As usual, I'm writing within a brand new fandom with an idea that just wouldn't leave me alone. I know these two aren't a popular couple within the fandom, but I love them together; two broken people finding solace and acceptance together.
Nothing belongs to me, I'm just playing with other people's ideas.
"Bruce."
"Nat."
On dark, particularly self-loathing nights, she had allowed herself to imagine this meeting, this reunion. Thought through plans, all the things she would do to him when…and then, eventually, if…she saw him again.
She wanted to smack his face hard, hard enough to leave a mark that would bruise. She wanted to beg for forgiveness, even though she never had and didn't think she could. She wanted to kiss him, throw him over her shoulder and haul him back to her room to fuck until they both passed out. She wanted to keep pretending like nothing had ever happened between them, that she was still Natasha Romanoff, untouchable, cold, and distant.
Mostly, she wanted to go back to that one moment of clarity and decision. She had felt so sure, so right, so absolute. So in control, even while she pushed him out of his. She wanted to change her fucking mind. To be loyal to Bruce, and let the world burn. To run off with him like he'd ask. Live a life of peace, rather than destruction.
….she didn't do any of those things. Instead, she just said,
"Bruce."
She had imagined what he might say. What she hoped, but also what she expected, but also how he might surprise her. She was hard to surprise, but he made her feel off kilter, like no one else. She was unshakeable, unflappable, more engineered than biologically produced. But so was he. And so he could match her beat for beat.
She thought he might be the one to beg for forgiveness. He probably even knew how, maybe had before. And he would be better at it than she'd ever be. She imagined him hulking out. This one split, alternated back and forth. Hulk trying to kill her on Banner's behalf, standing up for his hurt other. Hulk thanking her for choosing him, for being the one to take his side for once. In some absurdist moments, hugging her and pressing a delicate, huge kiss pressed to her entire face. Some wild, naïve part of her wanted Bruce to kiss her. To forget their past transgressions, to be overwhelmed by the mere sight of her, after all these years.
He might confront her about her betrayal, and rightfully so, scream at her and blame her. Hurt her with his words, like she had hurt him with her hands, with her choices. He might pretend as if nothing had ever been between them, as if she had imagined their tension and connection in some heady day dream. As if the kiss had been unreal, a shared delusion rather than the only moment of reality that truly mattered.
He said, "Nat."
Two fucking years. And he still thought he had the right to call her that. That he had any right. That he had…fuck.
She had planned for, considered, even imagined countless scenarios. But never how pure and haunting it would feel to hear her pet name on his lips again. So much, so near, and not anything close to enough.
He hadn't thought, or imagined, or planned. He had been a mental prisoner, with access to very little processing power. Most of what he did have, when he had it, was used in attempts to escape, to gain control, or to convince his other half that those were options to consider. That his freedom had a price.
He had dreamed though. Dreams had always been hard to delineate ownership of. Especially when he had been in control, the anger dreams were just as likely to be his and the gentle whims the other guy's. Now, it felt more like they were sharing that unconscious space, spinning and weaving it together. And what they both yearned for there, more than anything, was Natasha. Was Red. Was Nat.
Even after he had replayed her utter betrayal countless times. Even when he remembered that she chose Hulk in a way that shook both parts of a shared whole to their core. Even when in his darkest thoughts, he imagined her telling him, in detail, just how she had never loved him, how every move had been a calculated risk prevention. That no one would ever love him.
Because for every shared nightmare, there was a shared beauty. Natasha fighting fiercely alongside him in battle, pausing to flash him a grin and a wink as she skillfully disarmed and took down an attacker, like it was easy. Like it was breathing. Red's hand outstretched, gently stroking him as she sang a balm to his soul. The fleeting connection of those moments, when she and the other guy and him were one, in balance and at peace. Nat's lips on his, that one blistering moment of fiery redemption and perfection that had made every fiber of his being sing and rejoice and whisper, finally.
Natasha tangled up with him, both parts of him in some metaphysical way, connected in a way he hadn't thought to imagine he would or even could be again. Finding salvation between her thighs. Listening to her moaning out her pleasure as she whispered his name over and over. Feeling her body pressed to every part of his, seeing love shining from her gaze as he was finally able to let go. Finally, able to be one.
Red's hands stroking warmly along his length, unafraid and in fact happy and willing and satisfied with bringing him pleasure. Her tongue flicking out to lap over him, tearing a deep, low moan from his throat. Feeling her acceptance as well as her talented hands on him. Red turning over to bear her stomach to him, accepting his as gentle as possible touch without fear. Sharing the pleasure he felt with her, pleased that he too could make her feel so good. Crying out his name, loving him just as much as she did Banner.
Nat leaning against his shoulder while they sat on a porch swing at a house that was theirs and no one else's, where they belonged to no one but each other. Red sitting in a sunny field with his large head filling her lap, stroking him down and back and safe after a perfectly contained exercise. A little red-haired miracle girl sitting at a lab desk with him, questioning everything, while her mother smiled at the pair.
When he saw her, all he could think of was that imagined child meeting the cold, blond stranger that spoke his name like it was nothing.
"Bruce."
How do you bring someone who is disassociating back to reality, back to the present? What if you don't even know what their reality, their present is? What if you've been physically absent and mentally chained for so long that you no longer know if the disassociation is just that, or something even more frightening. Change. Growth.
A psychology 101 standard nudged at the back of his mind. Intimate familiarity can be used to cause some recall of the self that is lost.
His self is lost, and so is the intimate familiarity. Not just lost, but destroyed, burned, and ashes scattered. But he just can't help grasping at straws.
"Nat."