Chapter Text
“Dammit!” shotus someone in the hallway, banging on the wall.
Natasha’s wall, specifically. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but she’s got her early yoga class in the morning and she’s already running on very little. (She used to be better at this whole not-sleeping thing. Having a normal schedule is doing a number on her.)
This being the case, she tightens her ponytail and sticks her head out the door, saying, “Pretty sure that whatever happened, it wasn’t the wall’s fault.”
“Well, I can’t punch my roommate,” mutters the offending party. It’s the hot lacrosse girl from across the hall and two doors down: Hope. They’ve never spoken before, but Natasha makes it a point to know who people are, and she’s only human, of course she notices someone that attractive.
“Locked out?” Natasha asks, leaning against her doorframe.
“Worse,” Hope deadpans, rolling her eyes. “Socked out.” She gestures to her door, where a sock graces the knob - it’s not just knotted in the traditional fashion, but it’s arranged so it covers the keyhole. It could be tampered with, but it sends a clear message: enter at your own risk.
Still, Natasha offers, a little too casually, “I could get you in through that.”
Hope rolls her eyes. She wears disdain well. “I could get myself in, but I’d be yelled at or possibly forced to watch my asshole goth roommate fuck her asshole goth boyfriend,” she points out. “While this is an inconvenience, it’s probably less likely to aggravate and/or scar my psyche.”
Natasha considers this for a moment. She could let Hope go sleep in the common room, but she’s not sure how safe or permissible that is; she’s not sure how long this sexile is going to last, but Hope’s roommate Hela is, in fact, an asshole, so it could be all night. Luckily, the polite thing and the convenient thing line up this time around.
“I have a single,” Natasha says, even more casually. “You can come sleep in my room. If you want.”
“You’d be cool with that?” Hope asks, sounding a little surprised. “That’s unnecessarily generous.”
“Maybe I have ulterior motives,” Natasha says dryly. Dry is easier than casual. “Come on.”
“You haven’t even introduced yourself,” Hope points out, but she peers around to look at the colorful letters on Natasha’s door, courtesy of the RA (she hasn’t bothered to remove them, because it might make it look like she’s not quite as much of an antisocial disaster). “Natasha.”
“Lucky that you had a clue, then,” Natasha drawls. “Between the door and the beginning-of-year get-to-know-you nonsense.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Hope.”
“I, uh, moved in late,” Hope says, scratching the back of her neck. “Family stuff. So I missed all the nonsense. But you telling me your name is different than your door or an RA telling me your name no matter what.”
Natasha shrugs. She’d obviously known that Hope had missed the orientation activities (although she hadn’t known why, and she makes a mental note to watch what she says about families until she can do more research) but she’s found that most people get unnerved by her habit of observation. It’s clear that Hope had been expecting to slide under the radar, though. Unlikely as that is. Even just standing in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot impatiently, she’s stunning. She makes an impression.
Natasha doesn’t think that kind of thing about just anyone.
“Are you coming in or not?” Natasha asks after a moment.
Natasha ends up loaning Hope a pair of sleep shorts, too; she hadn’t packed for a sleepover when she left for the gym. She’s not shy about changing, which is probably a side effect of being an athlete, and Natasha’s not shy about enjoying the view, as it were.
Hope sits at the foot of the bed, looking slightly unsure of herself for the first time, and Natasha bites back a smile as she rummages around for her sleeping bag. “I need to get to sleep pretty soon,” Natasha says, “but I don’t care if you stay up as long as you keep it quiet.”
“You’re not going to watch me to make sure I don’t go rooting through your stuff?” Hope asks with a chuckle.
“Do I really seem that paranoid?” Natasha asks, although it wouldn’t surprise her if she already has a reputation for such things. “If the answer is yes, I don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I’m just paranoid about people being paranoid,” Hope says instead, shrugging. “Thanks, Dad.”
Natasha makes a mental note of that - although she doesn’t love discussing daddy issues, it might tie into the family stuff that Hope mentioned earlier - and clears her throat. Back to dry it is. “You’re too smart to rummage while I’m in the room.”
“I’d like to think so, anyway,” Hope says, clearly pleased that her off-color joke went over. Then she clears her throat in that way Natasha recognizes and says, in that same too-casual tone, “We can share the bed, you know. You don’t need to sleep on the floor.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow, covering for the fact that she’d been hoping (ha-ha) for that offer all along. “Oh, so it’s you with the ulterior motives,” she teases.
“Don’t worry,” Hope says, patting the mattress. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”