Summary: The five times Natasha called her husband in front of her teammates, plus the one time when they finally get to meet him

one

She knows she shouldn't take the call, not when Rogers is fresh off of a jet and looking as helpless as James had warned her he would look, but she's been on edge ever since hearing that Clint had been compromised. In theory, she knows that she would be the first one told if James was compromised as well, but she can't quite stop the anxiety from rising in her chest until she hears his voice.

"Sorry to interrupt," he says through the receiver, "but Fury's benched me in Nepal and I might actually kill someone if I don't figure out our Netflix password."

She snorts, covering her mouth when she gets a curious look from Rogers.

"I'm working, James," she says in Russian. Rogers is right next to her and even though they've agreed to tell him about James's whole 'being alive' thing, now isn't the best time for him to find out. He's about to face a lot of surprises and she doesn't want to be the one that throws him off his game.

"I know." There's a muffled thump in the background and she frowns.

"Were you serious about the killing someone part?" she asks. "Fury might bench you even longer if so."

"Relax," he teases. There's some shuffling followed by, "Just getting comfortable on the bed. Now, password?"

Beside her, Rogers doesn't ask who she's talking to, but she can see him vibrating with curiosity. He's too polite to ask, though, and she's selfish enough not to offer up an answer.

"It's―"

She breaks off into a stream of Russian, clarifying which letters are capitalized, which have been substituted with a number or symbol, as well as the actual spelling of the words. He repeats it back to her because, despite his fluency in the language, spelling Russian words with the Latin alphabet is always a bit tedious. Especially when they each have their own way of doing so.

Satisfied with his spelling, she nods and echoes back, "Yes, that's it."

There's a short pause and then a thrilled "Yes!" that comes through the receiver. She can't help but laugh.

"I love you, milii moya," he says. Her smile only grows. "As soon as you sort out whatever's happening in New York, I'll come home and prove it."

"You don't need to prove it," she says softly, hanging back as Rogers follows Coulson. "I already know."

"I know. I'm still going to prove it."

From inside, Coulson waves for her to follow and she says a hasty goodbye, promising to stay safe. Pocketing her phone, she slips into the empty space on Rogers' other side and he gives her a curious smile.

"Husband?" he guesses. She turns to him with an almost-impressed smirk.

"How'd you know?" she asks.

He shrugs sheepishly and scratches at his neck. "You just sounded really happy."

She smiles, but before she can promise to introduce him after this whole thing, Fury interrupts the moment and directs them over to a table where Stark, Banner, and an actual alien god are waiting for them.

* * * * *

two

She knows he's in Nepal and the time difference has to be killer, but she still calls him. After all, she had promised and Natasha works hard to keep her promises, so the first thing she does after Loki is restrained and the tesseract has been handed off is call James.

He's groggy when he answers, but he still murmurs a very happy, very sleepy, "Hi, lyubov."

"Hi." She lets out a long breath, the first one in a long time. "We won."

"Yay." His enthusiasm is colored with exhaustion and she can tell only sheer willpower is keeping him up right now. "That's good for you."

"It is," she agrees with a soft laugh, "and for the rest of the world."

He hums his agreement. Across the room, an agent waves her down and gestures to the case with the tesseract, but the last thing she wants to do is end her call with James so soon. Stark notices and with a nod, takes care of the agent without her having to ask him to.

"I'm proud of you, Natalia," James whispers. His voice is almost too quiet to be heard over the noise of the agents, but she hears him.

"Yeah?" she asks softly.

"Yeah," James echoes. His voice trails off and she knows she should let him go, so she does.

"I'll see you in a few days, okay?" she says. He just hums. "Go back to sleep, James. I love you."

He makes a sound that she assumes is supposed to be an echo of the same words, but he's too far gone for the words to actually form. With a soft smile, she stuffs her phone in her suit pocket and turns to see Rogers giving her a knowing look while Stark looks on with curious amusement.

"Who's the lucky bastard, then?" he asks, his voice as cheeky as his grin.

"Wouldn't you like to know," she taunts in return.

His grin falters and he rolls his eyes, but Thor loudly proclaims that it is time to dine and so they do, deciding to follow Stark's suggestion of a shwarma place just up the street. She doesn't get any more questions about her phone call, but then again, they're all too exhausted to talk in the first place. For now, the topic seems to be dropped but she knows it'll come up again. Especially since she doesn't see herself slipping away from her new team anytime soon.

