Inspired by and dedicated to natashavevo on tumblr, who directly inspired the AU this fic is based in. She's the real MVP.
This was pretty entirely written as an exercise to break through the writers block I have on a handful of WIPs I'm struggling through, and what was intended to be a short ficlet grew larger than intended. It was a nice change of pace to focus on how bad Natasha and Bruce are at flirting and emotional intelligence, because they're my favorite hot mess. In addition to Bruce/Natasha, secondary pairing include Clint/Laura and Sam/Steve, with mentions of Pepper/Rhodey/Tony and Maria/Sharon.
Warnings: profanity, alcohol use, brief references to drug use, minor sexual content
Thor up and knocks it out of the park for bad ideas on a Thursday, while Steve is banging the television remote against the arm of his chair like he thinks he can jump start a signal if he hits hard enough. Clint is egging him on.
"I think we should get a cat," Thor says.
Clint and Natasha shoot him down in unison, while Bruce says, "cats are nice," because under that decade old pullover and those giant nerd glasses Bruce is the kind of guy who starts shit because he wants to see what'll shake out. Nat's pretty sure the others just think he's oblivious, but he plays that up something fierce, and she's got him figured out.
Wordlessly, Steve points to the list of house rules taped above the television. Thor looks like he's contemplating pushing Steve to see how far he'll go, but Steve slams the remote down and says, "Absolutely not. House Rule #3. 'No pets, live or robotic.'"
Rule #3 is bracketed by "2. No private things in public places," and "4. Tony's visiting hours are limited to two hours on weekdays, four on weekends." It was hardly the most contested point when the five of them put the list together, but right now Thor looks ready to come out swinging.
Steve repeats, "No pets," like the hand of god coming down in their living room, and bangs the remote against the chair one last time for emphasis. More or less in complete violation of basic laws of electronics, this last slam does the trick, and the television flickers on.
Natasha shoves Clint's feet off her thigh while Steve cues up A Zed and Two Noughts to play for movie night because he's got an MFA and he'll be damned if he lets anyone forget it. Bruce leans in to whisper, "Guy loves his rules," and Natasha doesn't shove him away. Bruce stays close until he falls asleep on her, fifteen minutes in, like always.
Clint gives her a very speaking look, but Natasha still doesn't push Bruce away.
Bruce has a dozen books spread on his bed around his laptop and he looks like he's serious contemplating using them all for kindling, so Nat thinks that intervening is a favor to the entire building.
"Want a drink?" she says, sticking her head around the doorjam to Bruce's room. "Clint and I are taking Laura out to celebrate her actually siting for her Bar yesterday."
Bruce looks like he hasn't stepped away from his computer in three days. It's clearly been that long since he shaved, and with the rate he grows hair he's halfway to a real beard. Bruce isn't great at remembering that basic needs beyond research exist, so chances are good that they'll need to get some food and water in him before he gets within shouting distance of the bar. "I shouldn't," he groans, which is a blatant lie because every single person in their flat knows he's not set to defend his thesis for another eight months. "But, yeah. Yeah, I want a drink."
"Change your shirt," Natasha tells him. "You look like you haven't in a week."
Bruce groans. "Probably not far off." His knees creak ominously when he unfolds from behind his computer and stands. "Is it a nice bar?" he asks as he shucks his tee shirt and begins rifling through his drawers.
"It's Clint and Laura's favorite."
"Ahh," he pulls out a new tee shirt and pulls it over his head. "So no need to dress up or shave."
"Don't," Natasha tells him. "It pisses Clint off every time you accidentally grow a beard. He can't do better than that creepy goatee he's sporting again."
"Well," Bruce laughs, "if it'll piss Clint off."
Nat's glad that they're in agreement.
Clint and Laura's favorite bar is barely half a step above a dive, some place in Bed-Stuy that Laura had found years ago as an undergrad. It reminds Nat a little of a tamer, version of the places her dad used to do business, without the Russian expats and with an excess of faded Americana.
"This looks like the kind of place you get stabbed," Bruce grumbles as he follows her in. He's from small town Ohio; his idea of a dive bar is still anything dirtier than the pub from Cheers.
"Only if you're looking to get stabbed," Nat tells him. "Chin up. I'll keep you safe."
"Reassuring," Bruce sighs, but he follows her to the bar, anyways.
"I hear congratulations are in order," she says as they approach Clint and Laura's table, two beers in Bruce's hands. Laura's grin is so wide when she turns to see them that Nat can't help smiling back. Natasha loves Laura because they both love Clint, and because Laura is so inherently good. She's the All American success story neither she nor Clint were ever going to be able to pull off, rural Appalachian girl from coal country who went to Columbia Law. Laura Haney is the kind of person who makes you want to be better, who is kind in an uncomplicated sort of way, and Natasha loves her for that too.
