Chapter Text
If you could have picked anyone to be the person you finally came revealed your secret to, Natasha Romanoff would probably not have been one of your top five choices. True, she had been the only one to support your living situation-–“If she wants to screw up her life, that’s none of our business”-–but that didn’t mean she necessarily approved. At any rate, you hadn’t planned to tell her. You hadn’t planned to tell anyone. It just sort of…slipped out, right in the middle of your weekly coffee date.
For a long while, she let you stew. Such was Natasha’s way. She made quite a show of pouring cream and sugar into her drink. Your heart throbbed in your ears in the silence. Suddenly you found your lap quite interesting. Maybe she wouldn’t remark upon your confession. Maybe she would act as if you never made it.
She took a long sip of coffee, then:
“You missed a period,” she repeated. Her eyes bored into yours, so hard that at last you could no longer resist nodding. “So…you’re sleeping with him.”
“Is that bad?” You winced around the words.
Natasha fixed her gaze on the tower elevator behind you and added another sprinkle of sugar to her coffee. “It’s not surprising.”
Your shoulders fell as you looked into Natasha’s face. Though she did not appear to be searching for anyone or anything particular, she did not take her eyes off of whatever it was behind you that she found so fascinating. Five minutes passed; you wondered if you were in trouble. Your breakfast remained untouched in front of you. The thought of eating it only made your intestines twist more.
After a long bout of uncomfortable silence, Natasha began to move again. She picked at the croissant you’d brought her from Starbucks. She drank her coffee. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She did just about everything but actually address the issue at hand. By then, you were wild enough with fear to wish that she would. For god’s sake, you didn’t know anything about babies! Who else were you supposed to ask?
On the other hand, her cold silence was a million times better than the teasing you would have endured had Clint been there. Thank goodness that that morning it was just Natasha: calm, rationale, mostly-a-friend Natasha. Or so you thought until she placed her cup back down on table, her eyes still fixed to the ceiling.
“You realize that I’m going to have to tell Director Fury about this.”
You stiffened at the mention of Natasha’s mysterious boss. She, Clint, and the rest of their team had all mentioned him at some point, some with more warmth than others. He’d never bothered to visit at the same time you did, and after some of the stories Tony and Bruce told, you’d much rather have kept it that way. It took quite a bit of concentration to say, levelly:
“No!” Okay, that didn’t come out so level. You took a deep breath and tried again: “Let’s just…hold off on that. I mean, I could just be late.”
She lifted a single perfectly-manicured brow as she returned her attention to you. “How late?”
“Just a week. Maybe nine days.“
Her other eyebrow joined the first; her expertly-painted nails drummed against the side of her cup. You bit your lip, silently pleading with her to understand. Your supplication did seem to get through to her, but not in the way you hoped.
Natasha let out a dignified snort. “[Name], I can’t just let this go. If you and Loki are procreating–”
“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” you protested.
As usual, Natasha looked put out by your interruption. That day you did not apologize. Pregnancy scares weren’t something that Clint and Natasha had to worry about. At the moment, you were privately jealous of her situation. This was not very charitable–If she and Clint wanted children later, they would have no choice but to adopt, and it was not as though Natasha had got to choose her fate–but you couldn’t help it.
She sighed, probably wishing that Clint had not chosen that Monday of all Mondays to leave her alone with you. “Did you use protection?”
You shifted uncomfortably in your chair. “Most of the time?”
Natasha looked as though she were trying very hard not to push her palm into her face. You did not feel this was very kind of her. How were you supposed to know that Asgardian DNA was compatible with human? Then again, donkeys and zebras did just fine, other than the barren offspring. Was your child going to be incapable of giving you grandchildren?
“I think it’s a little early to be worrying about that,” Natasha remarked wryly.
You colored up. That was supposed to stay on the inside. But then, so was the fact that you had missed a period to begin with.
“Besides,” she went on, “I thought you said you weren’t pregnant.”
“What if I am?”
“I don’t know. But I would have to tell Director Fury. This was not part of the original agreement.”
What was part of the original agreement? No one seemed particularly interested in sharing that information with you. Perhaps Tony could have let you in on it, but, as he rarely indicated he had any interest in your relationship with Loki outside of the odd “How is he in bed?” question, you doubted he would be inclined to do you a solid.
You could only guess what terms you had accepted when the team discovered exactly who it was Thor’s brother had been communicating with in secret. Probably these weekly coffee dates with Natasha and Clint at the very least. As much as the two of them purported that they (and by extension the rest of the Avengers) liked having you around, you’d never even met them prior to Natasha breaking into your apartment to greet you there following work the day after Thor took Loki back to Asgard for the first time.
