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Steve thinks about the collar for a long time before he brings it up. He turns the idea over in his head between missions, pictures it in the dark of his bedroom when he’s alone, strokes himself trying to imagine the feel of leather around his neck at night, and sits in the sunlight considering all the reasons why having it might be a bad idea. When he does finally ask, he’s certain. When Natasha tightens the buckle at the nape of his neck, it’s everything he dreamed of.
When she clips the leash on, it’s something he didn't know he wanted.
The collar that started out stiff has moulded to the shape of his neck, easy to buckle now, the hole where the tongue goes for perfect fit worn visibly larger than the rest. Sometimes, when the world has been quiet and they’ve had days instead of just hours, he can see the shape of it imprinted on his skin in the mirror after she’s taken it off him. Her claim on him, showing who he belongs to. He knows it, knows what it means, why he craves it.
The leash puts him off balance.
He’s naked for her, kneeling on the floor of her apartment, her collar safe around his neck, finally, after a week when he’s hardly been out of his uniform, when sometimes the only thing that got him through was hearing her voice in his ear over the comms and remembering what this feels like, reminding himself that he would be here again.
She comes up behind him, the tread of her bare feet soft on the wood floor, and lays her hand on his neck. Her fingers covering leather, stroking his skin along the edge of it. He bends his head a little, pushing up into her touch, and her nails ruffle his hairline, scratching his nape. He breathes out, tension sinking through him, drifting away.
“Use your safeword if you don't want this to stay on,” she says, and at first he’s confused, because she knows him better than that, knows that he always wishes the collar could stay on longer, treasures every minute that he doesn't have to give it up. Then there is a click of metal on metal, and a tug, like testing a rope before you put your weight on it. Natasha’s strength hinted at in the pull on his collar, and nothing gives. Everything is secure.
“Oh,” he says, a small sound, surprised, and something else. He's looking down at the floor. His hands are splayed on his parted thighs. Where skin touches skin, a coat of sweat is forming.
Natasha steps around him, crouches down in front of him. She’s wearing a black silk robe, tied at the waist. With his head down, he sees the fabric part over her lap, sees the pale, smooth skin on the inside of her thighs dip towards shadow where they meet.
She lays her hand on his cheek and tilts his chin up.
“Okay?” she asks.
The leash is taut between them, a long, broad leather band wrapped around her fist to keep it short. She rests her fist against his chest, and it’s a weight, the downward pressure of the collar on his neck. Not heavy, just a demonstration of how she has him caught. He imagines her yanking down – suddenly, harshly – forcing his forehead to the floor between them.
There’s nothing harsh about the look in her eyes. Just something intent, a sharp, eager focus as if she’s searching for something, hunting it down.
Her question, he realizes, is hopeful, as if she’s worried he’ll say no.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, his heart beating double-quick in his chest.
She smiles at him, pleased. Relieved, almost. The cut in her lower lip from last night’s battle stretches wider with the curving of her mouth. There’s a bruise spreading along the line of her jaw, slowly soaking into her skin from beneath like watercolors on a sketch pad. It will look far worse in the morning.
She must hurt, he knows, likely all over, from the seemingly endless hand-to-hand combat of the last few days. But she found him, afterwards, in the hospital corridor – after the doctors had declared her fit to leave, after they’d made sure all they were keeping Clint for was a broken leg. She took one look at him and told him “All right, we’re leaving,” and grabbed him by the arm, leading him out the back way, taking him here. To this.
She strokes her thumb over his pectoral, rubs at the length of the leash, at his skin again.
“I got this for you a while ago,” she says. “I’ve been planning what to do with it. I’d like to keep it on you for hours, days. Leading you with me wherever I went. An obedient pet. I know you like being my pet, Rogers.” She leans forward, balanced on the balls of her feet, her knuckles against his chest holding her weight. Her other hand is warm around the back of his neck, just above the collar. Her lips brush the shell of his ear. “Perhaps you would like it even better on all fours, crawling after me. Perhaps you would like it if I kept the leash short, so you’d have no chance to stray.”
