AN: Hi! This has been a fun challenge to write :) It started out as something completely different and gradually morphed its way into this haha
I hope you all enjoy it!
The sun hadn't yet risen when Bruce shuffled into the kitchen, groggily rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand as he reached for a mug with the other.
"Morning, Doctor." Natasha called from the far side of the table, and he turned his head only to see her nose still buried in her book.
"Morning." he mumbled in reply as he made himself some coffee. "What're you reading?"
She folded a corner down, closed it, and slid it over the table towards him. Setting his mug on the counter, Bruce lifted the paperback and turned it over, wondering why the letters were refusing to resolve themselves into recognisable shapes. It took him far longer than her would have liked to admit to realise that she had been reading in Russian. He looked up to find her smirking at him, and he raised his eyebrows at her, trying to stop a smile spreading across his face at her strange sense of humour. Suddenly she launched herself forward, stretching her body across the small table to grab the book out of his hands. She arched an eyebrow, daring him to comment, but he had no idea what she had expected him to say. Instead, he turned back to the cupboards, hunting out a clean bowl to make his cereal, all the while listening carefully for the sound of a page turning so he would know she had gone back to ignoring him. It never came.
Bruce was almost certain he could feel her gaze burning into the back of his head. Deciding for once to trust his instincts, he was about to turn to look at her, when a door banged open in the hallway, and his chance to find out was gone.
"Yo, Nat!" a voice called, accompanied by the sound of heavy boots plodding quickly towards them. "Nat?"
Bruce turned as Clint strode in, dressed in jeans and a bright orange t-shirt with 'Ask us no questions and we'll tell you no lies' proclaimed in bold font across his chest.
"No need to wake the whole tower, Barton." Natasha reprimanded him, laughing as she did so.
"You know I always have stuff to tell you after I get back from-"
Natasha's fingers suddenly began tapping loudly on top of her closed book, and Clint stopped abruptly. Bruce tried to follow the Morse, but she was tapping it too quickly for him to keep up.
"Bruce!" Clint declared, turning to him. "What're you out of bed at this hour for?"
"I could ask you the same question." he shot back, forcing himself into a casual tone to cover his obvious attempt to figure out what he had missed in Natasha's message, yet one glance at Clint told him he wouldn't be getting an answer.
"But I won't." he sighed, pulling out a drawer and hunting through it for a spoon that looked reasonably clean.
As the conversation fell away the only sound in the kitchen was the clinking of cutlery, and Bruce kept rattling the utensils about, the cleanest spoon he was going to find clutched tight in his fist, desperate to avoid the silence that would descend if he stopped.
"I'm not in the mood to be debriefed over breakfast, Clint." Natasha said finally, and Bruce slammed the drawer shut in relief. "How about you fill me in later?"
"Sure." Clint replied uncertainly. Bruce watched with interest as he shifted his weight between his feet, before abruptly hauling his rucksack from his back and setting it on the table. He lifted a DVD from it, zipped it up, and slung it over his shoulder again.
"A present from a fan." he stated, presenting it to Natasha, the look which passed between them indicating that this was also a code, but one that Bruce couldn't follow.
"I'm always grateful for those." was Natasha's serious reply, taking it from him.
As he set off towards the corridor again, she called after him,
"That's quite a shirt, did a fan pick that out for you?"
He didn't acknowledge she'd even spoken as he walked away, but she laughed as if he had, and Bruce began to wonder why they bothered with codes when they were evidently well capable of telepathy.
Lifting his breakfast, he carefully moved to sit opposite her, glancing up between mouthfuls of cereal to watch her examining the cover of the DVD Clint had given her.
"What movie is it?" Bruce asked when he could wait no longer.
"I don't know." she replied immediately. "Never heard of it."
For the second time that morning, she slid the box across the table to him, and Bruce watched her warily in case it was suddenly pulled from his grasp again.
"Hey, I know this movie, this is that one about Russia!" he exclaimed, surprised. "I saw this once ages ago, it was on the tv at Christmas, I think. It's a kids' movie, right?"
