Ehehehe my foray into the world of Bruce&Steve&Natasha bromance at last! This also ended up with a fair amount of Steve introspection, which I didn't originally intend to explore quite so much, but once I got to writing Steve, I realized just how sad he must be. Walking a mile in somebody's shoes is always an eye-opening experience, whether the person is real or fictional, I suppose. But anyway, this is still a fun oneshot, not an angst-fest! Let me know if you like my take on Steve, and whether you enjoy the ficlet overall. :)

A huge thank you to blueincandescence for editing this, reining in my parentheses, and being patient during my obsessive meltdowns over single paragraphs.

T, you are the best. :)

Glorious Technicolor

"That looks disgusting. I hope you got enough to share."

In what was becoming a strangely usual turn of events, Natasha appeared in Bruce's lab without warning and announced herself by both criticizing his dinner and asking to share it. Bruce glanced up from his contemplation of the takeout chalupa he had just finished unwrapping, and smiled across the table at her — this time he was prepared. He reached for a second paper bag with the top tightly rolled to conserve the heat of its contents.

"Of course," he answered easily, sliding the bag across the stainless steel surface. "And hello to you, too."

Natasha only smirked in reply, dropping a small tote bag on the floor as she came forward to inspect her dinner. "Tacos," he clarified as she unrolled the bag. She peeled back the paper wrapping and studied the toppings in the light.

"Just the way I like them," she declared, and Bruce felt a rush of satisfaction when she smiled. "Thanks, Doc."

He had already taken the first bite of his own lukewarm chalupa, so he only nodded. Natasha ignored the selection of chairs around the lab and perched herself on a desk a few feet away from where he was leaning against the table. Her eyes were firmly fastened on the tacos she was carefully unwrapping when she spoke. "I'm sorry I missed movie night."

He swallowed carefully. "It's okay — thanks for giving me a heads up that you had to leave. I know work has to come first…and Gone with the Wind is always in reruns. We can catch it some other time." She had texted him hours before the movie was due to air, so he'd had plenty of warning that she couldn't make their scheduled movie night. He really wasn't upset. True, the disappointment had stung more than he'd expected, but he had managed to stay busy enough in the lab to mostly forget about that.

"Did you watch it?" Natasha asked before she finally took a bite. She immediately hummed in approval.

"How is it?" he asked.

"It tastes like a heart attack," she mumbled around her mouthful. "So it's delicious."

Bruce grinned. "No, I didn't watch it," he answered as she made short work of her food. "I was getting some work done. Well, I did catch the ending actually. Just the last couple of minutes, though, so it doesn't really count."

"So did Rhett and Scarlett make it work this time around?" she asked with a completely serious expression. She examined her second taco, turning it as if deciding on an attack plan.

"No. They still couldn't get their acts together."

"Too bad," she said, shaking her head. "I was really rooting for those crazy kids."

"Yeah," Bruce agreed with a sigh. "Me too." His disappointment was only slightly exaggerated; he'd always had a strange preference for stories with happy endings. Or maybe not so strange, he mused distantly. His magnetic pull towards hopeful stories had begun when he was just a boy, when finding hope in fictional worlds had been so much easier than finding it at home. After the accident, the draw of happy endings had only compounded when happiness and possibility were two variables that never seemed to end up on the same side of his life's equation. His own preferences aside, there was the inescapable fact that his emotional state was a very serious matter given his condition, so movies that sank his mood fell outside the careful boundaries he set for himself. When it came to emotional control, routine and boundaries were everything.

In recent months, however, he had discovered that he could watch just about any movie with Natasha and the bittersweet endings wouldn't sting quite as badly. He was undecided on what exactly caused the mitigating effect.

Natasha must have settled on which end of the taco to eat first; it was gone in a few swift bites. Her speed eating ability never ceased to amaze him. She also had the miraculous gift of never making a mess — no sour cream on her hands, no crumbs around her lips. He glanced down and realized that he was only halfway through one chalupa, and his own hands were covered in grease and hints of guacamole. He suppressed a sigh; talking and eating had never been his forte. Natasha, however, was brilliant at every type of multitasking.

"Well, maybe this time will be the charm?" Natasha offered with a cryptic smile. She crumpled the taco wrappings, tossed them into the wastebasket, and reached for the bag she had dropped on the floor as she arrived. A brand new Gone With the Wind blu-ray was presented to him with a flourish a moment later. The pristine cover boasted words like "special edition" and "hours of special features" and Bruce remembered the grease on his hands just in time to stop himself from snatching it away for closer inspection.

