Sleepless (part 2)
Part 1
Verse: MCU/Agents of SHIELD
Word Count: 5695
Ship: Melinda May/Natasha Romanoff
Characters: Melinda May, Natasha Romanoff, Maria Hill (background)
Rating: T
Notes: All of the Melinda/Natasha stories in this year’s Femslash Yuletide are in the same universe and chronological unless stated otherwise! (NB: These prompts are from 2014. It takes you two years to finish a holiday challenge, too, doesn’t it?)
Summary:
Natasha and Melinda round up the last two Advent Gang members in the middle of the night on Christmas.
AO3
Melinda hadn't meant to stay up half the night, but now it was 3 am Christmas Day and between her quiet cell phone and quieter apartment, she'd been having problems sleeping.
Stupid, maybe, but the thought of the incomplete, unsolved op files sitting on her desk kept causing her to toss and turn. Twice, she'd woken from dreams that the loose ends of the case had been tied up, gift wrapped in a neat little bow and presented all wrapped and festive.
The holidays had taken root in and infested her brain.
Her phone, lying on the coffee table, lit up and gave three quick bursts of vibration, and Melinda crossed the dim living room. Hoping she might still doze off again with her head leaning against the window pane, she'd plugged in the lights on the tree and manoeuvred around by that source alone.
A text alert from Hill's private line. 'Is Romanoff with you?'
Melinda rolled her eyes, and glanced over to the tree where the glass dove ornament hung. She could pick it out in an instant, she'd looked at it so often, though the tree was otherwise cluttered in ornaments. No, Natasha wasn't with her, because she was out god-knew-where, probably working through the night like the workaholic she was.
She texted back, wondering if Maria expected her to be awake or not.
The phone started ringing less than ten seconds later.
"May."
"I need you to call Romanoff. I assumed she wasn't answering my calls because she was sleeping, and that Metro PD was wrong when they woke me up twenty minutes ago." Hill sounded pissed, and Melinda couldn't blame her. "Clearly that wasn't the case."
"What did Metro say?"
"That the Black Widow has a ream of paperwork to fill out regarding the arrest of an Advent Gang member at an apartment building in Queens earlier this evening. Apparently she served orders and didn't hang around."
That sounded like Natasha to a ’T’, whether she’d sworn she wouldn’t go AWOL on this case again or not. "The cops followed orders?"
"Couple of young guys on the ground figured she held rank over them."
"Nat's good at that."
"Right. Find her, and tell her I'm expecting her call."
Hill hung up and the phone beeped at the termination of the call. Melinda forced down a yawn and went into the kitchen to turn on the kettle. She left her phone on the counter and leaned against the edge next to it, glancing down at the screen every couple of seconds as though something might change. But she knew Natasha wasn't going to call her—especially not if she was already ignoring Hill's calls. That suited her just fine. She could wait to get a little caffeine in her system before launching into work.
At least now she knew that her sleeping mind hadn't been totally off base, obsessing over work.
The kettle screamed its whistle and she shut it off and poured hot water with a splash into a mug. The sharp aroma of crushed orange pekoe filled the kitchen in an instant, and she yanked the teabag up and down in the water, impatiently watching as it darkened.
Three minutes later she blew across the steaming surface and took a sip, scalding her top lip in the process.
Only then, with the tender spot smarting, did she call Natasha. She left the phone on the counter, letting speakerphone fill the kitchen with the echoing ringing noise. It gave two rings, and an aborted third that would have sent it into voicemail, before Natasha answered.
"Hi," she sounded a little winded, like she'd been running or moving for a while—and with Natasha's stamina, that 'while' was 'quite a while' in normal people terms.
"Where are you?"
Silence on the other end for a moment. Then a non-specific, "Manhattan."
"Thank you," Melinda replied, rolling her eyes and looking down at her steaming teacup. Despite the still tender feeling in her lip, she picked it up and took another sip after blowing a long breath over the top. "Where?"
Silence again, though Melinda didn't think it was hesitation or reluctance to answer, so much as Natasha being busy and distracted by something else. Minimal amounts of background noise came through the line, though, giving her no clue of what might be going on on the other end. The occasional car going by. That was about it.
"Rockefeller Plaza.”
Again? Melinda poured the tea into a travel mug and grabbed the phone before she crossed back into the bedroom to change into a pair of jeans and a sweater. "Stay there," she said. "I'm coming."
"No," Natasha said.