His cheeks heat at the picture of it in his mind, the idea of what it would be like. If she had asked him, he’d probably have thought it too much, too staged, more than a little silly. But the leash is on him now, he can feel it, the stretch of it from her hand to his neck a solid manifestation of her power over him, the reality of her control.
“Please,” he says, and he’s hard with wanting it, his cock thick with eagerness for the tug of her will on his neck.
“I knew you'd like that,” she says. “And you’ll have it, I promise. I’m pretty sure you realize I’m not at my best tonight, though, and I think you need rest almost as much as you need me to take you down, so for now, I’m just going to skip to the part I’m going to like best, okay?”
It still knocks the air out of him, the way she can speak about this so matter-of-factly, the way it makes sense to her: what he feels, what he’s never been able to keep himself from wanting. Out of everyone he knows, she’s always struck him as the greatest realist. For someone who's spent so much time hiding and covering things up, she is startlingly clear-eyed about what is really there. He suspects she knew this particular truth about him from the day they met. She sees it, and she’s never turned her eyes away, even once.
He loves the way she looks at him.
“Whatever you want, ma’am,” he says, and she squeezes his neck, affirming. For a moment, her forehead rests against his temple, her hold on him on the verge of an embrace.
There is a calm spreading in his mind, a steadiness that he only feels under her hands. He’s made so many decisions in the past couple of days, all of them rushed, desperate, thinking on his feet to keep the Avengers fighting, to keep people safe. Here, all he has to think about is how to be hers, how to give himself over and follow her lead. Everything goes quiet inside him when she takes him here, except his sense of her.
She’s right, he did need that quiet tonight.
Whatever it is she needs from him, he hopes he will be able to provide it as well as she provides for him.
“Come,” she tells him, the word just a breath in his ear, and she leans back, stands up, letting the leash unravel to hang between them, allowing him room to move.
When he looks up at her, he realizes that he doesn't know if he should walk or crawl. He’s been on his hands and knees for her before – for her whips and her canes and the flat of her palm, for her fingers and her tongue and her silicone toys when she's chosen to open him up and press inside him – but this is different. There’s no point to it except as a demonstration of his subjugation, it would serve no purpose but to make it clear just how small he is beside her.
He would be her dog.
She cocks her head, studying him. There is amusement tugging at her lips, and it’s strange, but that makes him feel safer. Most people take him so seriously, but Natasha has always seemed to find him entertaining. It makes it a lot easier to just be.
“You can if you want to,” she says, reading his dilemma on his face. “Either way is fine tonight.”
He takes another moment, his nails scratching the skin of his thighs as his fingers tighten. His mouth is almost painfully dry. But he knows what he wants.
He leans forward, and lays his palms flat on the floor boards.
Natasha draws in a breath, the noise sharp, shivering, loud over the thrumming of his heart.
Her noises are never loud, not as long as she can help it.
“Good boy,” she says, and the shiver is in her words, too. He can feel it, vibrations travelling the length of his spine. “You’re always so good for me, Steve.” The leash shortens, pulls him forward. “Come on.”
He crawls towards her, hurries to catch up when she starts walking in the direction of the bedroom.
The floor is hard under his knees, cold beneath the palms of his hands. His cock hangs beneath his belly, heavy and swaying, slapping against the insides of his thighs with every step. He can hear the fleshy sound of it, imagines that she must hear it, too. He feels exposed, unshielded like an animal.
He keeps his eyes trained on the floor, doesn't dare look up at Natasha, but he feels her, the leash taut and her grip at the other end of it. Their bodies don't touch, and even so he is aware of her holding him. The leather only tugs at his throat, but every inch of him is flushed with her ownership, his skin hot with it, burning.