"Oh, wow," he said, glancing at the half-eaten dinner in his hands with frustration. Natasha's smile was teasing.

"Hurry up and eat, Bruce. These special features aren't going to watch themselves."

She read the list of features to him as he made a valiant effort to eat with unnatural speed.

Steve had never been much for the night life during any of the disparate decades he had lived in New York City. Bucky had occasionally dragged him out for a night on the town, but girls hadn't exactly lined up to dance with him in his pre-Captain America days and he hadn't been eager to dance with anyone after waking to find that the only partner he wanted was too frail to stand, let alone dance. He was much more popular these days than he had been the last time he'd lived in New York, but despite the crowds that clamored and the cameras that snapped when he so much as stepped outside, Steve found the city to be more isolating than ever.

The biggest bright side to moving into the Tower with the rest of the team was the night life they had invented for themselves. Not one of them could have an inconspicuous night out — and most nights they were too tired for that sort of thing anyway, despite Tony's complaints that they were a bunch of old ladies — so they had resorted to everything from game nights to movie nights. Tony's tendency to turn everything into a party was annoying, and the noise was usually much too loud way too late into the night, but Steve realized eventually that he enjoyed having a team again. Some of his fondest memories were the nights around a campfire with the Howling Commandos, and, while it always saddened him to make parallels to a life long gone, the closest he got to that kind of close-knit camaraderie these days was sitting in a circle around a Scrabble board or plopped on a couch watching a movie that he only partially understood.

Bruce and Natasha had actually helped a lot in that regard. Bruce had a penchant for watching the movies that Steve remembered from his day — the "Golden Age of Hollywood" he'd heard it called. It was ancient history now, with whole channels and film festivals devoted to playing these "classic" films like they were relics unearthed from a tomb. Like he didn't feel as though they were still new. Like he couldn't remember walking to the cinema with Bucky to watch the latest release, joking about whether they were more excited to see the war scenes or the leading ladies. Like it wasn't strange to look at the familiar black-and-white faces and realize that every one of them was dead.

It was difficult to always be out of date, but Bruce and Natasha's ritual of watching the movies he was actually familiar with felt like a source of stability, or at least an imitation of it. Natasha invited him to join them often enough, pointedly texting him times, dates, and the movies on the schedule, and Bruce also extended the invitation when he thought of it, usually at random in the middle of an unrelated conversation. It was almost a tradition at this point.

So when he wandered into the darkened sitting area late one evening and found that he had interrupted Bruce and Natasha in an unscheduled viewing of Gone with the Wind, he was surprised. It was another movie he had gone to see with Bucky, and Bucky's date. The relationship hadn't lasted long, but he did remember how she had sighed over Clark Gable. The memories stung, and combined with the thought that he hadn't merited an invitation to this particular party, Steve had to fight to keep his mood from flying south for the winter. He tried to slip back out without attracting attention, but he knew it was a lost cause before he made the hallway. Nothing and nobody made it past Natasha.

"Hey, Steve," her voice cut across the wide open space of the living area like it wasn't a vast room three or so stories tall. He heard Vivien Leigh's voice fall silent in the middle of a line as the movie paused. "Sorry I didn't invite you — this was kind of a spur of the moment thing."

"You're welcome to join us," Bruce added, turning to call over the back of the couch. As usual, their invitation was genuine, and Steve felt the gloom that settled too easily over him these days begin to lift again. Well, it wasn't like he had other plans.

"Why not?" he replied, and climbed the stairs to the second level, where Bruce and Natasha had commandeered a three seat sofa. The middle cushion was occupied by a large bag of tortilla chips, so Steve drifted towards the closest loveseat, but Natasha was already shaking her head.

"Over here, Steve." She stood and moved the chips onto the coffee table. "We don't bite."

"Speak for yourself," Bruce said as he tossed a final chip into his mouth. His smile indicated that he knew exactly how bad his jokes were and that he didn't care a bit. Natasha groaned, but Steve caught the twitch at the corner of her lips.

"So don't sit next to him," she said with a shrug. "I'll protect you, Captain." And she took the seat next to Bruce, patting the empty cushion beside her.