"Wasn't giving you a choice. And call Hill."
"Oh, is that what this is about? Here I thought you were calling because you were worried about me."
Melinda rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. "Just stay there."
Even at this early an hour on Christmas Day, New York City had traffic. Still, Melinda reached Rockefeller Plaza in good enough time.
She left the car parked next to a blockade, half pulled onto the sidewalk in a completely illegal manoeuvre and, hoping it hadn't been towed by the time she got back to it, slammed the door and darted toward the tree.
Natasha wasn't anywhere to be seen, not that Melinda had expected her to stay put. Her phone hadn't lit up with any further activity since she'd left the apartment—neither from Natasha nor from Hill—so she had no way of knowing if something had gone down while she was en route or not.
Hating being kept in the dark, and feeling more than a little bit of resentment, Melinda started a loop around the Plaza.
The tree stood tall and proud in the centre of it, repaired from the day it had toppled and not swaying like it had the day they'd watched it being raised, the lights within its branches glowing bright and adding so much light to the Plaza that it might as well have been daytime with the way it flooded the area. Two people lay, hidden beneath piles of blankets, across a subway exhaust vent. Melinda bent as she passed to make sure they were actually sleeping, not frozen, and continued on.
Natasha had sounded like she'd been moving right up until she'd answered the phone, and between that and her failure to commit to staying where she was as Melinda had asked, Melinda didn’t expect to find her still hanging around.
But she didn't see any sign of an altercation or struggle here either. The few snow piles that had been left were quite trampled over by the feet of thousands of tourists and commuters, and one or two more sets of footprints wouldn't jump out as being recent enough to mean anything.
So she called Natasha again. She looked around as the phone rang, half hoping that she might hear a ringtone echo back a response from the other side of the tree.
No such luck, and this time Natasha let the phone go to voice mail.
On her own, then, unless she happened to stumble across Natasha—unlikely, since Nat would keep herself out of sight—she ran through what little she knew about the situation. Natasha had already made an arrest tonight. With only two of the Advent Gang members having been outstanding, it was probably the remaining underling and not Grinch himself that she'd managed to catch up with.
So she probably thought that he was going to strike, by himself, just in time for Christmas morning.
At 3 am, their patrol crews already made bare bones by the holiday season would be down to a mere one or two patrol cars, driving around on their own and trying to keep an eye on all of the possible targets. The odds of their being in the right place to stop another hit were slim to none.
Natasha would be working opposite them, making sure to never be in the same place at the same time, so Melinda pulled out her phone and pulled up a schedule.
Rockefeller Plaza. 3:30 am Christmas Day. She scrolled up and down the list. There was, in fact, only one name on the schedule now—and he was supposed to be somewhere down in the financial district, driving around the Stock Exchange and far from most of the possible targets. Certainly, he wasn't anywhere near here.
Melinda looked up at the tree, then down at the skating rink, leaning over the railing on a whim to peer out over it.
The rink had been closed up for the night, of course, and it was appropriately dark, the long shadows cast by the walls around it giving it shady black corners that the tree and square lights couldn't reach. Something caught her eye, though, and Melinda pulled back, moving out of sight in case whoever—or whatever—had moved happened to glance up.
It could have been anyone, or anything, but her instincts said Advent Gang and Grinch and she realized at about the same moment that Natasha, if indeed she'd been here at all and not lying about her position, had moved on.
Leaving Melinda on her own. Her heartbeat picked up, and the rushing urge to move as her adrenaline spiked. She hadn't come armed, nor had she come dressed for a fight.
She took a moment to send a quick message to Natasha: 'At Rockefeller Plaza. Something here. Engaging.' And then put her phone away without waiting for a response. The stairs down to the rink were on the other side. She made the circuit, keeping herself far enough back from the railing so as not to risk her shadow being cast down onto the ice and tipping off her location for whoever was down there.
The gate to the stairwell was padlocked, and Melinda turned the lock over in her hand, resting it gently back against the gate so that it wouldn't jingle. It hadn't been messed with, so whoever was down there had leapt over it, or otherwise let themselves down some other way.
Melinda pulled herself up and over the gate, dropping with a soft 'thump' on the other side.
A burst of noise came from the ice. Scrambling, then sliding and a distant cuss. Melinda spun and went down the stairs at a run. There was a figure there, pushing himself back to his feet. And if she'd had any remaining doubt about his being her target, the costume he wore dissuaded her of it.
