Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tony woke up, face down, on a mattress that was horribly uncomfortable and thus he was sure couldn't be his own. He had no idea where he was though and in his experience that was never a good sign. Some form of trouble was ahead. Through years of partying and drinking more than was good for him just to get through one more social event and ending up in a lot of beds that weren't his own, he'd become familiar with that horrible taste in his mouth, the dryness of his throat – and the general fuzziness of it all.

But those days were over, weren't they? He was a different man now. Iron Man.

So how had he ended up in a bed that he didn’t know and couldn't remember?

He groaned and tried to pry his face out of the pillow. A weight settled down on the mattress beside him and he sincerely hoped that he still remembered how you did the no strings attached, one night stand routine, because his mind wasn't up for real drama yet. Which was when he realized, that, yes, he was apparently naked beneath the blanket and he didn't just have a simple blackout, but, yes, there must have been sex at some point.

Damn.

This was going to be a problem. Pepper would kill him.

Scratch that. Pepper and Rhodey would kill him, if they ever got wind that he'd fallen back into old habits – even if he hadn't the foggiest idea how that had happened in the first place. Surely that excuse wouldn’t fly even if it was the truth.

He groaned again. The person beside him, smelling of sweetly scented shampoo and clean skin, was leaning over him, probably trying to sneak a peek at his face – and he hated it, hated the thought of the situation, hated himself for allowing it to happen as if he hadn't come a long way since his days as industrialist playboy, media darling and scandal-prone genius. What he didn't expect was a sharp sting in his upper arm, and the yelp that was tearing itself from his own throat at the sudden pain.

“Good,” a female voice said, beside him. “You're waking up. I was beginning to worry.”

The voice was instantly familiar and he shot up from the pillow, only remembering the already present headache when he'd already moved, focusing on her, before the pain and slight nausea caught up with him and he had to hide his face in one hand, close his eyes and take a deep breath until the world stopped spinning. “Natasha?” he asked, before he even tried to look up at her again to confirm his suspicion, his gaze still blurry.

“Yes,” she replied, calm and without emotion. Tony had a good idea by now that this could mean a number of things, could in fact mean that he was as good as dead.

He wasn't sure how he felt about seeing her, sitting cross legged on the bed wearing nothing but a shiny, short babydoll style negligee and matching panties. A laptop was sitting in front of her, and apparently she was checking a syringe; the syringe that she'd stuck into his arms just a moment before.

Ouch.

There was this sinking feeling in his stomach telling him that he was missing something important here, and that whatever it was – it probably wasn't good. His befuddled mind told him that he shouldn't be staring, that staring was an even faster lane leading to his imminent and painful death, but he just couldn't look away. There was a quip about the tasteful choice of lingerie on the tip of his tongue, but not even he thought saying it out loud at a time like this was a good idea.

“Head clear?” Natasha asked, set the syringe aside and started typing fast, not looking at him.

That, he felt, was not how this had any right to play out.

“No,” he said, “not really. What the hell is going on here?”

She hit down hard on the enter key and sat up a little straighter. When she turned to look at him this time her gaze was unreadable, but her mouth was set in a thin line and he just knew he was in trouble, especially as he was having a hard time looking anywhere but her breasts at the moment. He made an effort to focus on her face instead, but just felt even more uncomfortable when their eyes locked.

“Must have been one hell of a night,” he said dryly, knowing that there was only one conclusion he could come to with the evidence glaring him right in the face. “I hope I wasn't... How drunk was I?” How drunk were you? a little voice in the back of his mind screamed, but he was not ready to voice the question, not ready at all for an answer either. He had no idea what to say, no idea at all how you apologized for ending up in bed with someone – no, not someone, a teammate - as apologizing had never been part of that particular routine.

“It wasn't a night,” she said, matter-of-factly and still very calmly. “And you weren't drugged. The shot I gave you should help you with the headache. It helped me. Will calm your nerves, too. Banner's cocktail, so it should help with dealing with most of the unpleasant aftereffects of a blackout.” She said it as if she thought he needed calming down. When she moved, he thought she was going to throttle him or worse, but instead she got up and opened the drawer of the small night stand, looking stern. Not that he had time to dwell on that, now that he could stare at her legs and buttocks. Had they actually done all the nasty and he couldn't even remember?