Maybe you looked just as sick with nerves as you felt, because Natasha frowned and sat a little forward. Sometimes she did things like that that made you think the two of you might be friends after all. She was a spy, however, and so you couldn’t exactly trust that what she wanted you to think was what you should have been thinking.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “I just meant that we’ll have to make sure SHIELD is aware. I didn’t mean that they’ll make you do something to the baby.”
“Do?” Your voice cracked. An image of yourself jammed with needles in a mental ward flooded your mind. “What do you mean do?”
“I mean abort the baby,” Natasha said flatly. “Or keep it. Unless it looks like the baby will be a major threat to you or the entire planet, I’m sure you’ll get to do whatever it is you want with it.”
You gaped at Natasha for nearly an entire minute. When you had woke up that morning, this was not how you planned for the day to go. Natasha started when you let out a massive groan and clapped your ears between your hands. “I can’t think about this right now! I might not even be pregnant!”
“I wasn’t asking you to decide right away. Look, if it will make you feel better, I’ll promise not tell Director Fury until you know for certain.”
Tears came to your eyes. “You will?”
Natasha nodded. “But…”
“But? There’s a but?”
“You have to find out soon. In the next week. Pick up a test on your way home from here.”
This seemed fair, though it did ruin your typical “avoid unpleasant things until they go away on their own” plan. Still your tears of gratitude threaten to turn into something more serious.
“But what will I tell him?”
It would be simple enough to lie about the pregnancy test if Loki happened to stumble upon it. He would have plenty of time to find your purchase, since you probably would be too scared to do the deed for another few days. At the same time, he never did any of his own cleaning, so you could probably just stash the box in a cabinet and be safe. But if the test came back positive…Well, a baby would be much more difficult to hide, and would only become more so as it grew.
Natasha’s nose wrinkled. “You mean you haven’t told him?”
Frantically, you shook your head. You were afraid that if you tried to speak, you’d actually start crying.
Natasha didn’t seem like the kind of person to appreciate tears, especially when what was upsetting the crying person was their fault to begin with. “Are you trying to make this as hard as possible for yourself?”
“No!” you wailed.
Sure enough, Natasha’s eyes widened enough to make you suspect she was disturbed. Any minute now, she would probably call Bruce and ask him to handle your emotional breakdown. To your surprise, she instead gave comforting you the old college try–comforting in her own way, at any rate. She did not get up, attempt to hug you, or even pat you on the back.
“Okay. [Name]. Take a deep breath.”
You did, sniffling all the while. When you remained quiet long enough, she continued:
“You’ve got time for damage control. We’re not accomplishing anything here, so I want you to calm down, go to the store, buy a test, and tell Loki.”
It surprised you that Natasha was so insistent about that last bit. Given the fact that he had practically abducted her boyfriend less than a year ago and then threatened to force Clint to kill her, you thought it odd for her to be the slightest bit concerned over Loki’s life. But, of course, you couldn’t say that, so you just said:
“But what if he leaves me?”
He had plenty of reason to. You were just some woman he met while trying to take over the world that he happened to like. Asgard was still open to him, and if Loki agreed to spend time in prison there, then at least he wouldn’t have to spend so much time with Thor. A baby just might be the last straw he needed to convince him to go home. Your fingers tightened around your knees at the thought.
“You can cross that bridge when you get there,” Natasha answered.
You looked sharply up at her, only to see Natasha shrug.
“You’re kind of lousy at pep talks,” you said.
She shrugged again. “You plan ahead for every eventuality. It’s either that, or you get killed.”
“Loki isn’t going to murder me for this!”
“I never said he would.” She stood before you could start crying again and grabbed the black handbag hanging from the back of her chair. “Do we have a deal? Because I’ve got a meeting with the guys in,” she checked her watch, “ten minutes.”
You sniffled away your lingering fear, wiped your sweaty palms on your thighs, and got shakily to your feet yourself. “You promise you won’t say anything to them? Not even Clint?”
“So long as you do what I told you to do. That includes talking to Loki about this.”
After a moment of hesitation, you nodded. You didn’t feel capable of much more after that, so you picked up your own things, including your uneaten breakfast, and walked briskly toward the the Avengers Tower’s door.
“I’ll call to check up on you,” Natasha called after. “And if Loki answers the phone, I will ask him how things are going.”
As if Loki had managed to figure out how to work the phone. The only reason he could text you was because Tony had taught him at Thor’s request. Loki didn’t even touch the phone at your apartment at all.
Unfortunately, you wouldn’t put it past Natasha to come visit in person, just to make sure you were doing as you were told, especially if no one answered when she called. Sometimes you thought Natasha and Clint’s presence in your life more than made up for all the visiting Loki had to do with his brother.