He appeared to be wearing a bodysuit with elf shoes—not skates—and a beanie made of the same fuzzy fabric with a pompom on the tip. He regained his feet and slid across the ice as she reached it. He hit a patch of light at the base of the opposite staircase, and the light threw the green of his costume into relief.
A bodysuit, yes, but a fuzzy green one like a Grinch costume. And it wasn't a pompom at all, but a burst of the same green fur on the top of his head. He looked over his shoulder at her, giving her a glimpse of the mask he wore—like something straight off of the set of a movie.
Her feet threatening to slide out from under her if she moved anymore quickly than a penguin-like shuffling walk, Melinda pushed across the ice, skating on the flat bottoms of her boots.
"Stop!" she called after Grinch. She looked side-to-side around the rink as she went, scoping out the area and looking for any damage he'd already managed to wreak.
Grinch laughed. He reached the stairs and took them two at a time. "You may have stopped my Whos but you're not going to save Christmas!" he called back when he reached the top of the stairs. He spoke in a strong Boston accent, and Melinda put that information away for identification. He had snow all down his front from falling on the ice and sliding across it, and he ran gloved hands that had long, prosthetic fingers, across his chest to dust it off.
Save Christmas. As though she'd fallen into a Lifetime holiday special. And Whos, really?
Anyway, her goal wasn't to save Christmas—though Natasha's certainly seemed to be. Melinda was just along for the ride.
She glided the last foot to the base of the stairs and took them just as quickly as he had, but Grinch hit something on his belt and slid through the gaps in the bars as though they weren't solid at all. He appeared on the other side a moment later and made a face at her, then took off at a run.
The same tech as their roof hopping Santa had used to get up and down chimneys, all those weeks ago. But they'd confiscated the belt from that Gang member (she refused to call them Whos, of all names), and where there were two of something, there was probably more.
Another mental note, that sometime in the new year, when SHIELD had returned to full staffing, they were going to need to tie up some loose ends on this case and get as much of this tech off the streets and in to be analyzed by R&D.
Melinda reached the top of the stairs and banged her hand flat against the gate, hoping that it would give.
No such luck.
Taking a deep breath in to brace herself, Melinda leapt up and heaved herself up over the gate again. This time, she dropped with a little less grace on the other side and didn't give herself a moment to recover before she took off after Grinch. He moved more quickly in that costume than she would've thought possible, running at a full-out sprint without tripping over the curled points on his shoes, without catching himself on any of the patches of black ice that were here and there on the stone of the plaza.
Melinda wasn't so lucky. Her boots were dressy rather than functional, and the gripping treads on the bottoms were all but non-existent. She'd thrown on the first thing she grabbed that had some sort of warmth to it before booking it out of the apartment, not expecting to come face-to-face with their target before she found Natasha. She should've known better.
Her phone started to buzz in her pocket. Melinda ignored it, sliding on another patch of ice and worried more about keeping her balance than she was on whoever was calling her. She fought to keep Grinch in her sights, but the brisk, frigid air in lungs more accustomed to working behind a desk than on the ground, outside, made it hard for her to keep up. He had to be using the device on his belt to keep moving at this speed—that or she was chasing down an Olympic sprinter.
More than 300 yards ahead of her and gaining distance, Grinch rounded a corner and disappeared into an alleyway. By the time Melinda reached it, he was out of sight. She stopped, caught her breath and looked up at the fire escapes lining the alley. A fifteen-foot-high fence stood at the far end, walling the alley off into a dead end. That didn't mean anything, of course—the belt could probably shrink him small enough to fit through the tiny gaps between the wood slats—but she thought he'd gone up, rather than straight through.
She looked up, squinting into the darkness and trying to choose which side of the alley was her best bet for climbing.
They weren't too far away from Times Square, and she didn't need to linger too long on the type of havoc he could wreak on the bright billboards there if he hacked into them. Saving Christmas, indeed.
Melinda went with the left fire escape.
It creaked and clanked with each movement, the metal cold and stiff in the frigid December temperatures. She'd remembered gloves, at least, so she could climb up the cascades of ladders with some nimbleness, and no risk of her skin sticking to the frozen metal.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed again. Melinda, halfway to the roof of the building, started reaching for it before shaking her head. She didn't have time. Once Grinch was subdued, then she could get Natasha here to help drag him back to HQ.
On the roof she looked left, right and then left again, scoping out her surroundings, but it was a normal enough looking rooftop. Knee deep in snow, with a couple of trails shovelled off by custodial staff who needed to move between the water tank and roof entrance from the interior.
