2014-

Eleanor and Natasha were fully settled into the life that they had been living. It had been two years since the Battle of New York and so the memories didn't haunt as much as they once had, although sometimes their minds would throw the occasional curveball their way.

They had been working with Steve and the STRIKE team occasionally still when Fury felt as though their skills in being able to handle things more delicately were needed, brute force didn't always work.

Life had been pretty mundane recently, not that it was a bad thing, just that there weren't any shocking surprises that they had to live through. It was nice, it was everything that Natasha had wanted since she was young, and it was right in the palm of her hand.

She never took it for granted. She thanked her lucky stars every time she woke up in the morning and realised that she was still holding Eleanor, it was something that she could never get bored of.

Natasha showed her gratitude for everything in lots of different ways. Eleanor's personal favourite was how she would leave little notes around the apartment for her to find. Nat didn't know this but Eleanor kept all of them in a box under their bed, she couldn't throw them away, but she couldn't leave them out either or their apartment would be covered, so in the box they went.

Eleanor showed her love through food a lot, she went to cooking classes as she wanted to be able to make lots of delicious food and baked goods for Nat as they were often tired when coming back from work. She was honestly pretty good now, and Natasha wasn't complaining at all, having tasty homecooked meals every day was a blessing, and she got to have the leftovers for lunch at work, a win all around.

Their alarm went off at 5 am as it did every workday, Eleanor would rather not have it set at this time but Natasha insisted on it. Eleanor could easily rush around and get ready to leave the house at 6:45 am by waking up at 6, but Nat said that she liked calmer mornings where they could sit together and have a cup of coffee before work. Hearing just how much Nat treasured those moments with her, she couldn't turn her down.

So, this is how she got herself into the situation of throwing a pillow over her own face and screaming into it when their alarm started making that godforsaken blaring sound.

"Stop being dramatic and get that butt out of bed", Nat laughed as she walked into the en suite. Eleanor didn't understand how she could just get out of bed as soon as the alarm went off, when waking up at 5 am she needed at least half an hour to comprehend that she was awake.

After Nat had finished in the bathroom and straightened her hair, something that she did almost every day now, she saw that Eleanor had still not gotten up. So she did the most obvious thing to do in that situation, she ran to the bed full speed and body-slammed her in a starfish position.

Eleanor grunted as the air was knocked out of her lungs, "Do you mind", she whined before getting dragged out of bed and pushed towards the bathroom.

"Nope, I'll go make us some coffee". Eleanor smiled at the prospect of coffee, and so did as she was told and hopped in the shower, outlining a plan for the day in her head.

She had a meeting to start off the day, not fun, that began at 8, so she had about an hour at her desk before that, which would be a good time to de-clutter her desk as recently it looked like a hurricane had turned its attention to it. After the meeting, she needed to go over some mission reports and get them handed in, which would take her to lunchtime, and then-

Her inner monologue was cut off by Natasha bursting into the bathroom, it wasn't like Nat had never seen Eleanor like this before, but the younger woman jumped out of her skin and felt the need to hide herself with the shower curtain.

"What do you wa-".

"We need to go in now, Fury's called us in, said it's important", Nat hurried out as she yanked the shower curtain away and turned the shower off, before throwing a towel at her.

"But my hairs all wet!". Nat pondered for a second, she couldn't exactly walk around looking like a wet rat.

"I'll braid it for you, just hurry up".

Eleanor quickly towel-dried her hair as best as she could and got into some casual clothes, almost falling over as she was rushing to put some trousers on, cursing Fury over and over in her head.

After the colossal failure that was getting ready, Eleanor rushed and grabbed her work backpack, before sprinting over to Natasha who was standing in the living room, tapping her foot impatiently. She swiftly grabbed Eleanor's shoulders and spun her around so that she could put a loose French braid in Eleanor's hair to keep it out of the way but allow it to dry, and they hastily left their apartment.