But some of the information was slowly sinking in. “What do you mean it wasn't a night?”

“As far as I can tell it was closer to two weeks. Apparently we've both been off the grid until this morning.”

“Off the grid?” he repeated incredulously. Then added: “Two weeks?!”, before the magnitude of the information actually hit him and he added: “Hold on. Apparently? What? What the hell did we do?”

“I've checked in with Clint as soon as I woke up. He says we were hit by an Asgardian spell during battle. Apparently most of the team was hit with something or other. They have yet to find Cap, who is convinced that he'd been trapped in a virtual reality by HYDRA, while in fact it's still World War II raging outside his head.”

“Okay,” he said. He knew he was staring at her now, not because he couldn't look away from the perfect outline of her body, but because he was trying to digest all this and piece together the rest. “And we've been gone...?”

“For two weeks. Nobody could find us. I'm not surprised we managed that between the two of us. You even interfered with your own AI to make sure it couldn't track us.” She had taken a sheet of paper out of the drawer and was looking at it as if she was contemplating her next move.

Tony couldn't care less. He was sitting up on the bed, naked under the sheet, trying to figure out what – apart from the obvious - might have happened between them in all this time. Fourteen days. A man could get into a lot of trouble in fourteen days. He could speak with some authority on that being a fact. “We were together all the time?” he asked.

Natasha started to walk back to the bed and her mouth curved up in an unamused half-smile. She sat back on the bed, studying him and then dropped the paper into his lap. “It seems we eloped. This is how SHIELD found us finally.”

“Eloped,” he repeated slowly and picked up the marriage certificate that Natasha had dropped into his lap. It looked legit. And it had their fucking names on it. Their fucking actual names. Natasha Romanoff, right there, beside Anthony Edward Stark. How the hell had that happened?

Only then did he notice the ring on Natasha's finger. Frantically he checked his own hand, half relieved when there was no ring on his own finger.

“It's on the nightstand,” Natasha informed him without inflection.

He swallowed and looked over. There it was alright. Golden and shiny and - fuck.

There were so many thoughts racing through his head that he had to swallow once more before looking at Natasha and saying: “So it wasn't just me then? Both of us? Spell, yeah? We can handle this,” he threw the certificate back on the bed between them. “This is not the disaster it could be, if...”

“This got out?” Natasha asked flatly. She turned the screen of the laptop towards him. “It hit the news this morning. The hotel is very likely already swarming with press.”

He stared at the headline, a picture of him and Natasha wearing sunglasses and kissing, likely in the hotel lobby.

Kissing.

Suddenly Natasha wasn't the scariest person in the world anymore. “Pepper is going to kill me,” he said and groaned.

“At least the romance between you two never took off,” Natasha commented with a slight note of humor. “That could have been awkward.”

He chuckled without any real amusement. “Could have been? This will be a PR nightmare. She's still going to kill me.”

Professional that she was, Natasha immediately went back to being unreadable. It grated on his nerves. Rage and violence he would have expected. Immediate threats he could have dealt with. But her calm way of accepting that apparently they'd spent two weeks making out and hiding away from the world was driving him crazy. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked, because he thought he really should know.

She pursed her lips and considered it for a moment. “I thought about it,” she said, and he wasn't at all sure she was joking, no, in fact he was pretty sure she wasn't, but then she smiled. “But that would have been even more bad press. The Avengers can do without that. We have enough people claiming we're a threat more than a group of heroes.”

“We're not heroes,” he said automatically.

“I know,” she answered and smiled at him, this time meaning it. “But we were still the good guys when the world needed us.”

He waved a hand between them. “So we're... we're good then? No hard feelings, both acting under the influence....”

She nodded very slowly. “We can agree that neither of us was at fault, I think.”

“Good,” he said. “Very good. I was worried. It's in the name. Black Widow and all.”

“Very funny, Stark,” she said. “I would find better reasons to kill you.”