She'd chosen the right fire escape, though. A fresh trail had been broken through the snow in front of her, the gait longer than her own, and Melinda took long, unnatural steps that stretched her legs out to try and walk in the footprints already made there. The trail ended at the cleared path, but the snow had been spilled outward toward the water tank rather than the doorway to the interior of the building.
Her phone was ringing again. She reached into her pocket and hit the button on the side to stop the vibrating.
A gust of wind blew across the rooftop, catching her hair and whipping it out and threatening to lift her hat off of her head. Melinda tugged it back more firmly around her ears and across her forehead, shivering as the wind cut through her coat. The water tank creaked, and swayed, and Melinda looked up, up, up. Against the black sheet of sky, empty of stars and lit like a glowing dome by the light pollution of the city, she could just make out Grinch's fuzzy figure straddling the top of the tank.
He leaned over the edge and waved those long fingers at her. She was sure if she could make out his face, he'd be giving her a mocking smirk.
Her hand strayed to her belt for the gun that wasn't there.
"Come down!" she ordered, but the wind grabbed her words and whipped them away behind her. It shrieked in her ears, and even if Grinch had heard her and responded, she wouldn't have known.
She crossed to the bottom of the water tank, ignoring the ominous creaking that suggested it might fall right over on her—it hadn't so far, and she was sure it had to be decades old—and circled it until she found the bottom of an access ladder, two feet above her head. She clapped her hands together to knock off the ice still clinging to her gloves from her climb up the fire escape, and leapt up, catching the bottom rung in her hands on the second try.
She pulled herself up with muscles angry from the exertion up to this point, and only paused a minute to catch her breath and brace herself once her feet, too, were solidly on the ladder. She had to cling tight to the rungs to stay there—each gust of wind caught her across the stomach through the ladder and threatened to throw her backward.
Grinch poked his head out over the top of the tank and looked down at her. She could swear, for a moment, that he'd stuck his tongue out at her, though the darkness kept his face in such shadowed relief that it might have just been a trick of the light. He pulled back out of sight when she reached the platform the tank sat on and pulled herself over the guard railing, landing neatly on her feet in a space where a great circle of snow had been disturbed, like Grinch had fallen face first into it.
"I have a gun! Don't come any higher!"
There was a second ladder from the platform to the top of the tank itself, and Melinda paused at the bottom of it. Though he'd clearly been addressing her, Grinch wasn't leaning over the top and looking down at her again. His voice was out of breath and trying to be tough, like he thought he could get her to back down with threats alone. A trickster who'd been pranking the city from the shadows for a month didn't like conflict—imagine that.
Melinda, cradling the upper part of the railing with her back, leaned as far back as she could to look upward. She could just make out the tips of Grinch's long green fingers, clutching the edge of the tower, and numbering high enough that, if he had a gun, he wasn't holding it right now.
"You're going to have to come down to me," Melinda said. "If you don't want me up there."
She should've called for backup. Should’ve answered Natasha’s call. She didn't want to start climbing up and risk him jumping down and getting away again, without anyone covering the ground.
"Not a chance! I have three more spots to hit tonight, and you're not going to delay me further!"
Melinda pinched the bridge of her nose, immediately regretting it when cold, gritty feeling bits of water dripped down off her gloves and onto her cheeks.
"What's your goal, then?" she asked. "No—I know. You're trying to steal New York's Christmas but I scared you off the Rockefeller tree."
He didn't respond.
"That was supposed to be your big finale, right?" Melinda continued. "Ernest was supposed to come and meet you, but he didn't show, and then you got spooked. It's over,” she raced through the names that had been on the file, “Bradley.”
"I'm the Grinch."
"I'll make sure the media knows that's your code name if you come down now." She was starting to shiver—the wind didn't seem to be coming from any particular direction, rather it hit her everywhere and the water tank didn't provide any sort of shelter at all.
"I don't even know who you are," Grinch continued, as though she hadn't spoken. "Everyone else—Everyone else got arrested by an Avenger and me, I'm the leader, and I get you?"
He wanted to be arrested?
"I just wanted to create enough chaos in the city that I'd get to meet the Avengers, and everyone else did, and I'm stuck with some beat cop."
Melinda bristled, annoyance flashing through her. Beat cop. Cute, he thought he and his gang were big time, instead of just Natasha's pet project. She should’ve known that press conference would come back to bite them in the ass.
