September 13, 2018:
Cap comes to Natasha's apartment in the Triskelion to get her to go to the gym with him. Casual banter follows.
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions:
Plot:
Mood Music: [*\# None.]
Fade In…
It's painfully early in the morning. Brisk, and the sun has only recently decided to peek out of slumber. The sky is streaked with beautiful dawn colors, and the Triskelion is mostly quiet, as many of the night shifts are getting tired and headed into the morning shifts.
Steve heads briskly through the residential area, bidding a few people good morning and good sleep. He often sees the night agents in this manner, with his early bird routine that makes a lot of them grumpy, but also just shake their heads with a smile. It's Rogers, after all.
A neat rap-rap at Agent Romanoff's door is in order; and a glance through the peep will prove it is a Captain Rogers in athletic gear, ready and eager to do a morning run with Natasha. HE remembered… did she?
The thing is, Natasha's rarely in her assigned room. SOMEtimes she is, but maybe only once or twice a week. AS in this situation and in this moment? She's not. So Steve is left to stand there and wait to a point where he might think to knock or ring the room again in fact, but that wouldn't seem very much like Nat not to hear and respond to it after only one call.
What happens instead is Steve feels a bump to the back of his thigh and when he turns to look he'll find her there, dressed in a black leather jacket and her black bodysuit beneath it, she's got her motorcycle helmet und her arm and her gloves are being pulled off of her hands… and a half smirk on her red lips, light but present. She's clearly been out all night, riding. Cap's receptive enough to know she does that too.
"Up already, huh?" She says to him then.
"Yes, have to work to keep this early bird reputation going," Steve replies. "—I was about to just go get an ahead start on that, perhaps when you were ready you'd emerge and join me; I didn't think you'd stand me up," Steve says, with a rueful flash of smile as he turns to look at her. He takes in her attire easily, relaxed, watching her remove her gloves before his smile rises to return her smirk with his own more open and natural expression. He doesn't mind, really.
"Need a rain check?" Steve's expression has moved to relaxed, understanding. He's adaptive, and won't push her if she was up or out all night.
Natasha's half smirk evened out into a small smile at his words and she shakes her head side to side. "No, of course not." She steps around him then and opens the door with a thumb push on the pad beside it. "Come on in, I'll just need a minute." She opens the door and steps inside, leaving it ajar for the Captain of America. Once inside she sets her helmet down upon a table off to the side of the door and then moves on into the living space where her jacket is dropped off.
"Whats on the Agenda for today?" She asks him then, stepping over to the kitchen area off of the living space, where she sets her gloves down on the counter and then moves to get a glass and open the fridge to retrieve a bottle of Orange Juice that is half empty.
"Would you like to know what I have in mind for the morning workout, or are you asking what I intended to talk to you about /during/ the workout, to 'cut to the chase'?" Steve asks with a chuckle, following her inside, gently snaring the door to be sure it didn't slam as he came inside. He politely stays near the door, instead of fully making himself at home. There's a reserved distance when in a woman's domicile. He has an athletic bag over his shoulder, and rests one arm over it, fingering the strap clip where it connects to the bag with a few broad fingers.
"Because the first one is primarily a stressful leg-day and special arrangement of the obstacle course," Steve explains.
Natasha has a glance poured for her and she offers one to him but she assumes he'll turn it down. Either way she then just takes a second to lean against the counter in her kitchen space and drink the glass of OJ while Steve says those words and they make her grin once her glass is lowered again. "Sounds riveting." She says back at the man in that dry sense of humor of hers. The redhead turns to redistribute the nearly finished jar of juice back into her fridge and she closes the door shut. "But yeah, I'm eager to know both options." She tells him then as she takes a moment to put the juice cup in the sink after finishing it off.
"Let me just go change and I'll be right back out." Nat says while stepping into the main area of her own assigned suite, essentially identical to any other suite in the Triskelion with furniture that looks entirely unused and perfectly well kept. "Wander around, look at the fake pictures of family and friends that came with all the picture frames." She says to him in good humor before she vanishes around the corner into the main bedroom of the place. "Any word from Tony?" She says from in there with her voice raised up a bit to carry better.
Of course Captain America does politely decline the orange juice. He already had a broad breakfast fit for a true American, of course. He dips his head to nod in answer to her going to change, and busies himself doing what she suggested: looking at the array of decorations (or lack thereof), along the extremely clean and barren mantle. He doesn't sit, he remains standing, though his body language is very patient.
"No. I expect to go back again tomorrow, if you'd like to come," Steve answers, voice similarly raised. The invitation is open but non-pressuring: he doesn't think she'll tag along again until the man is awake, really. "If you have a recommendation on something I could read to him that will make him frustrated enough to wake up, let me know," Steve says, a smile in his tone.