Laura pulls her into a hug as soon as she's in arms reach. She squeezes a little too tight, but she's one of the four people Nat will hug who don't already live with her, and there's not a lot Nat won't let Laura get away with, besides. "I'm glad you're here," she says.
"Wouldn't miss it," Natasha says, and steps away from Laura to give Clint hell about his goatee. "Thought this was a special occasion, Barton," she snipes. "And you show up with that on your face?"
Clint scowls and glares at Bruce instead of her. "We can't all be Sasquatch."
Bruce is maybe a foot too short to convincingly be called Sasquatch, but he's nearly hairy enough. He shrugs good naturedly and lets Laura pull him into a hug, too. He's about as much of a hugger as Nat is, and he freezes up for a moment when Laura wraps around him. "Congratulations, Laura" he offers as he visibly forces his back to relax. "I'm glad to hear it went well."
"Bruce, thanks," she pulls back to look him over, gripping him by both shoulders. "I haven't seen you in ages."
"It's because he doesn't leave our apartment anymore," Clint tells her, "except to go to the labs."
"I went grocery shopping on Monday," Bruce offers mildly.
"Sounds wild," Laura teases. She lets go of him to sit back down, and Bruce drops down on the stool Natasha had pulled out for him.
"Tell me about your exciting post-law school plans," Natasha says. Laura's more than happy to take the wheel. She says she's marketing herself to half a dozen environmental law firms, but she's being modest; they all know the firms are the ones courting her.
"It's all dependent," Laura keeps insisting, "all of these opportunities dry up if I find out I tanked."
Nat shakes her head. "You didn't."
Clint can't wipe the dumb grin off his face any more than Laura can, and Nat suspects she looks the same. Laura had come into their lives when the three of them were all at their worst, struggling to pull the money together to stay in law school, or just to stay in Harlem, Natasha fresh out of nasty business in Miami, and Clint completely lost. These days, they're all nearly real adults, with jobs and futures and everything that follows.
Bruce excuses himself to head to the restroom, and the moment he's gone Laura turns on Nat like there's blood in the water. "Did you come here together?"
"We certainly walked in together, didn't we?" Natasha snips. She's big enough to admit to herself that she's invested in Bruce's well-being in a slightly more than friendly way, but she's not quite honest enough to admit it out loud. When you have the kind of childhood that involves learning to use a gun out of necessity, you also learn to play things close to the chest.
"You know what I mean," Laura says.
"He hadn't taken a break from his thesis in days, and when he gets twitchy, he tends to call Tony over and accidentally set things on fire," Natasha says. "I thought it was in everyone's best interests to get Bruce away from his research."
"Thank God," Clint cuts in. He and Tony get on not at all, like a cage fight waiting to happen. Tony's absentminded excess and the wealth he throws around as an afterthought rub against Clint's nerves, and Nat's pretty sure Clint has spent the last half year desperately waiting for Tony to give him a reason to go for the throat.
"That's not the only thing you're taking an interest in, huh?" Laura presses, refusing the distraction Clint offers. Her take no prisoners approach to interpersonal relationships always impressed Nat, but it feels different now that she's on the other end of it. Laura's looking her in the eye like she's daring Natasha to deny it, to make something up, to throw the first punch, whatever. Maybe Nat will. Laura considers this a kindness, not letting go when she gets her teeth in her friends' business, forcing them to make choices she thinks will do them good in the end.
"If you're asking me if I'm interested in dating my roommate, who I'm sharing an apartment with for the foreseeable future," Natasha says, "the answer would be no."
"Sure," Laura says. Her smiles promises that she can smell the lie on Natasha. "But I'm not asking if you think dating him would be smart, I'm telling you that I can see you're into him, regardless."
"Lies and slander," Natasha says as casually as she knows how, but it's about as effective as lying to Clint. There's no point in trying to fake out somebody who knows how you lie. Might as well own up and save yourself the trouble.
New York City real estate is expensive, and Bruce, Clint, Natasha, Steve, and Thor are not expensive people. They make it work. Natasha had come to New York to take her dual citizenship to the bank for a job at the Russian embassy. Clint had tagged along for lack of any more compelling options, and they'd followed an ad for roommates they'd found posted on the bathroom door of a bar straight to Steve and Bruce's apartment. They both wanted out of Florida; Clint was spinning his wheels with nothing to show for ever leaving Iowa and Natasha growing a little too close to her father's footsteps for comfort. New York was for starting over, for starting better, on the right side of the law.
Steve and Bruce don't talk about how they ended up living together, but from what Natasha cad piece together, it involved Bruce's friend Tony, an accidental drug run, and Bruce getting booted from his old flat by an ex they carefully don't talk about. About a month after Clint and Nat had moved in, Steve's friend Thor started sleeping on the couch after being disowned by his rich dad. Thor kind of never moved off of the couch.