“Thanks, but you'll have to get in line for that,” he said and started to move to the corner of the bed, spinning out his legs and then considering his options. He wanted to get to the bathroom and he wasn't usually ashamed of his own body, wasn't now either, but circumstances were a little different this morning and he wasn't sure how well both of them would be dealing with nakedness and the implications.

“You don't need to spare my sensibilities,” she said. “I'm sure I already saw all there is to see at some point or another.”

He looked over his shoulder at the way she was lying back on the pillows now, aware of her own appeal and not hiding it. “Great wedding night, when both of us don't remember,” he muttered.

“Oh, I'm sure I gave you a good time.”

The cockiness made him smirk, and finally made him feel a little bit more like himself. “I don't hear you complaining either.”

“No memory. Nothing to complain about.” She smirked back at him and they shared a silent moment of connection and the realization that this would only have to be as awkward as they allowed it to be. Then her eyes darkened. “We should eat something – and then we need to talk this through. We need a strategy.”

That they could certainly agree on. Getting out of the marriage was the least of their worries. Doing it without starting another scandal was what they needed to think about.

He walked to the bathroom and let the door fall closed behind him, standing in front of the mirror for a long time, staring at his own tired face. There was a little red mark on his arm and it was beginning to hurt. He was tired, but not feeling like he was suffering from a hangover. In fact he now wasn't so sure that he'd had anything to drink last night. But he knew that all he wanted to do right at this moment was figure out what had happened to his armor, to JARVIS, who should have been able to locate him anywhere, and then hide away in Malibu and built a better suit.

A magic resistant one for a start.

What he didn't want to do at all was face the world outside. Not until he was actually feeling up to dealing with it.

* * *

“Look, Pepper, I'm not stupid. You know I act stupid more often than is good for both of us, but I'm not stupid, okay? I get what you're saying,” he said into his phone in exasperation and watched Natasha, sitting at the table in the corner, working away at the little laptop. They had both decided that they had to handle this situation first, but their actual priority had to be finding Cap now. Who knew what kind of trouble a paranoid supersoldier would get into? They'd gotten married for Christ's sake, so there was no telling what Steve had been doing for the last two weeks. So Natasha was now reviewing the data SHIELD was sending her way to form a plan.

She had dressed and was now wearing surprisingly casual jeans and a snugly fitting top with yellow and white stripes. It wasn't sexy or alluring, but somehow that made her more attractive. He had never seen her wear anything like it, but searching through their luggage had revealed that apparently both of them had gone for the casual look, probably to stay out of sight. It was disconcerting to realize that neither of them had any kind of clear memory of the last two weeks and still apparently they had both been acting as you'd expect Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark to act when they were on the run from the law or something. They had yet to come up with an explanation for their secretive behavior, beyond their sudden infatuation.

Clint had not been shy to inform Natasha that they had been making out on the scene of the battle, before Tony had spirited them away with the armor to god knows where. They actually had eloped. Like a couple out of some cliched historical romance novel, staying out of sight like either of their families would come barging in to stop the wedding at the last moment and dragging them back home to marry someone else.

Oh, the irony.

“Tony, I'm aware who you are. I know you. But scandal is your second name, so let me stress this again: We've had reporters speculating about the two of us since before you put me in charge of your company. We've had a fair share of inquiries and a fair share of stupid gossip. We've had journalists and business partners right out refusing to believe that you put me in charge for any other reason than you getting, and I quote, special favors for it.” He snorted, but Pepper went on as if she hadn't heard: “There've been speculations about you wherever you went after the aliens in New York thing. Everybody is watching what you do!”

“Nothing has changed then,” he said

She sighed. “I know you think that. But things have changed. They've changed big time. You're an Avenger now. And it's still your name on this company, but the interest in you has changed. And, damn, we were supposed to have a press conference introducing the world to Stark Tower and the way it's run next month. A beacon of clean energy and a symbol for New York recovering from alien attack. I wasn't sure if you'd be there. And now it's going to be a mess wherever you are.”

“Now I'll be there. No problem.”

“Problem,” she said. “Have you seen the media go wild? Avengers Wedding. Tony, what are you going to tell them?”