Melinda climbed up the first couple of rungs of the second ladder, taking care to set her feet lightly in a bid to minimize the amount of creaking it made. As long as he wasn't looking down at her, he couldn't know how close she was getting—and if he did have a gun, she needed to disarm him as soon as she could.
"I'm Agent Melinda May with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she said when her hands were on the top rung.
His surprise at the nearness of her voice rumbled through her as a physical reaction when he fell back, crashed down heavily on the top of the tank lid and shook the steel with a great racket that shook the tower.
Melinda clung to the railing until it steadied, then launched herself up onto the lid as quickly as she dared. She landed, cat-like on all fours with her hands deep in the snow.
Handler recovered faster than she thought he would. He righted at the same time she did, leaping up like he weighed nothing at all. He brandished a gun at her, held awkwardly with his hand not quite right on the butt and fingers trailing away from the trigger. One handed, too, like he was trying to show more form than he had. It could have been awkwardness brought on by the prosthetics in the gloves extending his fingers, but it looked more as though he was unsure of the gun and afraid that he might accidentally set it off.
The top of the tank was six, maybe seven feet across, and slanted the tiniest bit. With no room for an extended struggle, Melinda kept her hands down low, unthreatening. The wind screamed in her ears.
"Put the gun down," she said, even as she calculated the distance between them, running scenarios through her head one after the other.
Each one played out better than the one before it, but none of them were great.
Handler's gun hand wavered, and he brought his other hand up and wrapped it around the first. He slid his feet out into a position that almost made it look like he knew what he was doing with the weapon.
But his arms shook, and she doubted he'd ever even fired a gun in a range.
Which didn't, of course, mean he couldn't accidentally pull the trigger and hit her.
"The gun, Bradley," she repeated. "Put it down."
"No! Call the Avengers. Go on. I know you can."
Preposterous, if he thought she was regular NYPD. Or maybe the residents of New York really thought that the Avengers were available, at the drop of a hat, at the beck and call of any law enforcement agency who might need their services. Handler likely knew, though, that she had a direct line to one of the Avengers—never mind that they’d gone out of their way to try and minimize the role the group played in pursuing the Gang.
The Gang itself didn't seem to have bought it even if the larger public had. Her temptation to get Natasha here evaporated again.
Call the Avengers, indeed.
She measured the distance between them with a glance, keeping her arms out to her sides the whole time lest she spook him. Then she launched forward, ducking below the focus of the gun barrel. She caught Handler with her hand like a blade across his torso.
The Grinch costume provided a lot of padding and it hadn't been a hard hit, but Handler pinwheeled anyway. He stumbled back, arms flailing. The gun fell somewhere off to her right. Handler dove after it and Melinda spared a moment to be thankful it hadn't discharged, then knocked Handler flat with a strike across the back of his shoulder blades.
The top of the tank was sloped just enough for snow released by the struggle to start sliding off. Ice covered the steel underneath it and Handler slipped an inch or two forward before he managed to halt himself with desperate scrambling of his hands.
Melinda picked up the gun and flipped the safety on before tucking it away in her coat pocket.
Then, and only then, did she finally check her phone.
Natasha arrived within ten minutes of Melinda's giving her the location, and didn't say a word. She cast Melinda sidelong glances instead, looking her up and down out of the corner of her eye—pretending that she wasn’t—while she rounded up Handler and passed him off to a team for processing.
Back on the ground, she handed over a sheaf of paperwork for Melinda to fill out—the rest of the file on the Advent Gang, that they could put to bed at last. She didn't let go when Melinda reached out to take it.
"You ignored my calls," she said.
"I was busy," Melinda pointed out.
Natasha looked frustrated, like this wasn't a good enough excuse.
"Why didn't you stay home?" she asked. Same conversation, different angle.
Why did you throw yourself into the field? was what Natasha was really asking, and trying to come across like she wasn't. Why didn't you let me do this for you?
"I got a call from Hill," Melinda reminded her. "You didn't have backup."
"Neither did you."
"I thought I was coming to back you up."
Natasha pressed her lips together at that, and Melinda hadn't quite meant to accuse her of leaving her without backup, because it wasn't wholly true—Natasha had called.
"I was trying to find you." She'd probably only been a couple of streets away the entire time, if she'd started at Rockefeller Plaza before Melinda had arrived there. "I should've..." Natasha trailed off and shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said.