It works until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, Nat crashes on Sharon and Maria's couch for a night or three and they make mediocre cocktails while Natasha complains about men and about living with them. She doesn't think about moving out.
Apartment movie night is normally an exercise in frustration, as all five of them seem hellbent on forcing their own taste in film down the others' throats. Steve only likes independent film and Clint only likes action movies and Thor only likes historical dramas and so on and so forth. It's a weekly cold war at this point.
Thor has sent an email to their flat's email thread announcing that they'll be watching Shakespeare and Love as his choice this Thursday, which Natasha has no intention of doing. She makes other plans.
Bruce likes foreign film; they all say he's kind of an elitist when it comes to his media, but he says it's just because he doesn't mind reading the subtitles. He also went to the midnight premier of the new Star Wars with Clint and Tony and Rhodey, so the independent foreign language film thing might just be because he's a giant nerd, more than anything else. Natasha doesn't really like reading her films, but she's willing to compromise to get what she wants.
She forwards Thor's email to Bruce with a link to buy tickets for Thursday evening to a screening of some film she's never heard of. In New York City, it's fairly easy to find some indie theatre screening something she's never heard of, in English or otherwise, any night of the week. With it, she writes, 'in case you're looking for an alternative movie night.'
For a guy who checks his email irregularly at best, Bruce responds fairly quickly to tell her that he's in, has been wanting to see Mustang for a while, and that, no offense to Thor, but he would be more than happy to take a pass on this month's historical romance.
So maybe Laura wasn't wrong, but she wasn't completely right, either. Nat doesn't want to take a risk on asking out her roommate, not when the potential fallout is so much higher than just being told no. She isn't interested in turning a largely peaceful cohabitation into a minefield, just because she can't keep it in her pants. Still, Bruce is something she wants.
She figures a soft trial run can't hurt anyone. Take him out, call it anything but a date, see what happens. Expect nothing, but leave the door open. It's not a cop out, it's a precaution; if she doesn't actually ask him out, there won't be any fires to put out if he lets her down gently.
On Thursday, Nat arranges to meet Bruce outside the theatre straight after work. There's some dignitary coming in from Moscow, and the whole embassy's on overtime, greasing wheels and praying for manageable fallout. Bruce is waiting when she arrives. She hasn't gotten out of work before eight in weeks and she's just brushing up on running late, but he doesn't look too bothered.
"Work keeping you overtime again?" Bruce asks.
"I live for diplomacy," Natasha shrugs. "Sorry about the delay, though."
"Nah, we're still waiting on Pepper anyways."
"Pepper. Right."
Well, she kind of dug her own grave on this one. There wasn't really a way to tell someone you wish they hadn't invited their friend on your date when you were refusing to acknowledge it was a date. In hindsight, she could have afforded to be slightly more direct.
"And I forgot to ask if you'd be okay with me inviting Pepper, didn't I? She'd mentioned wanting to see this so I passed it on," Bruce realizes. He looks a little floored by his own mistake, a little like he's not sure if it should be a big deal or not. "Shit, that's socially inappropriate, isn't it?"
"Relax," Natasha tells him. "I like Pepper."
And she does like Pepper, but maybe a soft trial run on dating was not a winning idea. If she wants this, she's going to have to try a little bit harder and call things what they are. It's cost benefit analysis, nothing can be gained without a little risk.
After the movie, Pepper pulls Natasha aside on their way out of the theatre. "I wasn't third wheeling, was I?" Pepper seems genuinely concerned about this, which Natasha supposes must come from dating Tony and Rhodey both, and the healthy sense of interpersonal respect, communication, and awareness that's got to come with that territory.
"Probably not," Natasha says. She's rolling with things because she really does like Pepper and because she's pretty sure this was an honest fumble on Bruce's part, not a subtle hint. It doesn't mean she's not a little frustrated, but it's all self-directed. She's the one who thought a trial run date that she didn't frame as a date would work out as planned.
Pepper laughs. "Next time you ask him out, you should let Bruce know that inviting friends is kind of a mood killer."
Natasha doesn't bother to argue with her. Pepper was emotionally much smarter than she was, though they could go toe to toe on political savvy. Pepper had probably seen this coming months ago, while Nat was still trying to process that her type apparently now included scruffy guys in glasses. "Technically speaking, I don't think I let him know that I was asking him out," Natasha admits.
"There's always room for improvement," Pepper says. She winces, just a little, and Nat can't really hold it against her.
Bruce wanders in wearing his glasses perched in his hair and a frown that looked like the birthing pangs of a migraine. "Hey, Nat," he says, "you haven't seen my glasses around, have you? Nobody's seem them, and I can't find them anywhere."