Natasha was moving back her chair to get up. She walked over to him and indicated that there was something he should be looking at. He picked up his tablet and looked at the information she'd just sent him. “It seems SHIELD is going to hand me a set of cards, Pepper,” he said and frowned at Natasha.

She nodded. “It's for the best.”

Pepper who hadn't heard Natasha speaking snorted and said: “Because this worked out so well last time, Iron Man.”

He held away the phone for a moment to look at Natasha hard. “We can't stay married, Natasha. It's not like either of us was in any place to actually consent to this. We're not a couple.”

The casual way she shrugged only served to make him angry. “It's going to be a PR nightmare either way. I'm a good actor. You're a good actor. We give people what they want for a while and everyone will be happy.”

“For a while?” he asked, no longer sure if he was angry, confused – or scared that this had been some kind of insane set up by SHIELD to keep him in line. “You're not trying to inherit my company? Next thing I know I'll be dead and nobody'll find my body.”

She smiled a very soft and sweet smile. “Mr. Stark, if I wanted to do that, you would never know about it. So don't worry.”

He nodded his head, not smiling. At least in a weird way they always understood each other.

“Tony?” Pepper was calling impatiently. “Are you still there?”

He put the phone back against his ear and said: “This is the plan for now: We're the happy couple. Spin it any way you want. Make the investors love it and use it any way you can to strengthen your own position, Pep. SHIELD has some explaining to do about the Hulk taking out a secret military base too close to Washington and the happy Avengers marriage is exactly what they need to distract public opinion.”

“And you're going along with it? Without fighting it?” Pepper fell silent at the other end for a moment, before asking the most important question: “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, problem,” he said, convinced that he wasn't exactly lying. He was just not very comfortable with how this would turn out.

“Good,” Pepper said, sounding placating more than convinced. “I'll send Happy if you need anything. And Rhodey is already on his way. The two of you want to playact? Then better get started. Don't try to convince the paparazzi. Try to convince me that this will not blow up in all our faces.”

Natasha took the phone from his hand. “Mr. Stark knows there is no room for failure or disagreements,” she said amiably. “I'm here, too, after all, Pepper.”

She was listening to whatever it was Pepper was replying to that and then Natasha laughed. A clear and girlish, happy little laugh. He knew he was frowning at that. Especially when Natasha just ended the call without passing the phone back to him. She put it down between them on the table and watched him carefully.

“Are you really up for this?” she asked him.

“Are you asking me, Mrs. Stark? Isn't this the death of your superspy career? Life in the public eye?”

“Best place to hide. It will serve me in the long run.” She looked at the ring on her finger and wiggled it a little. “And besides I like the ring.”

His smile was strained, he knew it. “I knew it. Diamonds and all that. You're just after my money.”

“It's a bad time to let it get out that we were taken by surprise by an Asgardian who got in all our heads and sent us on a trip to wonderland. People will be afraid that this could happen at any time.”

“I know,” he admitted. The loss of two weeks of his life was more than a little scary without the rest of the world flipping out about it. But the prospect of living as a pretend couple was even more so. He wondered how he had coped with it the last two weeks. Had his mind been so far gone that he had been able to sleep all through the night? Had Natasha loved him enough to comfort him when the nightmares came? Had it made a difference?

Nothing worth dwelling about.

It was time to put on a show.

* * *

Rhodey arrived and it was reason enough for them to finally go meet this head on. Natasha dressed up in a sinfully perfect blue dress they found in their luggage and Tony, dressed in an equally expensive suit, took her hand and led her out of their little sanctuary. The guests in the lobby were staring at them. Rhodey greeted them warmly, obviously already informed of what he was supposed to do, hugging Natasha and exchanging jokes and small talk as if he'd known her all along, as if he'd been in on this from the start.

Natasha was even better, playing her role like the pro she was.

Tony was reminded of “Natalie”, the young woman who'd played her part a little too perfectly, when SHIELD had sent her to figure out what was wrong with him and to evaluate him. He couldn't help but admire her for it, the easy way she was falling into the role of happy bride, showing Rhodey the ring and smiling, hiding her face when they were checking out, as if she was shying away from the cameras. They had lunch together the three of them, chatting and laughing.