He looked up at her, and she shrugged in response, seemingly completely unsurprised that Clint had brought her a movie aimed at children. A thought sped across Bruce's mind, and he clicked the box open, wondering if it was a spy thing and Barton was really giving her something else, maybe even some sort of classified disc, disguised as a kids' movie. His hopes fell when an image he recognised as the face of the main character smiled up at him from the top of the DVD itself, and a piece of paper drifted out of the case. Natasha moved to grab it, but he lifted it quickly and turned it over. It was a small section of a lined page, crudely torn from an exercise book, and bearing a child's drawing of a girl in a black outfit with bright red hair and a silver glittering crown on her head. Bruce was still turning over this new addition, his mind racing as he scrambled to fit together all the pieces of this puzzle, when Natasha's hands closed around the case, pinning the note inside it, and gently tugged both from his grasp. He let her take them, watching her carefully as she did so, but she kept her face unreadable. She began to walk, he soon realised, not back to her seat, but out of the room entirely.
"Natasha!" he called, unsure what he was going to say, but desperate not to leave this discovery unaddressed. "Look, whatever's going on here's obviously none of my business, but if you want someone to watch that with I'd be up for it, I won't ask any questions about where it came from, I promise."
Bruce wasn't sure where the offer had came from, he certainly hadn't planned to say it, and, now that he had, he realised that he was obviously going to have it rejected, and had probably just made the whole situation worse.
"It's not what you think, it's not my-" she began to explain, but he cut her off.
"I don't want to know." Bruce replied kindly, a sense of the what picture these pieces might make beginning to form in his mind, and hoping they could focus on that and not on what he'd just offered her. "That's yours and Barton's business."
She smiled at him, one of the few genuine smiles he'd ever seen from her.
"Thought you said this was a kids movie?" she asked, the smile morphing into her usual smirk, and Bruce's stomach clenched uncomfortably as he realised where this conversation was heading. "And you want to watch it?"
"I guess," he chuckled, scuffing one battered shoe against the other, "I haven't seen Anastasia in a long time, but I think it'll be worth revisiting."
"I'm going to be hearing from Barton and then in with SHIELD most of the day, does this evening suit you?" she asked, business-like, closing the box and turning it to read the description on the back.
Bruce looked up in surprise.
"Sure," he replied, his mind still full of gracious ways to accept rejection. "I'll be in the lab all day, just come and pick me up when you're free."
He cringed internally at his choice of words, and her tiny smirk indicated it had not gone unnoticed.
"Will do." she replied, a ghost of her earlier smile dancing around her lips.
As soon as she walked away Bruce's mind began spinning again, examining his evidence, verifying his conclusions, but all the while distracted by the stunning realisation that he might have just got himself a date with Natasha Romanoff.
Natasha smiled to herself as she was swept out of the world she had been reading by the sound of footsteps in the corridor - nobody else in the tower trailed his feet along the ground as if he were scared of offending the floor. Keeping her eyes glued to the page, despite not reading a single word, she called a greeting to him. She could feel his eyes on her as she steadfastly stared at a line halfway down the page, before she eventually heard him mutter back in reply. Knowing his back was turned by the sound of Tony's ridiculously expensive coffee maker, she allowed herself a small smile, glad of Bruce's company while she waited.
"What're you reading?" he asked groggily, the rough timbre of his just woken voice pulling her thoughts back to the present.
Pushing aside any guilt at messing with him when he was clearly barely awake, she marked her page and slid the book over to him. She watched in amusement as he blinked at it, as though this would turn the Russian words to English. He seemed to gradually realise what was wrong, running his hand through his dishevelled curls as he thought, before he looked up to meet her gaze, raising a questioning eyebrow which didn't fully disguise the spark of laughter in his eyes. Setting her feet against the bar of her stood, she pushed herself up and leant across the table to grab the book back from him. Once it was safely back in her possession, she sat back and waited, expecting a quick-witted comment from the doctor. She was surprised to feel a slight jab of disappointment as he turned away without replying, and she watched him carefully, weighing up his relaxed posture and his casual actions against his lack of answer, eventually concluding he was probably more tired than annoyed.