* * * * *

three

By the time she and Pepper return to the Tower after lunch, they're both laughing and late. Tony is fiddling with something in Pepper's office when they arrive, clearly having waited for several minutes, but Natasha doesn't apologize for the delay. It isn't often she had the time to go out with Pepper and she was going to enjoy the moment when she had it.

"I thought you said you'd be back thirty minutes ago." Tony's brow raises, but Pepper cuts off any whining with a press of her lips to his.

"We were," she says. Glancing back at Natasha, she adds, "Then Natasha's husband stopped by during a mission and we couldn't just leave."

"Husband?"

Tony's only teasing, but Natasha still rolls her eyes. James comes up in conversation at least once a week if Tony has any say in it, but she's turned it into a game to see just how long she can go before Tony inevitably figures out who James is.

"When do I get to meet the elusive husband?"

She isn't going to grace him with a response, but she's saved from having to make an excuse by her phone ringing. It's James, and she answers with a smirk.

"Hello, love," she says, watching as Tony rolls his eyes. "We were just talking about you."

"Fury called you already?" James asks, confusion coloring his voice.

Immediately, her teasing smirk falls and Tony's brow furrows. "No, he didn't." Frowning, she asks, "Why? What happened?"

"I need you to pick me up from HQ," he says, and panic curls around her chest. "Mission didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped."

Her fingers itch for her purse and an excuse tickles her tongue as she turns to Pepper and Tony.

"So sorry," she murmurs, "I have to go."

She's out the door before either of them can say goodbye, asking James just what he'd gotten himself into in the last hour and speeding to the SHIELD headquarters in New York.

* * * * *

four

She's lying on a stiff cot in the medbay with Bruce glancing over her files when Clint walks in holding her phone and grimacing. She frowns, but it doesn't take a genius to know who Clint is talking to so soon after she's been hurt on a mission.

"Here she is," he grumbles into the speaker. He passes the phone to her and Natasha takes it eagerly.

"James?" she asks. She feels Bruce's eyes shift to her before returning to her medical file.

"Natalia!" he gasps. "I'm on my way, okay, love? Give me an hour or two and I'll be there―"

"No, no," she protests, "I'm fine. Clint will bring me home soon."

She knows there's no harm in introducing James to Bruce, but she isn't quite ready for her two worlds to meet. Aside from Clint and Steve, no one on the team has met James and she'd rather keep it that way. She may trust her teammates, but James had been her secret long before arriving at SHIELD and she isn't eager to share such precious information with them yet.

"Barton said you were shot, Nata," James says, his voice hardening. "Just how long have you been in the medical bay at the Tower?"

She grimaces, not wanting to give an answer, but James understands anyway.

"Natalia," he sighs.

"I'm fine!" She waves Bruce over and he looks confused but makes his way toward her. "I have to go," she lies, "the doctor is here―"

"Natasha, I'm not―"

She cuts Bruce off before he can ruin her poorly-created excuse.

"I'll be home in an hour," she promises. After making James swear to meet her there, she hangs up and scowls at Clint. "You shouldn't have called him."

"Technically," Clint argues evenly, "he called you and I answered. Lord knows what hellfire he would have brought down if I hadn't."

It's not an exaggeration and based on the cheeky look Clint is giving her, he knows that she can't argue. She's still going to scowl at him, though, and as soon as Bruce calls an actual doctor that can confirm his own observations, she makes sure Clint is the one that gets the brunt of James's grumbling when she gets home.

* * * * *

five

Fury's at the farmhouse. Fury's at the farmhouse and the entire team has set up base in the Barton kitchen, but Natasha still can't quite breathe. There's a witch still in her head and memories flash in front of her eyes every time she blinks, but she says nothing and hopes that Fury's plan works. She doesn't even realize her phone is ringing until she notices both Fury and Clint giving her pointed looks.

She doesn't have to look at the called ID to know who it is.

"Now's not a good time, love," she murmurs in Russian. She stands up and slips out of the kitchen, trying to distance herself from the team.

"Barton sounded like it was the only time," James responds softly. "He said you were pretty shaken."

"I'm doing better," she says. She blinks and can't stop the shiver that spreads down her spine. "It's less bad, now."

There's a pause and then― "Should I come?"

"No," she says quickly. "No, we're okay."

