He felt her smile against his skin and he only held her closer for a minute before she pulled back enough to meet his eyes. When she spoke he let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he had been holding. He hadn’t had much time to think about it yet, but he knew he wanted to stay here among all the things that gave him comfort, that made him feel like himself again. He had promised to stay with her and wouldn’t back out on that, so her offer to stay here instead was more relief than he could have imagined.

“Are you sure?” he asked, grateful and hopeful and so damn happy that she could read him as well as she did. His eyes followed her tongue of their own accord, but when he looked up to meet her gaze again she was surveying the apartment.

Her following words made his heart beat a little harder.

He didn’t know what to say - what could he possibly say to that? - so he leaned down to kiss her instead. He couldn’t picture Natasha as the girl who would wear his clothes or sleep in his sheets just to smell him, to feel him around her, but maybe he was wrong. Their relationship had changed after the war on New York even if they had never acknowledged it, and clearly even more now that SHIELD had fallen. Natasha was more honest, more open, than he had ever known her to be, and while he wasn’t sure how to deal with it, he was pretty sure it was going to be a good thing.