Towards the end she reached for his hand, holding on to it on top of the table where everybody could see, looking and talking to Rhodey, seeming to all eyes relaxed and happy, and he, silent now, but playing along. He squeezed back slightly and watched her, imagining what they must look like to the rest of the world at this very moment.

“Located the suit in the trunk of the car we were using,” he informed her, as they walked around a crowd of photographers, both smiling, holding hands, before checking in at a better hotel, requesting their honeymoon suite. “We need to get it, before we can leave.”

“It's our car,” she said. “We could make a road trip out of this.”

He smiled at her thinly. “We can't go Cap hunting on our honeymoon, Mrs. Stark. Not without attracting unwanted attention.”

Her smile was blindingly bright then and she surprised him by slightly tipping upwards and pecking him on the lips. “It's still Romanoff. Kept the name.”

“Of course, you did,” he said. The fact that his heart was beating a little faster had nothing to do with that not-really-a-kiss-at-all-kiss, of course, just the surprise.

When she walked before him to their suite, he couldn't deny that she was attractive. He'd always known that. It wasn't like anyone could deny that she was a beautiful woman. He could admit it. Only a fool wouldn't.

In their suite she walked straight to the bed and let herself fall down on top of it like an exhilarated girl testing it out. “Too bad we won't stay the night,” she said and sighed.

He actually smiled at that. “Maybe another time, when we're not an Avenger short of the whole team.”

* * *

Iron Man landed inside the garage back in Malibu without any trouble. Natasha was wearing her SHIELD uniform and carrying only one messenger bag. They'd left everything else behind to travel light.

“JARVIS,” he said, opening his visor. “Daddy's home. Sorry for meddling with your code a bit. It wasn't intentional.”

“Good evening, sir,” the AI's voice replied. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “This is Agent Romanoff. You remember her. She's going to live with us, when she's not out killing bad guys and doing... agenty stuff.”

“Welcome, Agent Romanoff,” the AI greeted politely.

“It's my pleasure,” she said and pursed her lips.

Tony wasn't sure if it was right to say that he was starting to read her better, but he had come to associate the pursing of lips with humor. “If there is anything you need let JARVIS know. He runs everything around here. Don't mess with his code and we'll be good.”

She smiled. “I won't interfere with your AI,” she said and made it sound like a sincere promise.

* * *

The greatest surprise was that Natasha didn't just vanish like a ghost upon their arrival. She made herself at home and did not avoid him. When he came up from the lab downstairs in the middle of the night, she was waiting for him with pizza. They didn't talk, just watched the news and he drifted off right where he was sitting. When he woke up again a blanket had been thrown over him and Natasha had moved to the armchair, curled up under her own blanket and was watching a movie.

“You seemed restless,” she told him as he got up to get himself to his own bed, as if she needed to explain the friendly act of covering him with a blanket.

He nodded and mumbled a thank you at her, before stumbling up to bed.

It remained a restless night for him. When he woke up, she had actually made breakfast.

“I had this undercover job as kitchen staff once,” she explained without missing a beat, before he could even make a scathing remark.

“Once?” he said, after tasting a bite of the pancakes. “You seem so good at it, that it must have been more than once.”

She shrugged. “Maybe more than once.”

“For SHIELD?”

“Before SHIELD.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you were kitchen staff?”

“Best place to poison the food,” she said and stared at him, as he halted the fork on the way to his mouth.

He smirked, took the bite and then started to chuckle.

She laughed then.

It could be worse. He could be married to someone he didn't actually like, someone who would be less acquainted with the complexity of the craziness of life.

* * *

Cap turned up again on his own two days later. They all met him on the helicarrier, wearing his uniform and cutting an impressive figure as always, but still managing to look a little sheepish. “Sorry, guys,” he said. “Not sure what I was doing for the last couple of days.”

“Playing hide and seek,” Clint suggested. “That's what the lovebirds were doing anyway,” he said and pointed at where Tony and Natasha were standing close together.

“Better than very openly attacking the person who chases you around the globe,” Bruce offered and smiled.

