#first of all natasha and bucky leading this very meticulous double life because ballet and murder for hire just fits so well it's great

[tonystarktogo]

Submission by @reioka 

So I see you like WIW. Please accept this garbage:

Bucky and Natasha are famous Russian ballet dancers and, secretly, famous Russian assassins. They dance Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and work one job each week on Mondays. It’s all very meticulous. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which job they enjoy more.

One Friday, after the beginning of a season of The Sleeping Beauty, they each receive a fan letter. This isn’t unusual for them—they’re excellent dancers, so they often get fan letters. But these… these are somehow gushing without feeling like they’re being put up on pedestals. Natasha hesitates before folding the letter up and putting it carefully in the little box that she’s kept that holds her precious things. Bucky scoffs and rolls his eyes at her, but she refuses to take it back out.

Everyone tells her she’s beautiful. The writer of her letter tells her that her leaps and bounds look effortless. That is—the greatest compliment she’s ever been given. She likes her skills being complimented, not just her looks. Bucky is used to being told he’s strong and handsome, but the writer of his letter tells him he appreciates his control and the finesse of his moves. He’s so used to being a second thought with Natasha on stage, but the writer makes him feel important, like he isn’t as easily replaced as he technically is.

The next night another letter comes for each of them. More praise. More gushing. Even Bucky is reluctantly enamored. Natasha takes his letters and puts them in her box too. The letters keep coming. They fall a little bit in love with the letter writer as time goes on. They wish they could send him something in return, but whoever it is only signs his name as ‘Ballet Aficionado.’ Instead they work harder, perfect their moves better, and the letters wax poetic about how it’s obvious they’re putting in more effort.

As the season draws to a close, the letters take on a depressed tone. The writer talks about how he’ll miss them, how he hates to lose the beauty they bring to his life. Bucky and Natasha worry and fret through practice, through assassinations, through restless, sleepless nights. They try to find the letter writer, but when they finally catch the courier that delivers them, she stutters out that she—she doesn’t know who the writer is, another boy delivers the letter to her, and when they go for the boy, he has the same story—another boy delivers the letters to him. Their mysterious Aficionado is like a ghost.

The finale of the show comes. The theater is packed. Bucky and Natasha dance their hearts out for their letter writer—they know he is there, know he is watching, and they want to make sure the last performance goes beautifully for him. They take their bows with the rest of the dancers and hurry back to their dressing room. There are letters waiting, like they’d expected. Natasha sobs over the beautiful goodbye she’s given. Their precious Aficionado had never called her beautiful, but now he does—tells her that her dancing is only half as beautiful as she is as a person. Bucky clenches his jaw and fights back tears of his own when Aficionado tells him that he appreciates all his subtle power, and he hopes that someday the rest of the world will appreciate it too.

The ‘goodbye’ written at the end is different from the others, hitched, as if a verbal sob had somehow been written. Natasha delicately slips the letters into the box, hands shaking. She doesn’t think they’ve ever received such a final goodbye from someone. At least not from someone who wanted nothing from them in return.

They don’t have time to linger on Aficionado. They have a job to do, some rich boy who spends all his time drunk and fritters away his company’s profits. Breaking into his hotel room is easy, and they hate that they don’t even have to try; they want something to challenge them, take their minds off the fact that perhaps the most romantic person in their lives is gone forever and they never even got to meet him. They snoop around the room instead, waiting for their victim to return from a night of drinking like he always does—and Bucky finds a wastebasket full of crumpled papers—crumpled letters.

All of them are smeared, some of them smelling of cheap alcohol, some of them damp from what looks like teardrops. He recognizes the words, the phrases. Praise for a perfect adagio, an ode to their pirouettes, constructive criticism for lifts. Bucky shoves his knuckles into his mouth, teeth biting into the skin, but the wounded, mournful sound escapes his lips anyway. “Natasha.” Natasha starts looking through the wastebasket as well, tears rolling down her cheeks, because oh, oh no, this man is the one who sent them the letters, ones they realized too late were actually love letters, his heart and soul being poured out to them, whose heart is so fragile, and someone wants him dead.

Tony Stark arrives, stumbling drunk, manages to give them a confused squint before saying, “Oh, right, you must be here to kill me,” and he sounds sad and resigned, but not angry or upset about it. Bucky bullies him over to the bed, and when he falls backward onto it, Natasha kneels and unties his shoes, pulls them off, as Bucky carefully unbuttons Tony’s shirt and pulls it off as well. “Oh,” Tony says, confused but not put off. “Pity fuck for the guy that creeped on you?? I accept. If I’m not so drunk that I can’t get it up.”