She was about to comment on his silence, to provoke him to talk to her, when the voice she had been waiting for echoed loudly down the hall.
"Yo, Nat! Nat?" Clint boomed, the heavy clunk of his boots echoing down the hall. He bounded into the kitchen, and Natasha supressed a laugh when she saw he was wearing the Harry Potter shirt Cooper had made him buy on holiday the year before. 'Perfect for a spy' she remembered him announcing when Clint had first worn it.
"No need to wake the whole tower, Barton." she shot at him, hoping the use of his last name would alert him to the fact that they were not alone.
"You know I always have stuff to tell you after I get back from-"
Natasha felt her pulse speed up, unsure how to stop Clint, but determined not to let the safety he had built for his family be ruined by her desire for company. She berated herself for not leaving Bruce sooner to wait by the door, as her mind simultaneously spun through thousands of possible options to shut Clint up, each less subtle than the last.
Running out of time, she began tapping out the Morse they had invented as shorthand for each other's names, chewing a little on the inside of her cheek as she waited for him to notice. She caught herself from letting out a sigh of relief when Clint immediately responded, his posture stiffening as his razor-sharp vision narrowed in on her hand. Conscious that Bruce likely knew Morse Code, she tapped out a rapid message, riddled with mistakes from the speed, looking straight into Clint's eyes as he deciphered the letters she was sending. After only a few words, understanding crept across his face, and she was still frantically tapping when he turned to address Bruce. She stopped as soon as he did, abandoning the word she had been making, and taking in a deep breath. She allowed her focus to drift away from the conversation as she calmed her heartrate, relief flooding over her at avoiding a guilt she knew she could never bear, and only bringing herself back to the present when she realised that Bruce was clattering about in the cutlery drawer far louder and for far longer than necessary.
"I'm not in the mood to be debriefed over breakfast, Clint." she announced, hoping conversation would put an end to the racket. It worked immediately as Bruce grabbed a spoon and closed the drawer as soon as she spoke.
"How about you fill me in later?" she asked Clint, sharing a look of confusion with him as they wondered what the noise had been about.
"Sure." he replied, and she saw the battle flit across his face as he debated with himself whether he could say any more in front of Bruce. Setting his bag on the table, he lifted a DVD from it and handed it to her.
"Present from a fan." he told her, the earnestness in his eyes willing her to comprehend who the movie was really from. She was careful to let nothing show on her face, but inside she was as overjoyed as she always was, to be reminded she had a family to think of her when she wasn't there.
"I'm always grateful for those." she replied seriously, trying to convey simultaneously as much and as little emotion as possible in the hope that Clint would understand how much she meant the words.
He nodded almost imperceptibly, and began to leave.
"That's quite a shirt, did a fan pick that out for you?" she called, letting out a laugh as his step faltered, and laughing even more when he walked on without rising to her taunt, evidently realising he could say nothing in response with Bruce in the room.
Once he was gone she lifted the DVD again, examining the cover image of a neatly drawn red headed girl holding a sparkly necklace, with a generically handsome cartoon man drawn just to her left, his arms folded over his chest and a roguish smile on his face. This, almost more than the pompous title 'Anastasia', made Natasha fairly sure that she was going to hate this movie. She turned it over to read the back, confused as to why Lila would send her such a movie, and slightly irritated at Clint for encouraging his daughter to watch any story where the key focuses seemed to be men and jewellery.
"What movie is it?" Bruce piped up from across the table, in between shovelling cereal into his mouth.
"I don't know." she replied, turning away from the case's claims that is would 'captivate the entire family' and sliding it over to him. "Never heard of it."
"Hey, I know this movie!" he exclaimed as he turned the box over to read the title. "This is that one about Russia."
Natasha's mind caught on the word, wondering if this was the connection Lila had made, but Bruce had already ploughed on.
"I saw this once ages ago, it was on the tv at Christmas, I think. It's a kids' movie, right?"
