AN: First off MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FOR INFINITY WAR! THIS IS VERY HEAVILY BASED ON THE MOVIE! If you've already seen it I hope you're doing okay after it and recovering well, and also read on :)
As lovely and powerful as Natasha and Bruce's little moment of saying each other's names was, I wanted to see a little bit more of that reunion, so I wrote my own version. This takes place a little after that scene in the movie, but before they leave for Wakanda.
"Bruce…"
Bruce turns away from the window, hastily shoving the old phone he had been examining into his pocket, and sees Natasha walking towards him, her harsh combat outfit contrasting with the brightly coloured tubs in each hand. Bruce rubs a hand along his jaw, scratching at the stubble, and nods at her. She moves closer, her tense shoulders causing her neck to angle oddly. He hadn't seen her this uncomfortable around him since the first time they spoke after the Other Guy tried to kill her.
"I brought you some ice cream," she offers, holding a tub towards him.
"It's not…" Bruce mutters to himself, trailing off before he can finish the sentence. Natasha raises an eyebrow, daring him to continue.
"Nah, just something Tony said, I'm being ridiculous." He states firmly, taking the tub from her. He holds it into the light from the window to read the bouncy, friendly font declaring that it contains 'Hulka Hulka Burning Fudge'.
Dropping the tub to his side, Bruce faces her with his best disapproving glare, only causing her to laugh.
"It's actually quite good, y'know." she replies, opening her tub and pulling two spoons from her pocket. "At least open it."
"It better not be green." Bruce mutters, his concern only growing when Natasha eats a spoonful of ice cream rather than answering. Switching to glare at the ice cream instead, as if he could scare it into being an appropriate colour, he slowly slides the lid open, and lifts it a little. Bright green ice cream beams up at him from the dark tub. Lifting the lid off completely, he tilts the tub round and holds it in front of the smirking spy's face.
"I never said it wasn't." she shoots back, meeting his eyes over the ice cream, challenging him to contradict her.
"What's yours?" he asks, peering at her vanilla ice cream with red and blue swirls through it.
" 'Cap's All American'" she answers through a mouthful. "You can try some if you want." He takes the spoon she hands to him, but doesn't go near either ice cream with it.
"Did you get one?" he asks instead.
She doesn't answer again, this time reaching over and taking a spoonful of the green monstrosity she had brought him.
"Nice?"
She nods and returns to her own.
Sighing, Bruce slowly scoops some of the ice cream onto the spoon and examines it. He can feel Natasha smirking at him as he inspects it, trying to work out what is causing the ludicrous colour, and so, meeting her eyes, he forces the green mess into his mouth.
"Well?" she asks.
"I've tasted worse." he decrees.
They eat in silence, staring at the expensive glass building around them. In the distance they can hear Rhodey and Vision discussing something.
"So, you, ah, you changed your hair?" Bruce offers.
"Yeah, I thought it could do with a change, felt a bit classier somehow."
"It, uh, it looks good." He watches her smile gently as she mutters her thanks.
They lapse into silence again, until Bruce abruptly drops his spoon into the tub and pulls the old phone out of his pocket.
"Did you know about this?" he asks, offering it to her.
She takes the phone from him and flips it open, eyes scanning across the display as she reads the only contact saved in it.
"No, where did you…"
"Tony. He said something about everyone falling out and that this was the only way he had to contact Steve."
He watches Natasha take a breath and lift her neck a little straighter, before she hands the phone back to him.
"I knew he had some sort of arrangement with Stark, I didn't know this was what it was."
Pocketing the phone once more, Bruce turns back to his ice cream.
"What happened, Nat?" he asks quietly.
"It's complicated."
"Then explain it to me."
She eats another spoonful of ice cream, Bruce watching her expectantly.
"It was because of Sokovia." she says eventually. "Did Tony tell you what happened there?"
"He summarised." Bruce mutters, gesturing for her to continue.
"Well, the UN didn't like what we'd done. The lives we choose to sacrifice to save the rest of the world. So they tried to reign us in, put us under a list of rules, we'd only be sent out when a committee decided we should be."
"Bet Steve loved that." Bruce interjects.
"Of course. We were asked to sign up to it. They used you as an example, saying we couldn't continue to manage ourselves when we didn't even know where you were."
Bruce focuses intensely on his desert, carefully scrapping all of the ice cream from one side to the other until his spoon hits the bottom of the tub.
"As you can guess, Steve refused to sign, took a couple of others with him. Stark kept fighting for the Accords."
"And you?" Bruce asks, mushing some of his ice cream to liquid. "What did you do?"
"I, uh." she takes a deep breath. "I sided with Stark." she says quickly. Bruce looks up in surprise, opening his mouth to question her but she rushes on before he can. "I don't trust them, you know I hate being controlled like that, but if we waited any longer we were going to be brought in by force, I'd rather go quietly and be in a position to bargain for some control."
"You shouldn't have to barter for the right to make your own decisions." he replies sullenly.
"I knew you'd say that." she laughs, but there's no humour in it.
"And what about you?" she continues, flipping the questioning back onto him, "What have you been up to while all this has been going on?"
Bruce finishes off the last of his non-melted ice cream in three heaped spoonfuls before he answers.
"I was, uh, well, I was on some planet."
"What, like, in space?" Natasha interrupts.
He nods and continues, determinedly staring into the empty tub as he speaks.
"I don't remember much of it, I woke up as myself on the quinjet, but Thor told me the Other Guy was in charge for two years." He sees Natasha's eyes widen but he ploughs on before she can interrupt. "They used me as some sort of gladiator apparently, made him – me… fight in these tournament things. And before you ask, I don't know where Thor is, I don't even know how I got here, one minute I was on Thor's magic Asgard spaceship and the next Thanos shows up and I wake up here on Earth again."
He is still glaring at the empty ice cream tub, following the traces of green that stain the white cardboard, when he feels a gentle hand on his arm. He looks up to see she is closer than she was a moment before. She takes the tub and the spoon from his hands, and places his and her own side by side on the windowsill in front of them. Slowly she turns back to face him, and he watches wide eyed as she walks until she is right under his chin, before she reaches up and wraps her arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug and burying her face in his neck. He lifts his hands and hovers them over her body, first over her shoulders, then moving to settle around her waist. Immediately he feels her relax into the hug and mumble something against his neck.
"What'd you say?" he asks, lifting his face out of her hair.
He waits, but she doesn't reply. After a moment of holding her close he whispers into her hair,
"I missed you too, Nat."