Tony appreciated the self-depreciating sense of humor.

“We just eloped,” Natasha said and sounded not the least bit impressed by any of their shenanigans. “That's no simple game.”

Clint winked at Tony. “More serious than I thought then.”

“Don't offend the wife, Barton,” he quipped back. “I won't even have to defend her honor. She'll do it herself.”

Cap looked from one to the other. “I saw the news,” he said, but didn't ask any more questions, probably trying not to make this uncomfortable for them, or for the lady at least.

A special unit of SHIELD psychologists made him sit down with them and give a full account of what he remembered of the last few days. Like with the rest of them, he didn't really remember the weeks after being hit by a spell. “She, the Asgardian, said, she'd give me what I want,” he said and sounded wistful. “Give us what we want. What could she have meant?”

Tony shrugged, sure there was no use in dwelling on what anyone who meddled with something stupid like magic was saying. But it wasn't lost on him that Natasha and Bruce were suddenly looking lost in thought.

“How did you escape all this, Legolas?” he asked, just to change the subject.

“Maybe I already have all I want,” Clint said cryptically and vanished down the hallway.

Tony wished life would ever be as easy as simply getting what you want most.

* * *

Next day she went on a SHIELD assigned mission. In the morning she was just gone, leaving JARVIS to tell him she had to go on assignment.

“She promises to be back for the opening of Stark Tower,” the AI relayed.

It didn't bother him overly much to be all alone in the big mansion again. He loved the silence, the room to create and do whatever he pleased without anybody walking in and asking questions. Not that Natasha had ever asked any questions. And he already missed breakfast.

His steps led him down to the garage. The images of his last nightmare were still with him. Hanging motionless in space. An army of incredible force before him. Explosion. Falling. Dying. But worse, the thought that he wouldn't be able to protect earth from what was coming.

It was time for another suit.

“You've just finished Mark 32, sir,” JARVIS reminded him.

“This one will be better,” he shot back. It needed to be better.

Instead of going to bed he spent the night on the cot in the garage and woke up screaming. There was the irrational thought that he wanted someone to be there, that the loneliness made everything worse.

But he knew that it was good that Natasha was out. He could not let her see him like this. She'd already thought him unfit to be Iron Man once before.

And all doubt would be gone as soon as he had his first cup of coffee and had gone back to work anyway.

* * *

Rhodey came by in the morning and watched him as he was tinkering with a motor. He was not about to let anybody know how much time he spent upgrading his suits these days. Maybe Natasha had her suspicions, but she didn't ask questions and so far he had seen no evidence of her snooping around the garage or armory. It seemed to be like an unspoken pact between them not to interfere in each other's business.

Surely, if she knew, she'd already alerted SHIELD to his evil plans to build himself an unstoppable Iron Man army.

But how could he not? They hadn't seen what was coming, hadn't realized how scary the world was beyond their own. Only he had seen it.

“So how's married life?” Rhodey asked.

“Quiet,” he answered truthfully.

But Rhodey only raised an eyebrow. “Between you and a SHIELD agent I'd thought it would be pretty much one fight after another.”

“No,” he said and set the part he was looking at aside.

“No?”

“Want me to lie?”

“No, of course, not. When your crazy fake marriage plan came up, I was sure it would only last for so long.”

“So did I,” he admitted.

“The shared living space no problem?” he said.

“It's a big house. We eat together. It's like being in Stark Tower with just one other Avenger dropping by.”

“Friends, then?” Rhodey asked and he wasn't frowning, but Tony realized that he was worried. When he looked at him questioningly he added: “You didn’t always get along so perfectly.”

“I had reasons to have trust issues and be miffed about her calling me a liability. And she had reason to not see me as anything but. I can see where she was coming from, although I still don't trust anyone at SHIELD as far as I can throw them without a suit. But she's part of the team. And we are a team. We can handle this. It’s Avengers business.”

Rhodey made a strange noise in the back of his throat and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Strange. I always thought if you ever got married it would either be Pepper or me. As we're the only people who you ever let in. Maybe I was wrong.”

Tony frowned at him. “Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart. I let plenty of people in.”