When they reach the foot of the bed she pulls him up short. He remains there, on all fours, head down, being still, being good - staying, he thinks, and the concept of it shudders through him, head to toe - as she moves onto the mattress. She doesn't leave him there for long, though.
"Here, Steve," she says, and that makes him shiver, too, the simplicity of it, the basic command. "Come up here."
He jumps to obey.
Hands and knees on the bed, and she's lying back on top of the sheets, her robe open now, the silk fallen away from her body. Pale skin against the black fabric, flash of red hair between her legs, and more bruises that he couldn't see before: on her hip, along the arc of her ribs, on the outside of her thigh. It makes him ashamed, that he couldn't keep those marks from her body - he's supposed to serve her better than that, serve everyone better than that. But he knows she wouldn't hear that if he said it out loud, knows that she can keep herself safe, that her injuries are nothing to what they would be if she weren't every bit the soldier he is. He can't change the events of the past week. All he can do is serve her now, be what she asks for, give her what she needs him to give.
He wants to be the best he can be for her, always.
"Here," she says again, pulling on the leash, "closer," and he crawls over her, hands on either side of her, until they're face to face.
She has him with her then, reeled in all the way, but she doesn't let up on the leash. Instead her hand stays in the space between them, holding on, a pendant on the leather strap hanging from his neck. With her other hand she reaches up and strokes his face. A brush of her thumb along his cheekbone, her fingers trailing down his neck, tracing his skin along the edge of his collar. It's a familiar touch, warm and safe and dizzying. A reminder that she owns him, that she chose to claim him.
She wets her lips, looking at him, and when he meets her eyes her pupils are blown wide, her eyes dark with lust.
"Use your fingers," she says. "Make me wet enough for your cock."
He makes a hoarse, undignified noise, his balls drawing up tight, and he thinks he might be wet enough already for the both of them, his dick leaking, dripping, maybe, onto her skin. He does what he's told, though, holding himself up on one arm above her and reaching down between them.
She isn't dry, she never is when they've got this far, but she usually needs touch to get to where she wants to be before she allows him to sink inside her. He likes that, that she makes him work for it, makes him earn it with his hands or his mouth almost every time. Likes it better because he knows it isn't really about him, but about her pleasure, about her getting what she needs. When they do this, all he's here for is her.
She arcs up when he touches her clit, smiling, making the sweetest sound, and it's so easy to belong here, on his knees for her, around and above her, shielding her with his body from the world, a guard dog with her collar around his neck, leashed and brought to heel. She spreads her legs wider, open beneath him, her head tipping back, and he would protect that vulnerability with his life, lay everything he is down for the privilege of being allowed to see her like this, to feel her.
She will tell him if he needs to, though. She will tell him everything he needs to know or do. All he has to worry about is her command.
“Mm, that’s good, Rogers,” she says. “That’s so good.” Her nails comb through his hair, scratch affectionately at his scalp. Her praise is warm in his blood. “Put your mouth on my breast.”
He bends his head to comply, feeling the resistance of the leash for a second as he moves down, before she grants him the leeway. In that moment when he’s caught he feels her muscles tense, her pussy grind up into his hand, hungry. His breathing comes too shallow, too quick. He closes his eyes and lets her restraint hold him, lets the awareness of it flow through him, settle in his bones. He feels it like a law of physics, equal forces balanced at either end of the leash, her control and his submission, everything right, everything true. Then the leash slackens, and she lets him move.
Her breast is soft under his lips, her nipple a raised peak, hard and flushed for him to lick at. He circles it with the tip of his tongue, tries to match the circles he’s rubbing on her clit. She trembles beneath him, says his name. He flicks his tongue across her nipple, the way he knows she likes, and sucks it into his mouth. She arcs off the bed at that, panting, clutching at his shoulder, and he hopes it’s hard enough to leave marks, even if his man-made body won’t let them stay long before they fade. Every minute he can wear her touch on his skin is a gift.