He looked up at her for an answer, but she merely shrugged. It certainly seemed to be, but acknowledging it would risk too many questions about why she had a children's movie. She looked on, intrigued, as Bruce transformed from the bumbling, anxious teammate she was used to, not into a green rage monster as Tony so eloquently put it, but into the extremely qualified Dr Bruce Banner, employing all seven PhDs to investigate Lila's DVD. She would have been amused by it, if she didn't think it well within his capabilities to work out exactly what Clint was doing from just this one clue. He opened the box, and something fluttered out. Natasha reached out to catch it, but Bruce was faster, turning it over to see the other side. If Bruce was speaking Natasha couldn't hear him over her heartbeat pounding in her ears, distracting her as she tried to focus. Pushing her hair back from her face, she stood up and walked slowly to the side of the table, so that she was in easy distance to reach out and place her hands on each side of the open case. Bruce made no effort to resist her as she tugged the box gently from him, still lost deep in his thoughts. Both relief and panic swept over her once more as she saw the page was one of Lila's drawings, presumably of her, with a large silver hat on, and nothing written underneath. She knew that could feasibly fit with Clint's cover story of a fan sending it to her, just as much as she knew that Bruce would see straight through it, and if he didn't work it out now, he would soon.
She had to tell Clint.
No.
She had to apologise to Clint.
It took all of her training not to let any of her guilt show on her face, and she met Bruce's eyes as calmly as she could as she backed out of the kitchen, knowing Clint would be unpacking in his room.
"Natasha!" he called suddenly. "Look, whatever's going on here's obviously none of my business, but if you want someone to watch that with I'd be up for it, I won't ask any questions about where it came from, I promise."
She stopped abruptly, slightly ashamed to find her feet positioned ready to fight.
"It's not what you think, it's not my-" she began to ramble, with no idea where the sentence was going, or even how she might stop it before she tangled this into an even bigger mess.
"I don't want to know." Bruce broke in, calmly stopping her explanation before it begun. "That's yours and Barton's business."
Natasha felt an uncomfortable heat beginning to creep across her face, not only at the awkwardness of accepting a kindness from someone who didn't owe it to her, but at the realisation that Bruce was always going to react with compassion, and that she should have known better than to think he'd expose Clint's family or risk putting them in danger. She ducked her head away, uncomfortable looking at him after the assumptions she had made about him, but he met her eyes kindly and sent her a gentle smile. Without her permission, she felt her own face mirroring his expression.
Her heart was beginning to thump in her ears again, this time for a completely different reason.
"Thought you said this was a kids' movie?" she asked spontaneously, willing her voice to sound cool and collected. "And you want to watch it?"
"I guess," Bruce replied, chuckling awkwardly, "I haven't seen Anastasia in a long time, but I think it'll be worth revisiting."
For the first time, Natasha allowed herself to consider his offer. She had watched movies with Bruce before, but it was usually more of an accident, they had never planned something like this before. She thought through her schedule
"I'm going to be hearing from Barton," she answered, allowing her vagueness to acknowledge that they both knew this wasn't a mission debriefing. "And then in with SHIELD most of the day, does this evening suit you?" she asked, cringing as she heard her own voice sounding overly distant and professional from her attempts to mask her uncertainty.
She avoided looking at him as he answered, clicking the box closed and turning it over to read the synopsis on the back again.
"Sure. I'll be in the lab all day, just come and pick me up when you free."
She smirked a little at his choice of words, but it soon fell away again into a genuine smile as she saw the open, honest expression the renowned scientist wore as he offered to watch Lila's ridiculous princess movie with her.
"Will do." she promised him.
Feeling uncomfortable under his gaze, she turned towards the corridor where she knew Clint would be waiting for her, weighing up in her mind how much she would tell him of what had happened. She would have to tell him that Bruce knew about Laura and the kids, and probably also how it had happened, but as she walked out of the kitchen she decided she'd rather not tell him that in the process she might have just got herself a date with Bruce Banner.
AN: I couldn't resist the movie being Anastasia after all the Natasha Romanoff/Anastasia Romanoff internet fan theories etc haha
This was a challenging type of story to write, but I really enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought of it, I'm interested to know which perspective people find they like better, in this story or in general Bruce/Natasha fics :)