"So we disappear?"
An infinitesimal grin shrugs onto her mouth. The vague acceptance doesn't erase the revisiting of her childhood — the sharp, nonresonant bang of a pistol, cracks of bones forced against their designed range of movement, fingers and fists taking ownership of a body that didn't belong to her until her self-liberation years after graduation. So, while he thinks, she steals away to the shower. The liquid ice of the spray pounding down on her distracts from flashbacks or fantasy. For that, she's grateful.
Due to the cold, her time in the bathroom is brief. No matter how much training, a regular human body could only withstand reduced temperatures before numbness that paved a downward path to shivering and a deadly lethargy that compelled a person to collapse on the floor and wait while their physiology succumbed to cold. Aware of this, her mind calibrated to a self-imposed timer and ticked down the seconds while she finger-combed through the curls that the water transformed into sodden waves.
When she emerges, clad in her robe once again, she's pleasantly surprised to find Bruce, even if it looks like someone pressed pause on the position he held when she retreated into the bathroom.
"Been a while since I've seen you 'round here." She quips, practiced persona adorned. This is one of the sole masks not intended for protection.
Whatever reverie or contemplative cloud he's enveloped in, he snaps out of. Stuttering a bit as he returns to himself, he says, "Wanted to make sure you weren't up to any trouble."
As she squeezes droplets of a cold cascade from her hair, the cloth towel shields the chuckle tucked behind lips pressed shut.
When she emerges from the cloth, something's shifted. He shakes his head and, with it, their facade. She steels her ribcage in preparation against a plummet. He's solemn when he tells her, "You're not a monster."
The sentiment is not what she expected, but not what she necessarily wanted. "You don't have to comfort me—"
"I'm not. I mean, I'd like to, but…" He sinks onto the bed's corner, looks at his hands that start to wrestle one another. With his fingers locked in a chokehold, he glances up and says, "Whatever they did to you — in the Red Room — it doesn't make you a monster."
"No," she agrees. "It's what I did after."
If he wrings his hands any tighter, he risks cutting off his circulation. This isn't an appropriate time to grab them, though. She'd already tried that, and it didn't go so well.
"But then you committed to helping people, with SHIELD. That's gotta count for something." He looks at her like they're on a sunken ship with one life vest and she told him to save himself.
Being left behind, no questions asked, is something she's used to — not this kind of gaze. Then again, she's not accustomed to any of this — the wanting, denial of the wanting, then pondering sincere flirting and feeling like an awkward mess until he stuttered and stumbled, the quick looks and accidental connections, the connections she tried to make on purpose, the evolution from "you and I" to "we."
But she's not responded to the counterpoint posed to her. "Maybe." She acknowledges the possibility, then turns it back on him. "Does it count for you?"
His downcast expression dissipates into something else. Knowing him, it's something entirely too self-critical. "That's different."
"Is it?" She interrogates him with a look of her own. "Or is this you putting distance between us to make things easier when you run?"
"Natasha—"
Bare feet pad against two steps across the smooth wood, bringing her bedside, where she sinks. There's healthy space between them, and both of their hands are preoccupied with themselves and not each other's. It's a neutral ground upon which they stand — or, rather, sit — as she says, "You keep trying to convince me out of trusting you. What do you want?"
His expression shoves the figurative rescue device back at her. His fingers form a spider vice around each other. Perhaps more to himself than her, he responds, "It's not...I can't—"
"If you want to run after this, I'll be there with you — but only if you want me there." Despite a gnat of fear buzzing around in her head, she asks in earnest, "Do you?"
"Of course." He murmurs it, then once more, clearer, more firm. "Of course. But I'm—"
She knows what's coming. For that, she initiates a preemptive launch into action. "I trust you." Whatever disaster brought them this time, he wouldn't weather it alone. They'd collapse with the rubble or rise and run.
It took a few encounters to develop an interest in him, weeks to unlock herself and stumble around overgrown garden mazes as they sought a lullaby for him and something unknown for her. It took a while to realize that was the locked garden they found and shared, and a while more for her to become a frequent visitor. Now, though, the decision to stay came so easily, without a tactician's analysis and without a hiccup of trepidation.
There's absolutely no calculation when she says, "We don't need any of this — the kids, the farm. It doesn't make us any lesser."
In spite of her best efforts, she bridges the gap between them, forges another connection. A palm grazes over his freshly smoothened cheek, once, then again. On the second stroke, her hand remains. This time, he doesn't pry her away. In complete honesty, she tells him, "You're a dork, not a monster."
While he does not smile, his clove eyes glow, and his mouth goes slack. It appears his filter is disabled, since he sounds like he's in a daze as he admits, "You're incredible." The fumble happens after. "Um, not-not a monster."
She grins, which is the catalyst for the grin that curves out of his open mouth. The covers rustle soft as one of his arms slides toward her, not touching, but within range of her personal radar. There, they hang, her thumb tracing over the plane of his jaw to the curve of his ear, where her fingertips curl into the still-damp hair. Using his outstretched arm as leverage, his hips shift so he's canted more toward her and not the bedroom wall. Her heartbeat thrums throughout her limbs, in the base of her spine, around her lips, which fall to a neutral position.
They — the people who raised her — taught her not to want this, never to sincerely want what she imagines as her eyes flick down toward his mouth. Her body was not hers. Every curve was a tool, every deliberate flutter of her eyes a tactic for manipulation. Tease, never fully reveal. Associate physicality with emotional distance instead of romance. The code of spies and assassins had no words for yearning, attraction, adoration, and branched seduction simply as a form of strategic coercion.
In this moment, she was completely and utterly disobeying every tenant of her training in this area. She embraced the throb of her heavy pulse, felt for his with the hand tucked around the side of his face, and claimed her body as her own.
Then, she leans into him.
At that moment, there's a squeal for "auntie Nat." Their hands retreat to their respective sides, they break visual contact, and try not to rise too fast, or in unison.
Her clothes are in the room designated for her when she visits, infrequent as that is. In silence, she collects her towel and Bruce busies himself with smoothing away the indent of him from Clint and Laura's bed. He assures that he concludes the mundane task in time to walk with her out of the room.
At the door, she turns to ask him, "Where to first?"
He conceals a smile into the scant gap between them, ponders, returns to her waiting gaze. With no conditions or code, he says, "Your pick."
There's another sing-song yell for her, which she sets aside for a moment. In this instant she's taken, hands folded in front of her torso, she kisses where his cheek meets the corner of his lips. With the few confidants she's recently gained, she's come to use this gesture as friendly appreciation and nothing more. With Bruce, though, she wishes it was not a peck on the cheek, but her mouth on his.