He dips his fingers deeper between her folds, giving her the heel of his hand to press her clit against while he strokes the rim of her opening. She’s slippery wet now, soaking the sheets. The way she feels, he can’t help moaning around her breast, sucking her harder out of sheer need to taste her, to bury himself in her.
She brushes his cheek again, with the knuckles of the hand that holds the leash, the leather warm like her skin against his jawline.
“Yeah,” she says, “that’s where you want to be, isn’t it, Rogers? Because you know that’s what you were made for, to please me with that thick, hard supersoldier cock of yours, for as long as I see fit to let you. It’s the only purpose you need, isn’t it, to serve me, to keep serving me until all you know is the feel of me around you, around your cock, around your neck.”
She slips from his mouth, then, because he can’t hold his head up, has to bury his face against her skin when he whispers “Yes. Yes.”
She strokes his hair, so gently.
“Ask me,” she says.
“Please,” he begs, the words spilling out of him with no chance of holding them back; hers, like all the rest of him. “Please, ma’am, let me fuck you. Let me be inside you, let me be good for you. Anything you want, just tell me. Please.”
“Sweetest boy,” Natasha says, “so eager and beautiful. It’s all right, I’m going to have you now. Right here, like this. Slow and deep, Steve. I want to feel every inch of you going in and every inch going out. Okay?”
”Yes,” he says, nodding as he lifts his head. “Thank you, ma’am.”
When he moves, her touch falls away from his cheek, the leash dangling loose between them. The end of it is wound around her fist, her hand curled against her chest.
He bends his neck and presses his lips to it, to her leather-wrapped knuckles, to the strength of her fingers where they close around the lead.
Her chest rises and falls, a sharp, steep breath, and he has to look up at her, look up to see her face.
She's gazing back at him, her head raised off the pillow so that she can see him, and he feels caught in the headlights, laid open, meeting her eyes through his lashes with his mouth still brushing her skin. He wants to tell her how grateful he is, at being anchored like this, at knowing she holds the safety line fast so that he can let go and fall without needing to look down; wants to tell her what the falling feels like, right now, in this moment, the wind rushing by as he plummets, hurtling into a deeper space, down and down and further down, but right here, with her, because she holds him. He wants to tell her what it means, but all he manages to say, again, is “Thank you.”
Natasha is still beneath him, absolutely, unmovingly still for a moment that seems too long, cut away from the reality of time. Then she blinks, a rapid flutter of her lashes like you might blink away moisture from your eyes.
“Jesus, fuck, Steve,” she says, “come here,” and her hand closes around his collar and yanks him forward, yanks him up to her, and she’s kissing him, pulling him down over her and rising up to meet him, claiming his mouth with her lips and her tongue and her teeth, devouring him, and he lets her take him, open him up for her and push inside, lets himself feel her everywhere, inside and out, as he falls and keeps falling.
“Do what I told you,” she breathes against his lips, pulling away just enough to speak. “Do what I told you now, Steve.”
She’s twisted beneath him so that her legs are around his hips, and all he has to do to obey is take his hand away from her pussy, wrap it around his dick, and guide himself into her.
Slowly, like she said, and she’s kissing him again before he’s halfway there, biting at his lip and then licking the sting away. She’s so tight around him, groaning into his mouth when he grinds his cock as deep as it will go, digging her nails into his scalp when he pulls back again. He’s trembling with the strain of keeping to the pace she asked for, the pleasure that much greater because he’s following her commands.
“Harder,” she tells him. “Do it harder.” And then, a whisper in his ear, the weight of her on his neck as she hauls herself up by the leash to reach, trusting his strength to take it: “I want to feel exactly how well I made you fuck me, Rogers, long after the bruises from this mission have stopped aching.” She licks at his earlobe, grazes it with her teeth, a promise of pain that makes his cock jerk inside her. “Go on. Show me why you were worth putting my collar on.”
