[OPEN] One of those days...

[widows_kiss]

Who: Natasha and [OPEN]
Where: the bar
When: backdated to this past Tuesday (5/20)
Rating: PG-13ish?
Summary: It's not every day your son shows up from the future. (At least, she really hopes not. Once was plenty.)
The Story:
Natasha's somewhat come to terms with the strangeness Wonderland seems insistent about dropping into their laps. Some of it is beyond expectation and for the most part she's done her best to roll with that, take it in stride, from people showing up from all manner of timelines and alternate realities, to talking to living breathing fictional fairy tale characters and even to her teammates and enemies belting out Disney ballads to one another without warning. She thought she was handling it fairly calmly.

And then James had shown up this morning with the information that he was her son - her and Steve's son. From the future. Oh, and in his world she gets to die somewhere in the next three years by a rogue AI out to destroy humanity. She was really hoping he was from one of those alternate realities like the one the female Hawkeye had arrived from, because if that was her fate... She really would have been much happier never knowing.

Not that she held any of this against the kid - she didn't - but it was still a lot to digest. Which was why she'd abandoned her usual haunts for the evening in favor of finding a stool at Ellen's bar. She'd tried spending the afternoon in training, trying to exhaust herself and outrun the circling thoughts, but that had been less successful than she'd hoped. Maybe the alcohol would do a better job. Not that she was one to over-indulge, usually. And it took a lot for her to get to the level of intoxication she was partially craving. She wasn't even sure that was wise, considering everything, but for one night, maybe she'd be a little reckless.

Still, she sent off a text to her teammates of 'Unless there's an emergency, I'm taking the night off. In the bar if you need me.' before she got started. Just in case.

Comments

[widows_kiss]

"Oops. My mistake," she teases him, taking another long sip of her drink, because yes, she's run into them. Or at least one of them, but she's seen another one in here a time or two.

Still, his reaction to her bringing up Bucky and that particular incident has her hiding a smile behind her glass, especially when he sets his glass down with a little more force than necessary. "Mm-hmm. I believe you. I'm glad you resolved all your hard feelings. Next time though you might want to decide on a safe word before you start."

[assembles]

"A--"

Steve's two seconds away from asking what she even means by that, when it hits him and he lets out a frustrated sigh. It's one more thing for Natasha to tease him about, which is normally fine, but it's a little different when it's his best friend.

"It's not like that," he insists as he closes his eyes and takes another long sip of his drink. "All I wanted to do was keep him safe."

His intentions had been right during that event, they'd just been pushed to an insane limit.

[widows_kiss]

"That's the point of a safe word, Rogers," she teases him lightly, laughter in her voice as she bumps her shoulder against his. "And I'm sure tying him to a chair did just that. Although I'm still not clear what you were keeping him safe from, other than himself. he seemed a little annoyed with you at the time."

Not that she could talk, since she'd happily handed Coulson over to a similar fate. Then again, her handler had been on a suicide mission to the edge of the woods, so she had no regrets over that.

[assembles]

Steve sighs and dips his head into his hands, rubbing his face a few times as he shakes his head. "I have no idea what I was keeping him safe from. Bucky's completely capable of handling himself." Both of them know that all too well, don't they? Not that he's anything approaching the Winter Soldier, but still, Bucky's a good soldier. And a damn good shot.

"The less I have to reflect back on events, the better," he says decisively as he finishes off his second drink. At least Bucky gets that Steve hadn't been in his right mind at the time. Although Bucky may have an idea of the deeper implications of what he did, Steve's managed to avoid talking too much about it.

[widows_kiss]

"Hey, I could have brought up Disney ballads with a certain trickster, but really if you're going to pursue a relationship here, you're probably going to have better luck singing love songs to the guy that lets you tie him up without exacting too much revenge," she retorts with a completely straight face and a tip of her glass in admiration. Which lasts all of ten seconds before she starts chuckling to herself again.

"At least your taste has improved, I can't blame you there."

[assembles]

As soon as Disney ballads are mentioned, Steve groans and shakes his head. How is it that Natasha has all this ammunition against him and he doesn't have any against her? He's going to need to pay closer attention to what she does during events.

As Natasha keeps talking, he feels his cheeks grow hot and tries to cover it by propping his head up with his palm on the bar. "Bucky's definitely an improvement over Loki, yeah. But... pretty sure if I sang anything at him, he'd run the other way."

They're friends, it's not -- sure, they're close, but Natasha's barking up the wrong tree. Bucky's got the shared life experience, but he's way more interested in chatting up girls than shacking up with Captain America, right?

[widows_kiss]

"Maybe you should try Toy Story on him instead," she points out with an impish grin that clearly states she's not going to dismiss this line as easy as that on a permanent basis, but perhaps she's mortified him enough for a little while.

[assembles]

Steve laughs and leans over the bar. "Which one's the spaceman and which one's the cowboy?" Not that it fits all that well when he gets right down to it, since those characters had hated each other at first. He and Bucky, they've been tight from the start.

Although he has no idea why he's putting this much thought into it in the first place. He'll blame Natasha, she started it.