Natasha laughs. She likes this about Bruce, that he's not so smart that he doesn't ever need help, that he's not too proud to know he sometimes needs it. She could use a distraction, so she lets him become one. The aggressively redacted briefings she's skimming and all the red tape she's wading through are making her feel an itch somewhere in the territory between daring and reckless. "C'mere," she says. Bruce frowns a little more, but he does what he's told. "It's cute when you're confused."
Nat plucks his glasses off of his head when he reaches her and slips them on for him.
Bruce says, "oh," like he's discovering something.
Natasha hopes it's something good.
The worst thing about Bruce is Tony. Which is to say that Natasha kind of really likes Bruce—a lot more than he seems to realize, despite her best efforts—but she's not quite as hot on his other half. Still, she likes Tony more than most of her roommates do, so if Bruce won't remember to kick him out, it's for the collective good that she's the one to step in.
Rule #4, she texts Bruce, after Tony has spent two and a half hours on their couch, camped out with Bruce and a circuit board that's been smoking ominously for the last forty minutes.
Already? Bruce texts back, almost immediately. From the kitchen, Nat can hear Tony loudly demanding to know who could possibly be more interesting than him and their future joint Nobel Prize. Natasha drifts to the doorway to watch. For all the high bandwidth it takes to spend too much time around Stark, he's fun when you wind him up and watch him go.
Past due. Nat replies. Make it quick, we've got plans.
"I can't go now, Bruce," Tony booms, arms flying like a turbine. "This is innovation, we are perched at the threshold of greatness, gumdrop!"
Bruce just points at the closest House Rules flyer and waits for Tony to tire himself out.
"Rules are for pikers!" Tony yells, "not for genius!" He goes through this particular routine two times a week most weeks, but it's still fun to spectate. Tony's never quite banked his outrage over Rule #4. "If I wanted to deal with assigned visiting hours, I would have gone to prison years ago!"
"You still can," Bruce reassures him. "You could go to prison so easily."
"Thanks, babe," Tony says, patting the back of Bruce's hand.
"You boys working on something interesting?" Natasha asks, just because she likes the way Tony startles when she sneaks up on him.
"Hey Nat," Bruce smiles. "We're just fixing our toaster oven."
"Jesus fuck!" Tony yelps.
"Our toaster oven was broken?"
Bruce shrugs. "Technically? No."
"Where do you even come from?" Tony wails. Natasha wants to hear more about this technicality on the toaster oven and Bruce is just used to Stark's theatrics, so Tony is dismissed entirely as background noise. On the coffee table, what Nat now recognizes as a part of the toaster oven is still giving off smoke; she thinks that ought to be more concerning to Tony than her sudden appearance.
"We thought we could probably improve it if we updated a few obsolete parts," Bruce says. He shrugs at Natasha's raised eyebrows. "It's improved, more or less."
"Maybe less." This takes the number of kitchen appliances Nat can safely cook with down to one. She guesses she's just going to need Bruce to cook for her in recompense. Her cross to bear. "Don't you two have jobs? Theses to write?"
"Research and development," Stark announces, waving his hands to survey the smoking mess on the coffee table. There's no way Stark Industries is branching out into kitchenware, not with Starks Sr. and Jr. so hellbent on bioenergy, but Stark's ability to pull pseudoscience out of his ass is unprecedented. He could make the wheel sound like an innovation, if he wanted to badly enough. Bruce just shrugs. His thesis is on the observer effect and gamma rays. They both know he has no angle to play here.
"Research and develop your own kitchenette," Natasha tells Tony, turning to pointedly look at the front door.
"Jesus, fine," Tony grumbles. "See if I upgrade your fridge for free."
"Our fridge is fine," Bruce assures Tony, as they start packing up their things.
She'd feel more like an asshole kicking Tony out if this didn't happen once a week, and if Rule #4 hadn't been instituted after Tony set part of their armchair on fire showing off a test robot to Bruce. But she's got plans involving Bruce, and as much as she does grudgingly like Tony, he's not any part of her latest, more direct, attempt to get a date. "I'm sure we'll see you tomorrow," Natasha tells him, watching Bruce herd him toward the front door.
"You won't," Tony insists. "Bruce is coming over to play at my place tomorrow."
Bruce sighs. "You know how I feel about your sex den."
"More positively than I feel about Rogers' goddamn 10 Commandments," Tony says. "And I'm telling Pepper and Rhodey you called our place a sex den.
"Clint's called it worse," Bruce says, pushing the front door closed. "Goodbye, Tony."
Tony yells something undistinguishable through the closed door. It's probably something nasty about Clint, but that's pretty standard practice. Bruce turns to face her, and the look on his face is halfway between belligerent and apologetic. He probably does feel bad about the toaster oven, but he wouldn't throw Tony under the bus by admitting he was wrong.
