what was going on and-"

"Okay" You laughed, cutting her off. "What's your point sweetheart?"

"Natasha lovessss youuuu" Wanda giggled, her head rolling back as she looked up at the ceiling. "Come on guyssss its time for the birdies to sort themselves out."

"Birdies?" Thor looked over at her in confusion. "There are no birds here."

"She means lovebirds Thor." Carol laughed.

"How does a woman who's spent less time here than you know more?" Maria laughed as she ushered the others out, grabbing Carol's hand.

You looked over at Natasha once they had all left. "...What?"

"I thought we were saying we shouldn't casual date anymore?"

"Well me too."

"So why were you all over Wanda like a rash?"

"...I'm sorry, what? When you said 'no more casual dating', what did you mean?"

"Well I was asking you to date me properly, so I could be your girlfriend... What did you think I meant?"

"I thought you meant we had to stop doing this."

"Oh."

You both sat there in silence until you realised that your silence could be interpreted as not wanting to have her as your girlfriend.

"That's much better than what I was thinking."

Natasha gave you a light smile, her eyes searching yours for any signs that you might be lying.

You knew that she might need some encouragement to show her that you were telling the truth so you continued. "I want to see you most days. I want to label this."

"I want to see you every day Y/n. I want to wake up next to you and fall asleep next to you. When I saw you with Sophia..."

"Who?"

Natasha looked at you blankly. "What do you mean 'who'? The woman you were out with at the coffee place."

"So that was her name..."

"I seriously cant believe you... I literally stalked that woman and her family and you didn't even remember her name!" Natasha looked exasperated.

"...Well she wasn't you..."

Natasha closed the space between you until you were both inches away from each other. "Can I kiss you?" You nodded as she surged forwards and captured your lips with hers.

It was vaguely strange that she asked for permission this time when you had kissed each other so many times before. You only realised why, when you noticed that the pace of this kiss was different. It was slower, like she was taking her time memorising every little line on your lips and every tiny ridge in your mouth. Natasha asked permission because it was her strange, completely Natasha way of asking if you were okay with her. With being in a relationship. You melted instantly and your heart swelled. It was then that you realised that no matter how badly your parents had fucked you up, how badly the Red room had fucked up Natasha, that the two of you had found each other and were prepared to heal together.