She’s almost hanging off him, her feet pressing into the small of his back, and it’s easy to get an arm beneath her shoulders, lift her too him for a better angle. She tells him yes when he thrusts into her like that, when he bottoms out inside her with as much force as he knows she can take, tells him how good he’s being when he keeps doing it, keeps fucking her, slow and hard until the bed is creaking, until she’s moaning with every drag of his cock inside her, until he’s panting, dripping with sweat, glowing with the gift of being allowed to work for her pleasure. When she comes, convulsing around him, gripping him tight, he feels used, owned, happy.
Afterwards, they lie close together in the quiet, face to face under the covers that Natasha pulls over them. Steve doesn't have the best sense of time when he’s like this, floating in the warm, embracing space where the falling ends, but he’s pretty sure they’ve lain like that, arms around each other, for quite a while before Natasha thinks to unwind his leash from around her hand.
She flexes her fingers, and he moves to take her hand in both his own, rubbing the circulation back into her muscles the way she does for him when she’s had him tied up for a long time.
“This all right?” he asks.
She gives his fingers a quick squeeze, then lets her hand relax in his.
“Perfect,” she says. “Thank you.”
Her other hand strays to the leash, dropped on the pillow between them. She gives a little laugh, the particular twist of a smile that means she’s amused at her own expense.
“I don’t really want to take it off you,” she says.
Steve’s heart is suddenly too big for his rib cage.
“You don’t have to,” he says.
Natasha turns her eyes on him.
“Steve, I’m not letting you sleep in the leash when I’m too exhausted to stay awake myself.”
“I know.” She looks out for him, she makes sure to keep him safe. They made his body three times as big as the one he was born to, and there’s still not enough room inside him for how that makes him feel. “Just. You don’t have to. I want you to know that.”
She turns her hand over in his, lacing their fingers together.
“The last few days,” she says, “this mission. I did what I needed to do, I held my position until Jane and Bruce figured the science out and found a way to beat those things. But it was chaos. Nothing I could do to impact the situation, nothing I could do to help but keep fighting. I saw Clint go down, but he was too far away for me to even try to reach. I heard you on the comms, struggling, but I couldn’t be there to have your back.” She fingers the leash again, tugs it just enough that he feels it’s there. “Tonight, I wanted… I needed to feel control. I thought it would help, having the concrete link. Knowing I didn’t have to let go of my hold on you for a second.” She smiles, somehow dreamily content and self-mocking all at once, and strokes her thumb over his knuckles. “I think it worked a little too well.”
Steve wants… It’s suddenly so crystal clear what he wants that it’s hard to breathe, hard to make the words come out. He wets his lips, feels his cheeks heat with what he’s about to ask.
“You could find something like the collar,” he says. “But more…practical, maybe. Something I could wear for you all the time. Then you’d never have to let go.”
He can hear her breathing, like before, when he went on all fours for her. Too loud to keep her cover. Exposed.
“Steve,” she says, “you don’t know what you’re offering.”
Steve thinks about her voice in his ear in battle, about her feet on his shield when he’s her stepping stone. He thinks about crawling across the floor for her, about her fingers digging into his skin and the pull of her leash around his neck. He thinks about falling, about knowing the anchor point will never give.
“I’m pretty sure I do,” he says.
He can see her throat move as she swallows, feel her pulse beat where his fingers touch her wrist. Her eyes on him are so sharp, but he doesn't try to look away.
“Ask me again when you’re not exhausted from five days of combat and high on submission,” she says. She reaches out and touches his face, his jawline, the edge of his collar. “Ask me when I’m not this strung out on having my leash around your neck.”
“I will,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says, and there’s disbelief in her voice, a sense of wonder that makes his soul ache. “I do believe that you will.”
When she finally takes his leash off, he kisses her hand again. She lets him fall asleep like that, with his head bent, his lips against her skin. She’s still stroking his hair when he drifts off.