"I'm going to guess that you were waiting to fill me in on those plans you alluded to until Tony left?" Bruce asks. His glasses are slipping down his nose so he has to watch her from over horn rimmed frames, and god help her, but Nat's pretty into that look on him.
"Obviously," she says. "Thought we could grab dinner."
"Cool," Bruce smiles. "I like dinner."
"And I was thinking you could cover the check since you're breaking kitchen appliances again."
He laughs. "Fair enough. Are we meeting the others there?"
"Nah," Natasha shrugs. "They're all busy." She'd made sure of it about a week in advance, actually. She didn't really believe in leaving room for human error. "Just us."
Bruce nods. Clearly the significance of that is lost on him. He's working on his second doctorate, yet somehow can't figure when someone is hitting on him with gusto. "Let me just grab my windbreaker."
On the bright side, it's pretty cute for a windbreaker.
Their lunch has been on the table for less than three minutes before Rhodey's giving her his most genuinely unimpressed look. "Seriously?" he asks. "That was the best you've got?"
Rhodey is one of the only reasonable people Nat's friends with, and one of the only aspiring politician she likes. He takes no shit, which is probably a good quality while working in the mayor's office, but he's merciless. You bite, he bites back.
Natasha shrugs. "I've never needed to actually flirt with intent before."
"I can tell," Rhodey sighs. He tugs her phone out of her hand to reread the text she just sent Bruce. Getting too hot for you? It's ostensibly about the toaster oven. "Jesus, reading this is even worse the second time around."
"Eat your pasta, Rhodes."
Nat and Rhodey have a standing monthly lunch date to talk politics, which inevitably turns into companionable bitching about their personal lives every week. In between updates on the lobbyists Rhodey's been bickering with in the Mayor's office and the continuing saga of visiting Russian dignitaries, Nat's been fielding and narrating Bruce's text updates about the goddam toaster oven. She doesn't think Rhodey would be as amused by that situation if Tony had reverse engineered their kitchen appliances, instead.
"I'm just saying," Rhodey continues, "that you text like a middle schooler with a crush. The secondhand embarrassment is overwhelming."
"You want to take the reins?"
He spears a noodle on his fork and points it at her for emphasis. "Absolutely not. I'm having fun just watching."
"Glad someone is," Nat grumbles.
"Have you tried bad pick up lines?" Rhodey is trying not to laugh. "Maybe you could write Bruce a haiku."
"Do haikus do it for Pepper and Tony?"
"At no point in my life was I ever so hopeless I needed to write poetry for a guy," Rhodey says. He pauses, then admits, "I did stand outside Pepper's window and recite Shakespeare once in college. She was actually pretty into it."
"Maybe I'll try that," Natasha sighs. She stabs a fork into her lasagna like she's trying to pin it in place. "It probably couldn't backfire any worse than anything else I've tried."
Rhodey pats the back of her hand. "It can always get worse."
Reassuring.
Tony and Bruce still haven't resolved the fallout of their toaster oven experiment, so there's a cardboard box sitting on the kitchen counter that reads "sorry," in red marker, with three frowny faces scrawled near the base. Natasha's contemplating it, imaging what exactly the two of them can do to make it up to her. She's coming for someone's ass if she has to eat one more microwaved burrito this week, and at the rate things are going, they won't have a toaster oven for another ten days.
Bruce wanders into the kitchen in yesterday's clothes while she's still glaring at the empty box over her nearly empty coffee mug. He looks strung out and worked up, like he's coming down sloppy from a high or like he hasn't yet been to bed. Given his record for poorly timed self-destructive impulses, it's a real toss up.
"Are we out of cereal?" he squints at Natasha and her mug, faltering like her lack of breakfast foods has thrown him off course. "I'm starving."
"Hey, starving," Natasha says, "I'm Nat."
"Yeah, yeah." Bruce tries to keep a straight face but he laughs a little despite himself. Bruce is so serious sometimes, she likes that she can make him laugh. She likes that he lets himself laugh around her. "You're a riot."
Nat directs him towards the cupboard where she's hidden all the cereal in protest, then says, "You laugh at my jokes. That's why you're my favorite."
"Sorry?" Bruce rustles through the cabinet. He's taking long enough to choose a box of cereal that he might as well be alphabetizing them in there. "Favorite what?"
Natasha shrugs. "Just one of my favorites."
Bruce emerges with the Raisin Bran and a roll of his eyes. "I like you too, Nat," he tells her.
He says it like it's a throwaway line, like he's talking to any one of a number of friends. Not like he means it any less, just that it doesn't mean anything beyond the obvious. But the way he looks at her and smiles, like he's unspeakably fond, like he's lost in wanting, like he doesn't have the words for how much he cares, makes Natasha think she's not the only one playing favorites.
Bruce wanders off with the entire box of Raisin Bran before Nat can say anything further, but she thinks about the way he looked at her for the rest of the morning.