It was only a fifteen-minute drive, so they would be able to get to Fury's office within the expected time. Natasha drove of course. She got them there five minutes earlier than it would normally take them, with her reckless, but controlled, driving. She could go especially quick now that they owned a nice car loaned to them by SHIELD. A Corvette Stingray. Natasha's pride and joy. Eleanor sometimes joked that Nat loved that car more than she loved her. Natasha tended to respond to these jokes with silence.

Once at the Triskelion they immediately went up to Fury's office. Eleanor was not happy about it only being 5:50 am, but it must have been important to call them in especially with them not living at base anymore, so decided not to grill Fury about her face almost slamming a radiator earlier because they had to rush around.

"Agents", Fury greeted them after calling for them to enter.

"You asked to see us, Sir?", Nat started as they took a seat.

"Yes, a boat has been hijacked, you will be working with the STRIKE team as well as Captain Rogers", Fury threw a folder at them that presumably contained all of the briefing information, "One of you pass yours onto Rogers". Eleanor was confused at why Rumlow, the head of the STRIKE team wasn't here with them. Rumlow was always nice enough to Eleanor but he did not pass her vibe check, it all seemed to be a façade in her eyes, but she never mentioned anything because she thought that she was probably just being paranoid.

"Why is Agent Rumlow not here?", Eleanor asked as she looked at the now open file in her hands.

"That's the thing, you two have a slightly different job that I need you to keep under wraps". Both Agents furrowed their eyebrows in confusion before he continued his explanation, "The hijacked boat is SHIELD owned, and has some intel on that I don't want certain people to get their hands on". Their frowns only deepened, why was there information on a SHIELD boat that wasn't linked up with the main servers?

The two women don't ask questions though, they follow orders and get the job done. "I need you two to save as much as this intel as you can, and I cannot stress this enough, Captain Rogers cannot know that you are doing this". They nodded but were interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Enter", Fury bellowed, and in came Agent Rumlow. "Ah, Agent, right on time". Fury must have told him to come a few minutes earlier than he had wanted Nat and Eleanor.

"Good morning, Sir", he stepped into the room and smiled at the two women already seated before standing next to them.

"Agents Romanoff and Hughes got here a few minutes early so I just gave them their packets", Fury lied as he gave Rumlow a folder as well, trying to make it seem like the wasn't just in a conversation with the other two Agents. "Long story short, there's a hijacked boat that I need un-hijacking, the three of you, plus Captain Rogers and the STRIKE team are being sent. Get it done, Romanoff, Hughes, I need you to go and collect Rogers from the Washington Monument, Rumlow get your team and a jet ready, you will be in charge of debriefing everyone on the way there, Rogers will be leading the main operation".

They all nodded and Rumlow made his exit. Nat stood to go as well, but Eleanor stayed seated for another few seconds, pondering the logistics of this Captain collection, "Sir, our car only has two seats".

"Just make it work", Fury waved his hand in dismissal. Eleanor slowly nodded her head with her eyebrows raised before standing and following Natasha out to their car.

"So, you're driving, Steve's huge, I'm going to be the one squeezed in, aren't I?".

Nat smirked and nodded her head as she wrapped an arm around Eleanor's waist, "You can sit on the centre console".

"Great", Eleanor mumbled, clearly feeling a bit dejected with that idea, thinking that she would probably be thrown through the window if Nat had to harshly brake.

"Why don't I just stay here so that we aren't playing 'How many clowns can you fit in a clown car?'".

"But where's the fun in that?", Nat pouted and increased her grip on Eleanor's waist to keep her on the path to their car. They soon reached it and began their journey to Washington Monument.

"Okay so", Eleanor opened her folder, after working countless times with her girlfriend she knew that Natasha always read the file as soon as they got it so that she could mull over the plan in her head, so if Natasha had to drive, Eleanor would read it out to her without needing to be prompted. Another thing that Natasha adored about her. "Hijacked ship yada yada, it's called the Lemurian Star, at least 20 hijackers". Lemme just try and find a room with computers so we can... you know", Eleanor referenced their mission.