“Yeah? Who?”

He admittedly had to think about this for a moment, before he said: “Bruce.”

“So you had to make a quick choice between Black Widow and the Hulk? And I was worried.” He laughed.

Tony just shrugged it away. “Who says I made the choice?”

It was a question he had asked himself before. The fact that Rhodey was suddenly staring at him as if he was contemplating that statement, shouldn't make his heart beat a little faster.

He surely wasn't at the stage where sudden panic attacks were happening in broad daylight.

* * *

Silent space. Horror before him. Darkness and a bomb. Crashing back. Falling. End.

He woke up from the nightmare in bed this time, jerking awake and then freezing. A hand was pressing down on his forehead. He turned to look at Natasha who was curled up beside him under the heavy comforter and looking at him with calm, wide open eyes.

“You were dreaming,” she said. A simple statement, no question.

“Yes,” he said.

“Go back to sleep,” she told him.

They stared at each other. “Why are you here?” he asked, not talking about her being back.

“Didn't want to be alone,” she said. “And it looked like you didn't want to be either.”

This time he fell asleep staring at what was visible of her naked shoulders and the dark lines formed by the straps of her bra. No nightmares came this time.

* * *

They smiled at socialites and drank champagne. Pepper was happily greeting them and complimenting Natasha on the way she'd made up her hair. The people present were watching the way the two women were getting along, as if everyone had been holding their breath for this to finally turn into a bit more than passionate romance and unconventional courtship ending in surprise marriage and into a big delicious scandal instead.

They were sorely disappointed, but nobody could withstand the charm of Black Widow when she was playing to win, so their disappointment was only short lived.

Tony was watching her. “You are really in love,” a woman said beside him, patting his arm. He wasn't surprised to recognize Christine Everhart.

“Why else would I marry?” he said, aware that he wasn't even technically lying, as being under a love-spell meant that when they had married, they'd also both been in love.

“Maybe people as crazy as you unlikely hero types can only be happy with each other.” She shrugged and walked away.

“She's been waiting to get that parting shot in all night,” he mumbled.

“Do you mind?” Natasha asked, appearing at his side.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Used to it.”

She kissed him then, not just a peck on the lips, but a real, full, open mouthed kiss. She wrapped her arms around his back and his own hands came up to settle at her hips. It took his breath away.

The picture of them made it into most gossip columns and lifestyle blogs on the net that very night.

* * *

They never even once talked about how long this was supposed to go on. Pepper was saying that maybe in a year or two they could change up things. Fury had already told him that he didn't care what went on under the surface as long as there was no scandal making problems for the Avengers Initiative.

Their team mates just politely refrained from mentioning their marriage at all. They also didn't say anything about the slight change in dynamic between them. But Tony had caught Bruce smiling at Steve and nodding in their direction.

It was annoying.

But he still didn't mind sharing his living space with someone.

He didn't even mind when Natasha climbed into his bed occasionally – never really courageous enough to return the favor himself. But today he'd taken the opportunity to wrap his arms around her when they were out in Central Park – all for the cameras, of course – and kiss her again.

Perhaps he was in trouble.

This was all fake after all. No use getting attached.

No nightmare woke him that night, but he couldn't sleep with the thoughts of the kiss lingering in his thoughts. He stumbled out of bed, not sure where to go, but already deciding that sleep was just not an option at the moment.

From downstairs he could hear the muted noises of the television and when he walked down he could see Natasha sitting on the sofa. He froze in mid step a few steps further down and stared. She was wearing the same kind of lingerie that she'd been wearing that morning in the hotel – but her firm round breasts were exposed and she was touching herself, teasing a nipple with one hand.

He was about to silently make his retreat, when her voice came to him, loud and clear and firm: “Come down here, Tony” she said. “We should talk. And there is something I have to show you.”

That whole statement was simply surreal and she couldn't actually mean it, not in the dirty way that his brain was taking it. Not when her hand was on her nipple...

“How did you know I was there?”

“I know these things,” she said. Her other hand was resting between her legs and he felt heat run through him at the thought of what she'd been doing, been about to do, a moment before. He looked away as she sat up straighter covering her breast with a hand instead of righting the lingerie. His gaze fell on the television then and he froze again in surprise.