"Just ask him out," Clint says, halfway through their run. Staying in shape isn't the imperative it used to be, back in Miami's Little Moscow, where her family name had put a target on her back, but Natasha appreciates the routine. She still kicks the shit out of bags at the gym Clint's an instructor at, still terrifies the Manhattan yuppies who just want to take their Zumba class in peace. She likes to tell people that nouveau riche fear keeps her young, because she'll never get tired of the disquieted look on men's faces when they realize she'd hand them their asses with ease.
"Seriously, Tash," Clint nags, when Nat doesn't respond. "You're fucked, you're so obvious. Being right with the law's made you transparent."
"You're nosy these days," Natasha replies, picks up the pace. Clint swears, catches up.
"Laura's been real concerned about it," Clint grumbles. It's hard to tell if he's cranky about the pace he didn't agree to or about his girlfriend caring more about his best friend's social life than his own. "She thinks you're gonna sit on it too long."
Natasha dodges an older couple powerwalking with their mess of dogs. Sidewalk space in New York parks is always a competition. "I'm not sitting on anything."
"Bull."
"Eat me, Barton."
Clint lets it lie, more, she suspects, out of a need to save his breath while keeping pace with her than because he's been convinced of anything. They don't talk for the last mile and a half, and the silence gives Natasha an opportunity to stew.
"I'm not sitting on this," she finally insists, after they've run themselves out and cooled down. What bothers her most is the assumption that she wouldn't have the spine to act on this, or more likely, that Clint and Laura both would expect that she didn't have the emotional honesty to act on sentiment. Or, maybe, what rankles is that they're halfway right. "I've tried, more than once. I don't think he understood I was asking him out."
Clint laughs, like a giant asshole, until he's doubled over with his hands on his thighs. Natasha walks away. She's never really in the mood to watch other people laugh at her interpersonal failings. "Wait, wait," Clint trots after her, still not finished laughing. "Tash, listen. Have you looked him in the face and asked him if he, Bruce, wanted to go on a date, romantically, with you, Natasha? Alone, just the two of you?"
"I didn't waste my breath on that many words, no."
"I think you've gotta," Clint says. "Guy's got the social know-how of a baked clam. Like, four months ago I told him he was a good friend and he was surprised we were friends."
"To be fair, you're kind of a dick to Bruce."
Clint shrugs expansively. "I'm a dick to everyone I like. It's how they know I like them."
"I'm so glad you're giving me tips and tricks on people skills, then," Natasha sighs.
Three beers in, Natasha makes her Facebook status "Clint Barton is a fucking lightweight," because he is. She accidentally tags the wrong Clint.
Five beers in, she has her feet in Bruce's lap, and is contemplating the merits of coming on to him right now, in front of God and everyone they know. Pros: if Bruce still doesn't catch on, somebody's bound to spell it out for him. Cons: she would never live it down, and it might be a little tacky. Sam had won DJ rights for the night, which meant a pretty steady stream of dated R&B, and if "Get It On" plays one more time she's going to get something on, alright, pros and cons be damned.
Clint has taken his hearing aids out because Friday night means that Tony's visiting hours are twice as long, and because he's always grumpy when Laura's out of town. He's modulating his volume all over the place because he can't tell how loud the music is and he'd just as soon not know, which means that one moment he's keeping his conversation with Rhodey about the Giants at a dull roar and the next he's agreeably shouting at Sharon about the merits of a solid core workout. It just adds to what's an altogether disorienting experience, between the Marvin Gaye feedback loop, Thor's ongoing attempt to convince Steve that body shots would be a good thing for them all to do as friends, and Maria and Sharon nearly necking by the coffee table.
On beer seven, "Get It On" comes back on, and by the end of the song Natasha's decided that she gonna fucking go for it. She's pretty sure Pepper's hand's in Rhodey's pants anyways, so it looks like the threshold on public shame is getting harder to reach the longer the night goes on. Nat's got most of her lower half sprawled across Bruce's lap, and she thinks she's probably in an okay place to make some good decisions.
"Listen," Nat says, putting a hand on Bruce's shoulder, just as the song fades out. She thinks about what Clint said about being emotionally obvious with Bruce and she announces, "I didn't used to have a thing for guys in glasses."
For a moment, Natasha is hyperaware of the almost quiet as she watches Bruce. He's absently stroking her leg, a little less sober than she'd realized, and maybe this wasn't the best plan she's had to date. A new song clicks on, and the silence is broken as Tony begins to wail in time with OutKast. Sam beams a pillow at his head, which barrels full stop into Thor when Tony ducks. Thor belts a pillow back in Sam and Steve's direction, but his aim is less than stellar, and chaos breaks out all over again when it hits Maria and she retaliates immediately.
