So, The Avengers has left me with a lingering desire for Captain America/Black Widow fic, but a trawl through AO3 seems to indicate that everybody’s writing Steve/Tony. And sadly, that turns my crank not at all. I dunno. Tony/Thor, I’d be willing to read—something about the mad scientist tinkering with new power sources, and the god who embodies lightning itself—I could do that. Steve/Tony just…either one is fine, but the rich playboy tycoon and the beloved nostalgic solider-hero together? For me, it’s too much American jingoism occupying the same space.

I’m not knocking Steve/Tony at all—it’s just, obviously, those who are into it are getting something from it that I don’t. Meanwhile, my brain keeps humming over Steve and Natasha. I want to see Natasha disbelieving him, testing him, trying to find out when the impossibly nice guy mask will crack so that she can meet the real guy underneath. I want her incapable of believing that there is no mask. After all, he was an actor for so long—sure, he inhabits the character very deeply now. Doesn’t mean it’s not a character. I truly think she’d need to see Steve at his worst before she could believe in his best.

And I want to see Steve dealing with her paranoia, her levels of subterfuge, in his forthright, naively privileged, but terribly decent way. He’d just keep on being that guy she can’t believe in. Oh, man, I just want that horrendous mismatch thoroughly excavated, with all its cultural/metaphorical implications intact. Steve slept through the Cold War, but Natasha suffered for it terribly, I mean, god, that says so much right there.

I think she would put him through the psychological wringer, and I think when he came out the other side he would understand why she had to do it. I think, after everything, he would still trust her. And in the end, that’s why Natasha would break first.