Nat smiled softly at how she didn't have to ask for information from the file, Eleanor just automatically swept through all of the information that Natasha would want. "Okay so pretty much directly in the middle of the ship on the first level, there's a room with a lot of computers, it'll be easy to get to if we can avoid Rogers and Rumlow". Eleanor couldn't shake the feeling that there was a lack of information on these pages, such as demands, hijackers usually lay out demands as soon as they have control. It also didn't mention that the ship was SHIELD owned.

"Alright, I'm gonna let him know that we're almost here", Nat said as she pulled out her phone whilst driving, typing in the extraction message with a little smiley at the end.

"Nat", Eleanor deadpanned, "Don't text and drive please".

"Yeah, yeah, it's sent now and we didn't die, don't worry", Nat teased back and placed her hand on Eleanor's thigh to try and stop her from being annoyed, she had told her countless times not to text and drive. Luckily, the calming technique worked as Eleanor immediately relaxed.

It was less than thirty seconds later that they spotted the Captain in the distance conversing with someone that they didn't know. Eleanor was just thankful that he wasn't still on his run around the area, and that he was near the sidewalk, she did not fancy taking a jog over to him if he went to the wrong curb.

As Natasha pulled up next to the curb she revved her engine a bit to get his attention, and because her ego went up exponentially whenever she was in that car. Eleanor took this as her cue to unbuckle herself, unfortunately, and sit herself on the back-end of the centre console. At least it was squishy due to it acting as an armrest. She had to tuck her legs up to her chest so that they wouldn't get in the way and placed a hand on Nat's shoulder for balance.

The window then rolled down, "Hey fellas. Either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I'm here to pick up a fossil". That was a good one, Eleanor very audibly laughed.

"That's hilarious", Steve replied dryly but with a hint of amusement.

"How you doing?", the other guy with Steve bent down and said to Nat once Steve was in the car. He was very clearly flirting, so Eleanor frowned at this, and her frown only increased when Nat smoothly responded with "Hey", with a smirk.

Eleanor increased the grip on Nat's shoulder briefly to warn her to knock it off, Natasha just responded by pushing her legs into the side of Steve's chair.

Steve looked like he was about to tell Nat to knock it off as well, but Sam started talking to him again, "Can't run everywhere".

Steve chuckled, "No, you can't". Both women were confused but didn't really care about what they were talking about enough to try and get an explanation. And Natasha's level of caring plummeted to rock bottom when Eleanor's hand absentmindedly moved from her shoulder to play with the baby hairs on the back of her head. It was calming.

The calmness was immediately removed from the car, however, when Nat yet again smirked, rolled the window up and harshly pulled out into the road, making Eleanor fly backwards and she had to grip onto Nat's chair for dear life.

"Jesus fuck", she exclaimed after managing to reposition herself, Steve winced at this and Nat just laughed.

"You're supposed to hang on", she mocked.

"Hey, you're the one that dragged me on this death trap ride, do not test me".

Nat put a hand up in fake surrender as Steve turned to look at the two of them, "So, Fury wants us".

"Yeah, Rumlow will debrief us fully on the way there, but there's been a ship that has been hijacked by pirates, we need to get it back as well as those on board", Eleanor quickly explained. She wasn't going to go into too much detail as Rumlow would have more updated information ready to go on the jet, as well as some likely visuals.

Steve nodded in understanding as she handed the file over to him as Fury had asked. He smiled kindly at her for the explanation before looking at the contents of the pages. The guilt started bubbling up, she would follow the orders that Fury gave, but Steve was a good guy, she hated lying to him. She was already harbouring the secret that his apartment had been bugged. Eleanor couldn't even really think of a logical explanation as to why it was bugged, Steve didn't seem like the type of guy to betray SHIELD.

She put it down to people being overly paranoid. But, there's a point where it crosses a line, even for an intelligence agency. Steve fought for SHIELD against an alien army, and there was still a complete lack of trust and privacy, it didn't sit right with her. It also made her slightly paranoid about whether her privacy was breached without her knowing at any point in the past.

But, she had to put these thoughts aside to focus on the mission and not look suspicious. She was good at putting on a blank face when she had to, it was part of the job. So, she swallowed thickly, put the walls up, and continued playing with Nat's hair.