"Okay," Bruce says. "But I don't really know why you're telling me this."
Across the room, Clint slams a bottle on the dining room table and screams "Tequila!" at a truly unholy volume. Someone lobs a pillow at him, and he manages to duck without knocking over his bottle.
"I'm trying to tell you that I like you, Bruce."
Bruce nods, solemnly. He's doing a much better job than her at tuning the rest of the room out. "I like you too."
"No," Natasha insists. Bruce isn't getting it, hasn't been getting it for weeks now, and she doesn't know how to get the point across. They're out of sync, and Nat can't bridge the disconnect. "It's important that you hear what I'm saying to you and your face."
"I'm hearing."
"I like you," she tries again. "More than other people."
"Lend me some sugar," Tony wails, "I am your neighbor!"
Natasha puts her hand on Bruce's and emphasizes, "A lot." She knows what she's trying to tell him but she can't find the words to string into order; none of them are the right ones, no confession or endearment she knows feels like anything she could force out of her throat. She's not good at this, asking for things, sharing her feelings like party favors. She knows she's blowing this all over again, but she doesn't know an honest way to tell Bruce that she feels better when he's around, that she likes the person she is with him, that he makes her want things she hadn't trusted herself to want before, without any of it sounding false. He's as gun shy and cagey as she is, and any promises she makes that don't ring true will scare him off. She'd rather struggle to make him see than push him too far, too fast.
The grin Bruce gives her is dopey and sweet, and for a moment, Natasha thinks she's made him understand. "You're my favorite, too, y'know," he tells her. "You and Tony are my absolute favorites."
Like clockwork, Tony appears at the sound of his name. "You kids talking about me?" he says, then sprawls on the couch and works his way in between them.
"Constantly," Natasha says.
Sam has shouted her name three or four times by now, like he hadn't realized she'd been ignoring him and he thought she just couldn't hear, but by the fifth time she leans over Tony's chest to look. His body is slung across Steve's lap, but he's waving her over, clearly not recognizing the moment she and Bruce had been on the verge of sharing. They were sharing it with Tony now, so Natasha leaves the two men to it, and flops across Sam's lap, like they were building Jacob's Ladder out of bodies.
"Listen," Sam says. "This is for your own good, Nat. We're just looking out."
Natasha loudly demands clarification.
Steve shrugs. Natasha can feel the movement all the way through her shoulders propped on Sam's thighs. "Talk to Bruce when you're sober," Steve says. "You were flailing. We're embarrassed for you. No offence."
Natasha's not that interested in explaining to Sam and Steve and their perfect relationship that she's tried to ask Bruce out three times and he still isn't picking up on it. That it may look like she's flailing but she's doing the best she knows how to do. They're the best people Nat knows, but arguing with the two of them when either one of them has decided they knew how to help was like running uphill. Nat grunts and waves a dismissive hand. She figures that's the end of that.
"You'll get it," Sam encourages. "Some people just don't know how to flirt. That's not your fault. You've got other good stuff going on."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, asshole."
"When you guys do work it out," Steve says, "you better not work it out in the living room. If you do the do on Thor's couch, he's gonna guilt trip you to death. Also, 'no private things in public places.' Don't want to be in violation of Rule #2."
"Do the do?" Sam cackles before Natasha can address any of that. "You serious?"
"Are you planning on staying the night?" Steve asks.
Sam laughs, jostling Nat enough that she sits back up. "I didn't come all this way to go home alone."
"Then don't poke fun."
"Gross," Natasha says and stands up. "Flirting." She's exhausted and disheartened and the last thing she really wants to do is finish off her buzz watching Happy Couple of the Year flirt with the ease of familiarity, when her latest move on Bruce got completely commandeered by Tony.
She gives the room as a whole a goodnight, then drags herself off to bed. She thinks about Bruce's steady hands and his outstanding mouth and the way he looks at her with infinite care, as if thinks he ought to keep his looking secret, and she tries to imagine how she could ever tell someone that wanting them keeps her awake. She falls asleep before she can find her words.
By the time Nat wakes up in the morning, the apartment is empty. She figures the boys have dispersed to their usual haunts, so she ignores it; she's not quite hungover, but she has solid plans to appreciate her empty apartment and not leave until it gets loud. She's napping by the time any of them wander home, and wakes up after midnight, managing to miss all four of them for the full day.
She's starting to get a little cagey out of agitation. She's been trying every way she knows how, and Bruce isn't getting the message. She doesn't have the words to spell herself out more clearly. Even halfway through her twenties she is still the same, stilted child who grew up pretty and alone in a mobster's empty house. Natasha doesn't know how to change that, or how to become bigger than the girl who knew how to make words do anything but tell fragile truths.