Within that span of time, Natasha is stepping back out of her bedroom with a pair of black exercise pants and top on and a jacket that she's zipping up over the top, her hair is back in a ponytail and she has a black bacllcap on her head as well. "Try the Twi'light novels." She says with a light grin before she walks again to the kitchen to get a water battle out of one of the cabinets and take it to the freezer where she fills it with ice. "He'll likely wake up by book two, I would think. If those don't wory, switch to Fifty Shades. And… record it so the rest of us can hear you read it to him." She fills the bottle up at the tap and then turns to step to the edge of the kitchen area where she grins toward Cap.
"All right, lets do this." She tells him. "Leg day, right?" She asks the big tough super soldier of the United States. "Everyone generally skips leg day, you know?" Natasha turns then toward the exit of her suite and pops the door open again. "But… I'm guessing thats not your style."
"These are naughty books, aren't they," Steve says, with a deep huff of breath that ends up in a more broad and deep laugh. He can laugh at himself sometimes, even if there's also something of a shy reaction to her teasing him. She usually is teasing, but he doesn't mind rolling with it. She's a good friend.
"Do they? That seems like a terrible idea; you can't just work out one body part. Everything connects together," Steve answers, proving it is, definitely, not his style. "Especially this," Steve says, tapping the side of his head. Teasing her back, in a manner. He follows her out, turning towards the athletic area, where he'd gotten the obstacles prepared before he came to fetch her. "Only cheating themselves, to skip some things," Steve says, with a sigh and brief shrug of super-shoulders.
Natasha closed up her quarters with another thumb tap and then moves to follow after Steve, showing amusement at what he says on her lips. "Twilight isn't." She replies to him. "Its just painfully horrible romance between a Vampire and his hundreds of years younger teenage love interest. And there's werewolves in there too because why not."
She glances over at him, and up since he's a lot taller than she. "Fifty shades is definitely as you described it though." But she can't bring herself to refer to anything as a 'naughty book' not while trying to maintain an air of professionalism at least!
Her green eyes go forward again and she slips her water bottle into the side pocket of her sport jacket. "Most people don't have the stamina that you and I do though, Rogers. These exercises that we do wear them out much faster. I sometimes watch people in the break room groan as they just get up out of their chair for God's sake. It makes me reflect on the things that 'haunt' me at night and then I try to remind myself that I don't have it as hard as I might think." She smirks, glances his way again. "It lasts about five minutes before I have to get up and go outside for awhile." So thats probably why she was out all night.
"Painfully horrible romance? Hmmm. Underaged love interest and supernaturals. It sounds more like something Tony would /like/, than would wake him," Steve parries thoughtfully. "But perhaps I misunderstand what's horrible about it."
Natasha bringing the topic to stamina changes Steve's manner, to reflective. "I wasn't anyways this way, to have this level of stamina, at all," Steve quietly states, his expression softened, faced inwards into his past. "I wouldn't place this routine on just anyone, nor ask anyone to push beyond their personal needs for a workout. You are a special case." There's honesty, and kindness in his voice. He doesn't say things he doesn't believe; the man is a horrible liar. And why would he lie about it anyway? The smile returns, though: "But I DO ask that others push to find and surpass their own personal limits. Whatever those are. Break room chairs or otherwise."
Natasha just grins at his response on those novels. "Give them a read some time. All you have to do is close the cover if you decide you don't like whats on the page after all. Thats a lot easier than walking out of a movie and having to demand your money back if you don't like it." Natasha glances over at a few other agents as they pass them both by and greet them, she gives them a nod and a small greeting in return before she looks back to Cap. "You do realize that when you and I work out together that people compare it to Rocky Four, right?" She asks him then. "I'm apparently 'Ivana Drago' and you're… well, clearly Apollo Creed." She shows an even larger grin then and she shakes her head as she continues on to their ultimate destination. "I'll send some of the books over to your place, because now I'm fascinated to get your Book Review opinion on it. In fact… I might have you make it a video so we can upload it to Youtube. Thats what the kids are doing, these days, after all."
Once more her green eyes go up to his. "Gotta stay relevent with the kids, right, Rogers?"
"I don't usually go to the cinema," Steve admits to her. "A lot of the modern movies jerk around really quickly and are dizzying to try to follow. Everything in such a rush, even the plot." A sigh, but he's smiling. He's not upset over being an old man.
"Do you have a copy of Rocky Four?" Steve then asks, unzipping the side of his bag and drawing out his little notepad: a familiar sight when a reference is made that he doesn't get, but would like to. It is full of a lot of very strange titles and items of pop culture. He adds a line about Rocky Four under a question about 'look up what Netflix and Chill means'.
"Relevant? I suppose. I think we do all right as is, though, even without videos like those," Steve says, giving her a brief smile. They've reached the obstacle course, though, and he switches gears. It doesn't look so bad at first, but a closer look will show that it will take some considerable power and agility on a lot of the things the course demands. Subtle, and limit testing, without being crazy. Steve's workout regime. "Feeling ready, or feeling your age?" he teases her, putting his bag down.