And that—that’s so heartbreaking, that he thinks it would be a pity fuck and that they think he’s creepy, after all the pretty words and thoughts he spilled to them. “Aw, I am too drunk,” Tony says sadly. “Will you kiss me before you kill me, at least?” And Natasha and Bucky share a look before quietly agreeing. Tony smiles and makes grabby hands. The kisses they get from him are surprisingly soft and sweet, and he never leans in for more, just taking what they’re willing to offer him. “It’s nice of you to give a dying man one last wish,” he says, smiling at them guilelessly, before promptly passing out.

“…WELL,” Natasha snaps at Bucky. Bucky rolls his eyes and carefully scoops Tony up. They keep him in their tiny apartment until they can find out who wanted him killed. Tony gives them sad eyes when they tell him “Obadiah Stane” but he isn’t surprised. “And you were just going to let us kill you?” Natasha asks one day, even though she doesn’t want to know the answer, and Bucky stops chopping beets to hear what Tony says. “Why fight it? This isn’t the first time Obie tried to have me killed. And as much as I’d like to be able to say it, I can’t beat the Winter Soldier and Black Widow. Besides.” He smiles down at his hands sadly. “You two are young and beautiful and talented. Why would you ever want me.”

And they stare at him, this poor man who thinks he’s not worth wanting, not even worth being saved, who had poured his heart and soul into making them feel wonderful, not expecting anything in return. They haven’t kissed him since they brought him here a few weeks ago, but he hadn’t asked for more and they hadn’t wanted to push. They hadn’t realized that Tony might have thought it was actually pity, that they were only doing it to comfort a sad man who thought he was about to die. Well, they can’t have that. Natasha will have to dig out her memory box to show him how all of his letters to both of them ended up in it, and Bucky will have to show him the spiral notebook in which they’d both jotted down responses of varying length.

For now, they take him to bed, kiss the questions from his lips until his words become moans, touch him until his nervous, fluttering hands grasp at them tightly. They take turns keeping him occupied until they can make arrangements: Stark Industries is an American company, so they leave their troupe, make arrangements to move to New York. (The troupes there trip over themselves to be able to list Natasha Romanova and James Barnes among their ranks. They are guaranteed jobs.) They pack up their things and have them forwarded to Tony’s apartment.

A nice British man named Jarvis heaves a long-suffering sigh when they call him to get security clearance. They bundle Tony up in Bucky’s old clothes (he is unfairly adorable) and smuggle him onto a plane. They arrive in New York and their first order of business is to get Tony safely ensconced in his penthouse suite. Their second is to take care of Stane. They do that swiftly and without mercy. Their Aficionado is precious and kind and after some digging is definitely not the one that deserves to die here.

Tony has absolutely no idea why they choose to stay after that. They got paid, technically, by Obadiah. They could leave. He tells them so. Natasha digs her memory box out of their things, resolving to unpack everything else. Bucky finds his notebook full of letters that would have been sent if only they’d found Tony before. They sit and watch Tony read them. “How could we possibly leave you when we love you?” Bucky asks quietly as a tear rolls down Tony’s cheek. “How could we possibly leave you when you love us?” Natasha adds softly as Tony chokes on a sob and covers his mouth.

Their new troupe does The Firebird and they train harder than ever before to perform well for Tony. There are letters waiting for them after the first recital. They wax poetic like they always do, but this time they’re signed, ‘See you at home! :) Love, Tony’ and when they arrive back at the penthouse, Tony is holding a bouquet of flowers for each of them. Natasha carefully dries one of her tulips and one of Bucky’s roses to put in her memory box. Bucky doesn’t make fun of her.

#submission #reioka #WinterIronWidow #THIS IS BRILLIANT!!!! #I love it #I also have no clue how to respond to submissions so I figured i'd just put my freaking out in the tags #because i am freaking out alright #first of all natasha and bucky leading this very meticulous double life because ballet and murder for hire just fits so well it's great #and tony falling in love with their dancing and coming back for every show just admiring them from afar knowing they'd never want him #but being unable to stop from coming back #it just kills me like how long did he know they were gonna be hired to to take him out?? #and of course he's just a giant ball of insecurity even after they didn't kill him aw he must've been so confused #i bet natasha still collects her letters and she makes sure Tony sees her putting them into the memory #because his face just lights up every time he sees it it's fucking unreal #so yeah basically this is perfect #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR WRITING THIS REIOKA YOU'RE AMAZING! #Tony x Nat x Bucky #fic #Tony Stark #Natasha Romanoff #Bucky Barnes #Ballet AU #dancer Natasha #assassin Natasha #dancer Bucky #assassin Bucky #Tony is precious