The only thing to do, Nat decides, is to show Bruce what she means, too clearly for either of them to lose the plot. She thinks she'll make him breakfast; Bruce likes cooking but she's hopeless at it. Trying to learn about the things he enjoys ought to send a message. Let the cliché do the talking, leave minimal room for interpretive error.
Natasha doesn't know how to make anything wilder than toast for breakfast, and not without the toaster oven. Scrambled eggs can't possibly be that hard, she decides, and starts cracking eggs into a pan. And, if they are, at least she has hours before breakfast time to get them right.
It takes less than three minutes to change her mind. Scrambled eggs are definitely that hard. The unpleasantly smoky smell the eggs had going on resolves itself into actual smoke as the vaguely blackened eggs start actively flaming. Natasha grabs the detachable tap in the sink and begins spraying down the frying pan. The moment water hits the pan, the fire alarm starts blaring.
"What the hell?" After a few moments of the alarm, Bruce stumbles into the kitchen in boxers, a Harvard tee, and ten kinds of bedhead. It takes a moment for Natasha to get her focus back on the egg disaster. Bruce pulls the pan off the stove and under the faucet, but the eggs don't stop smoking. Clint swears a blue streak as he, Steve, and Thor make their way out of the apartment, leaving the door gaping open behind them.
"I thought cooking couldn't be that hard," Natasha explains. The sprinklers kick on, and she groans. "It looks like I miscalculated."
"C'mon," Bruce sighs, tugging at her wrist until she follows him to the door. They scramble down the single flight of stairs to the ground floor of their building, Bruce raising his voice to be heard above the whine of the fire alarm. "Why were you making eggs at 3 in the morning?"
"Practice," Nat admits.
"Jesus," he gapes, "practice for what?"
Out of the building, it's bitterly cold, and Natasha is soaking wet. It's three in the morning and she set eggs on fire and she should have reached the end of her rope so long ago but she hadn't. Now she has, in dripping pajamas on parking lot asphalt and looking Bruce's complete incomprehension right in the face. "For you, dumbass," she snaps, "because you cannot catch a hint to save your life! I didn't know how to make it any more obvious. I thought if I did something different or tried to impress you or whatever, you'd maybe notice that I've been trying to ask you out for a month.
"I guess we all noticed this."
Bruce takes a long second to sort through that info dump. She'd thrown a lot at him all at once and he's still sleepy and dazed, but Nat wishes he would hurry up and talk to her. She's been waiting long enough.
"God," Bruce says. "You're right. I am a dumbass."
Nat snorts. "I know."
"I really didn't notice." Bruce steps in closer to Nat, bumping his bare toes against her own. "Wish I had."
"Oh yeah?" Nat challenges. It's Bruce's turn to put himself on the line, she's already had her big emotional reveal of the night.
"Yeah," he smiles, private and sweet, like he's been saving it for her. "I would have said yes very quickly."
"Hey, Bruce?" Natasha steps up onto her toes to crowd against him, brow to brow. "Want to go out some time?"
He says "yes" without a hesitation, and then he kisses her.
They're both soaking wet from fire alarm sprinklers and she can hear the fire engines pulling into the lot and the entire population of their apartment building is spread out around them in the parking lot with nothing to do but watch the show, and, even with all that, it's really fucking good. She'd had her suspicions about those hands of his, and he's quickly proving her right as he slides his fingers along the hem of her shirt. Nat pinches Bruce's side, just enough to startle, and slips past his gasp to fit her tongue beside his. She laughs when he decides that fair is fair and cops a feel.
"I want to do that again," Bruce says, as Natasha's laughter really starts to get in the way of the kissing, "when we're not soaking wet. In front of our entire apartment building."
They haven't pulled away from each other at all, Bruce's palms still warm through her pajamas, and over Bruce's shoulder Nat can see Clint filming the two of them on his phone. Beside him, Thor and Steve are starting up a slow clap. "Want to come back to my place?" she asks. "I have a bed and some towels and a sweatshirt I stole from you."
Bruce leans his forehead against her own and laughs. "I'd love to go back to your place. When we're allowed back into the building, at least."
When Natasha pulls Bruce into another kiss, she knows that there are forty odd people watching them and that Clint's still filming for god knows what reason, but she wants to do it just because she can. Kissing Bruce is just as good the second time around.
Natasha's got high hopes for the third.
In the morning, when they emerge together from Nat's room, the apartment is plastered in new signs. "#2. No private things in public places," they all read, excepting a sign by the couch saying, "All: please remember that Thor sleeps here," and, "#8. Do not desecrate sanitary food prep areas" on the fridge. The quick turnaround is pretty impressive when they don't have a printer in the flat, so Nat takes it as a sign that Steve approves and has been waiting for the two of them to get their shit together. She pushes Bruce against the empty counter where the toaster oven should be and does her level best to make him blush, anyways, in direct violation of house rules.
fin.
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