There, Natasha's legs were wrapped around his waist, he was still mostly wearing his dark suit pants, but his naked back was turned towards the camera. The picture was gray and grizzly. Surveillance? His mind started racing, but the Natasha on the screen was throwing her head back in a silent plea, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, nails leaving red trails down his back. They were moving faster and faster in unmistakable passion.

“Sit down,” Natasha told him from the sofa and he did, swallowing, his throat suddenly dry.

“We were obviously enjoying ourselves.”

“Where did you get it?” he asked fighting his dry throat, unable to look away. The track pants he'd slipped into were suddenly much too tight.

“I checked that first day, following our own trail and all the leads I left myself. I knew the camera was there. I'm not stupid enough not to check. And neither are you. You must have known when we were there. Stopped it from sending anything.”

He knew exactly what that meant. “So this is the only recording?”

“Whoever set it up didn't get anything. But we did.”

“You've had it from the beginning?”

She nodded and shifted a little so that he could see more of her legs, her perfect thighs, her stomach, a dark spot, the scar of a gunshot wound, a long white line along her arm, from a thin blade. For the first time he looked close enough to see all the small signs of battle, the scars, marks of a hard life, the imperfection. Perfect.

“I've watched it before,” she said, not admitting anything to him, but stating a natural fact. “We're sexy.”

“We are.”

Her gaze fell down to his crotch and there was no denying anymore that this was exactly what he wanted, what both of them had been dancing around since that first morning, knowing, but not remembering.

She pulled a condom package from the back of her panties, and the thought that she had been waiting for him was driving him wild. He reached for it, but she shook her head, reaching for his crotch, making him move so she could pull his erection free.

“I thought about this, since our little walk in Central Park. I'm a passionate woman and that kiss, Tony, don't tell me it wasn't a promise of more.”

“Natasha,” he gasped, not able to hold it together any longer.

She put a finger against his lips and looked over his shoulder at what they were doing on the screen. “There is that part where I have you tied to the headboard and ride you,” she said, quietly, but with a note of excitement in it.

Her words went straight to his loins, his erection twitching in her hand, as she touched and squeezed him, making sure he was ready and putting the condom on him with a sure hand. By now he was painfully hard and as she slipped to sit over his lap he reached out to grasp her buttocks, leaning up to kiss her breasts.

She sank down and they both moaned, holding on to each other.

On the screen behind Natasha's back another Tony Stark was enjoying what wasn't yet his wedding night.

But maybe this was something like their wedding night right here and now.

* * *

He woke up in bed late in the day. Natasha was pressed up against his side one leg wrapped around one of his.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“No nightmares,” he answered truthfully.

“Me neither.”

They let their small revelation of truths sink in. He started tracing little circles on her thigh. “So, we're really married then? Not just pretend married?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.

“Maybe. Maybe it's what we wanted.”

“Like Cap said? I mean I always thought you were hot...”

She smiled. “Are you fishing for compliments?” she asked, before kissing his lips, biting his lower lip softly.

“What did we want then?”

“I didn't want to be lonely,” she said. “Someone who'd understand.”

“Someone who'd stay despite the nightmares,” he finished.

“Maybe,” she conceded.

Maybe, he knew, was not a yes, but it was enough for the beginning of something new. Something that perhaps he'd been waiting for, that was worth taking risks for.

“Let's give it a try, huh?” he said.

She nodded. “I'm bad at relationships.”

Even now he couldn't read her well enough to tell if she was saying it as a warning to him that this might blow up in their faces, or to explain why she thought this was a good idea. He gave it a moment of thought and then pointed out: “I'm terrible at relationships.”

“Let's just see how this goes for a start.” She leaned over to kiss him and he kissed back, not urgent, just a tender, sweet kiss that was nothing like the hard-edged, messed up people they were.

They would not make promises, not speak words of love right now. He knew he cared for her and it didn't seem impossible anymore that she actually cared for him, too. And that was all he was asking for.

They were adaptable. They could grow from here.