She glances around the corner into the kitchen. The team is still huddled around the table, but Steve's head is turned so that she knows he's listening to her. He may not speak Russian, but that won't stop him from keeping an extra eye on her whenever James isn't around.

"I don't think the team can handle any more surprises right now," she says.

"Alright," he agrees. "I'm still going to check in with Fury, though. You know that, right?"

She breathes a soft laugh and nods, wrapping an arm around herself. "I know."

"Good." Another pause. "It'll be okay, Natalia."

"I know," she echoes. "It always is, isn't it?"

She hangs up a moment later and rejoins the team, sliding into an empty spot next to Steve. He doesn't say anything, but he does give her a knowing look and she shakes her head. The rest of the team is more careful; they hide their worried and curious glances and Natasha's grateful for it, but she also wishes they wouldn't worry so much. They have a plan, after all. Everything is going to be fine and when this is all over, she'll go home to James and pretend it was all a bad dream.

* * * * *

plus one

He's only joining her because she knows waiting any longer would be a little ridiculous and she doesn't really see the point. It had been a fun game for the last two years, but it was well past time for James to finally join a team event, even if it was only a brunch at the Tower.

It's closed for the weekend, but that doesn't mean it's any less impressive, so she takes James through the front doors using her key card and smirks a little. FRIDAY is sure to alert Tony of her arrival, meaning that by the time they reach the top floor, the entire team will know that she's brought a plus one.

James whistles lowly as they walk across the lobby. "Classy."

She snorts. "Excessive," she corrects.

Stark Industries is not decked out with a chandelier and gold pillars, but there is a koi pond in the center of the ground floor and a ceiling that rises several floors above them. The lights are hidden cleverly so that it takes James a minute to figure out how and where they come from, but it's nothing like the elevator.

"Oh shit—"

They shoot into the air and James's hand finds her shoulder quickly. He looks a little queasy, but that doesn't stop him from peering curiously over the handrail so that he can watch the ground floor disappear beneath them. When the doors open with a soft ding, he hesitates for a second before pulling himself away from the glass wall.

"That was incredible," he mutters. "Count me in for brunch every Sunday."

"You might not say that after you actually meet the team," Natasha counters with a smile.

"I have met them," James says haughtily.

"Barton and Wilson don't count," she argues. He'd met both of them outside of the team dynamic and Steve doesn't count either because, technically, those two have known each other for a century now.

"Who else is there to meet anyway?" he asks, slipping his hand into hers.

She doesn't need to come up with an answer. James is very aware of every member on the team, but as they turn the corner to step into the common room, he's met by all of them.

"This is a surprise," Tony says, the first to speak up. At his side, Bruce just blinks.

"I told you we'd need an extra plate," Natasha reminds him. Clint chuckles, muttering something that sounds a lot like, "What about an extra pound of pancake mix?" that makes her scowl.

"An extra plate and a whole ass human are two very different things."

She ignores Tony in favor of seeking out Pepper and it's very intentional that she leaves James behind. He tugs on her hand once, but she slips free with a smirk and disappears despite the crease between his brow. Steve is there. He can introduce James just as well as she can.

By the time she returns to the common room, nearly fifteen minutes later, James is very intentionally ignoring her and nodding along with whatever conspiracy nonsense Clint and Wanda are spewing. She only interrupts because she's hungry and because she doesn't want to hear about new conspiracy theories as soon as they get home.

Brunch goes well, especially since she'd been a little nervous that Tony would be brash and difficult. Surprisingly, he's not and although James doesn't look entirely at ease with the team yet, she can tell that he isn't uncomfortable. It's somewhere in the middle which, after only one meeting together, is more than she had hoped for.

When she and James finally do leave, Wanda is talking animatedly with him in Russian—something that leaves Rhodey wide-eyed—and Tony has already sworn to build him a new arm by next week. She isn't even surprised when Thor thrusts a flask of Asgardian mead into James's hand as they finally step into the elevator.

"That was a lot," James breathes, gripping her hand as the elevator drops.

"They're a lot to handle," she agrees. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. "You did good, lyubov."

He grins and presses a kiss to her hair as they step out of the elevator.

He'll join her for team get-togethers from now on and, eventually, he'll likely end up joining the team, but Natasha's okay with that now. It's beyond time for her two worlds to collide and with people she loves on both ends, she thinks that maybe this time, it'll all be okay.