Melinda, who'd started to flip through the paperwork and read the documents already filled in by Natasha earlier that night, relating to the arrest that she'd already made, looked up and froze.
"For what?" she hazarded when Natasha didn't continue.
"Missing him. Leaving you alone." She shook her head. Her hair stood up in a tangled mess already, snared like she'd taken her hat off and run her hands through it a few times without flattening it again. "I was so obsessed—“
"Natasha," Melinda said, holding her hand out, palm up, to cut her off. "We're both tired."
But Natasha had her lips pressed together again, brow furrowed and frustrated. "This isn't about my being tired," she said. "This is..." she trailed off like she was grappling for words that wouldn't come.
People surged around them, packing up the scene and taking notes and photographs. Melinda gestured for Natasha to follow her and started heading back to where she'd left her car. Natasha trailed behind her. Melinda didn't particularly want to have any in depth conversation about their relationship where other people could overhear—no doubt Natasha felt the same way, and that was holding her back from speaking.
"I left my car over by the tree,” Melinda said, and slowed down so that Natasha was forced to catch up with her and keep pace.
Natasha gave a vague nod. "I'm a few streets over," she said. "Why did you message me and then not respond when I tried to call you?"
They were less than half a block away from the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team and moving at a quick enough pace to leave them out of earshot.
"I was occupied keeping my eyes on the target," Melinda said.
Natasha's lips twisted like she wasn't buying it.
"Is it that important to you that I stole your arrest?"
"What?" Natasha spun, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk and looking genuinely caught off guard.
Melinda crossed her arms. "Well?"
For a moment, Natasha looked so frustrated with, and appalled by, the accusation that Melinda thought she might storm off and not respond at all. She turned away, arms hanging limply by her sides, hands flexing like they wanted to clench into fists, but like she was holding herself back from showing that much aggression.
"You said you wouldn't take off on your own again after last time," Melinda said.
"I know."
"And?"
Natasha shook her head. "What do you want me to say?" she asked. "Are you really going to take me to task for this? Hill's all over my ass for it already." She pulled out her phone and turned, flashing it at Melinda and showing her a blast of missed calls. "I was doing my job."
A gust of wind blew across them and Melinda pulled her arms more tightly around herself, shrugging her shoulders to try and stay warm. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the street was cold.
Natasha's brow creased, and she took an aborted step forward, then looked around as though she was expecting an audience.
"I didn't want you to have to do this," she said, and those limp arms lifted a little helplessly. "I wanted to—“
"Protect me," Melinda said.
Natasha's lips pressed together. She looked embarrassed to be caught out. "Yes," she said finally, with a little helpless shrug. "Melinda, I don’t—I don't think you're incapable of protecting yourself. I don't want you to think that," she said quickly.
“What should I think?” Natasha looked away again, looking as uncomfortable—if not more so—as she had that day they'd spoken in Stark's garage about their relationship. Her fingers curled and her eyes were wide and unblinking, focused on a pile of snow somewhere to the left of her foot.
"Natasha? What should I think?" she repeated.
"I love you."
Melinda froze, so shocked that she had to take a deep breath to catch up her sore lungs when she forgot to breathe.
Natasha turned away again, her shoulders lifted a little helplessly. "I think that's what this is," she said. Open and honest and raw, without a hint of the light flirtation Melinda would've expected from her to hide the emotion of such a confession behind. She didn't know how to respond, and silence stretched between them, thick and heavy and veering toward awkward the longer it went on.
Natasha tilted her head back and stared up at something in the sky—maybe the tip of Avengers' Tower, just barely visible between the other skyscrapers pressing down on them. Then she shook her hair out and raked her fingers through it. "Let's go home," she said. Her tone didn't reveal anything at all, but she started forward again without looking back at Melinda, like she could walk away from the confession and leave it behind where she'd spoken it.
Melinda took a couple of quick steps to catch up with her, and caught her by the elbow. "Nat," she prompted.
Natasha paused.
"I..."
"I don't need you to respond," Natasha said. She did turn then and the truth of her statement shone openly in her eyes. "You wanted my motive, there it is."
Her mind reeling but coming up with nothing to say, Melinda hugged her. Natasha returned it in kind and they pressed each other close. Natasha's heat finally helped her to block out some of the briskness of the wind and feel warm again, and when they broke apart, Natasha pressed a kiss to her cheek.
With arms wrapped around each other's waists and their steps in sync, they made their way down the street.