It had been a long, shitty day at the end of a long, shitty week. The op in Kiev had several pieces of bad intel, resulting in a building falling directly on top of her, as opposed to collapsing from carefully placed shaped charges when she was three miles away. When she limped off the jet, Natasha was greeted with not only her standard mission report, but a stack of annual update forms and nondisclosures from human resources that needed to be filled out before she went home.
Congratulations, you survived another year at SHIELD. Please fill out these forms in triplicate to sign away your soul for the next 365 days.
Her day capped off with running into Clint. Normally this would be good, a chance to rib each other or even go back to one of their places and fuck away their stress. Instead, he told her that he and Bobbi had talked, and they were going to give it another try. Natasha wished him the best of luck, but really it just made her tired. She loved him like a friend, and she could love him romantically, but he was far too scattered. They were better as friends with benefits when his relationship with Bobbi was off-again.
Natasha made her way home on the subway from SHIELD's New York office building. The walk up to her third floor apartment was hell, her wrenched knee shooting pain with every other step. Once she got through her front door, she made her way directly to the kitchen where the take-out numbers were listed. A short phone call later, and a pizza was on its way to her.
She hadn't gone to medical, she reminded herself as she shuffled to the bathroom, because she knew what they'd tell her. Careful with the bruises, watch any cuts for infection, and brace the knee. She grabbed the fabric bandage and store-bought brace from her medicine cabinet and went back to sit on the couch, shucking her pants after she sat. Natasha took her time wrapping her knee, making sure it wasn't tight enough to cut off circulation, before sliding the brace over it and stretching it out the length of her couch.
Of course, this was when the buzzer rang.
Cursing under her breath, she got up and walked to the intercom. "Who is it?"
"Pizza for Rushman?"
In response, she rang him through. Carefully, she leaned against the wall, mindful of the bruise taking up most of her right shoulder blade from a chunk of flying debris. Within moments, someone was knocking on the door, and a look through the peephole revealed a baseball cap from her favorite pizza place on top of a nest of curly hair. When she opened the door, Natasha was utterly shocked, but years of training allowed her to keep her face neutral.
All the recent intel pointed to Robert Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, as holing up in a South American village. So what was he doing standing in her doorway in Queens with a pizza?
"How are you tonight?" he asked, bland customer-service smile firmly in place. "That'll be $13.50."
Her hand went to her back pocket, where she always kept her wallet, only to find it wasn't there. Not just the wallet, but the pocket. She had forgotten put her pants back on after wrapping her knee.
"Shit," Natasha sighed. That building must have fallen on her harder than she thought. At least her shirt was one of Clint's, nondescript gray and long enough to cover her underwear. "Sorry, it's been the worst day."
"I know that feeling," he said. Gentleman that he apparently was, he kept his gaze at eye level. "Mind if I ask?"
"Work buried me in annual HR paperwork," she said, because sometimes it was nice to act like any other woman, even if that meant venting to strangers. "And then my boyfriend broke up with me for his ex."
Natasha's eyes were drawn to Banner's fingers as they clenched a little tighter around the pizza box. His voice was surprisingly tense when he asked, "Is he the one who–?"
She quickly put the pieces together: recent ex, her busted knee and countless bruises, and a note in Banner's file of what happened with his parents. "No, he didn't hit me." Banner was clearly skeptical, if the look on his face was any indication. "I teach self-defense. These are from girls who got a little over-enthusiastic with practicing." She gave him a little smirk. "If anyone hits me, I hit back twice as hard."
"You've had to say that a lot?" he asked with what sounded like genuine interest.
"Just to every middle-aged woman telling me I'm worth it and don't have to put up with anyone hurting me."
Banner huffed a small laugh and relaxed. They stood there for a moment before Natasha remembered he had her pizza and she didn't have pants.
"I'll go grab my wallet and you can be on your way while I eat my pizza and watch bad movies alone on my couch," she said, turning away from the door.
"Actually," Banner said, and she looked back, "if you don't feel like being alone, you're welcome to ride along with me on my deliveries for the rest of the night. Only if you want to, no pressure."
"I don't think my knee can handle keeping up with a pizza delivery bike," Natasha said as she fished a twenty out of her wallet, "but thanks for the offer."
"I have a car."
She came back to the door, eyebrows arched in a display of skepticism. "Really?"
He shrugged. "I rent a basement from a woman here in Queens who needed extra income after her husband passed. She didn't want to sell his car, but neither she nor the nephew she lives with knows how to drive. I pay for gas, she keeps the title. I can deliver pizza with climate control."
Natasha turned the offer over in her head. Playing the recently-jilted lover was a way to get him to lower his guard and reveal news about his current situation, information she could take back to SHIELD. Even if he wasn't feeling chatty, she could pick up things here and there.
She resolutely ignored the part of her brain that was tired of being a spy and wanted to be a whiny, just-dumped girl. Really, she did.
"Let me just get some pants," she said as she handed him the twenty. "I'll be back in a few."
Banner grinned back at her. "I'll have your pizza waiting in the passenger seat."