Natasha was looking at him, lifting her eyebrow in the sarcastic way that only she could properly manage, but it was Bruce's expression that caught Steve's attention. He was staring down at the way Natasha's hip was pressed against his. She sat with the same careless grace as always, and Steve couldn't help but wonder what exactly was going on between the scientist and the spy.

In his experience, Natasha never touched people so haphazardly. She always had a motive for each movement, each touch, even each kiss. She wasn't cold, just calculated and efficient. She saw the possible outcomes of each minuscule action before making it, and acted accordingly in such uncanny fashion that she almost seemed prescient at times. She had to be aware of the fact that she was touching Bruce, but she didn't seem to be in any hurry to address the situation. And there was no motive for the contact — no distraction to create, no escape to engineer. It was almost like truly casual touch, an easy intimacy that he had never observed in Natasha before. It didn't make sense.

Unless…

He shook his head fractionally, shaking off the suspicion that came careening into his head like a baseball soaring towards a home run. Natasha and Bruce had never shown any sort of romantic interest in each other — just the opposite, really. He had seen the antipathy between them in the early days of the Avengers Initiative, and while that had mellowed into something past professional and approaching friendship, there was still a certain hesitance in Bruce's eyes when Natasha entered a room. Natasha was always difficult to read, but for a long time, something about her had stiffened when she was around Bruce. Had that changed without him noticing? The fact that they were friendly enough to have movie nights was still a recent development, and he felt sure that it was largely due to their time spent together developing a "lullaby" to bring Bruce out of his Hulk state. Still, as far as he knew, there wasn't anything deeper to their relationship. Of course, he acknowledged to himself, he could be wrong. He was the poster-child for many things, but romantic experience wasn't one of them.

He took the offered seat at last and noted that, while Natasha settled herself more comfortably against the couch, she didn't scoot away from Bruce. In fact, she remained pressed so close that Bruce had a difficult time finding a place to rest his arm without draping it right over her shoulders. Natasha started the movie again, and Bruce resorted to folding his arm close to his chest to avoid cuddling her. He caught Steve's curious gaze and sent him a look so harried that Steve had to press his lips together to avoid laughing. Sometimes, Dr. Banner's company was a blessing in more ways than one; if anyone was more of a fish out of water than he was, it was Bruce Banner.

"Did you see this movie back in your day?" Natasha whispered after a few minutes. Normally they had a standing rule against talking during movies, but she had slipped the question in between lines of dialogue and Bruce never complained when she broke the rule anyway. Usually, he joined right in with whatever topic of conversation she started and they had to skip back scenes at a time when they got carried away and talked through them. If they needed to skip back at all; sometimes they were both so familiar with whatever movie they were watching that they plowed ahead without bothering with the missed scenes.

"I did," Steve answered, dropping his reply between a line of dialogue and a dramatic swell of music. Clark Gable appeared onscreen, his characteristic Rhett Butler smirk firmly in place, and suddenly Steve's mind drifted far away and long ago to a soggy parade ground in England. "I met Gable once," he commented quietly.

"What?" Bruce leaned forward to stare at Steve around Natasha, and his distraction was so intense that his arm loosened and rested over the back of the sofa, just brushing Natasha's hair. "You met Gable? Where? When?"

Natasha sighed, but Steve noted just how quickly she paused the movie. "Are you going to swoon, Bruce?"

"I might," he muttered, staring fixedly at Steve.

"It was 1943," Steve said as he drifted back, taking the memory out like tarnished silver in need of a good polish. "Everybody was drafted into the war back in those days," — except me, he mentally added — "and he was flying with one of the bomb squadrons. I was touring for the USO, entertaining the troops, if you can call it that. He came to see the show."

"How — what was he like?"

Steve suppressed a smile. Bruce wasn't exactly an open book under normal circumstances, but his expression had gone slack with wonder and his eyes were nearly sparkling. Natasha noticed too, if her amused smile was any indication.

"He was kind," Steve replied. "Said we had a hard job, trying to crack that tough a crowd with a standard song and dance number. I told him that I loved his movies. I probably sounded like a starstruck idiot," he finished with a wry smile.

"Now, Steve, I'm sure that's not true. You were a star-spangled idiot," Natasha corrected with a truly wicked grin. Bruce either didn't hear or he pretended not to; he interrupted before Steve could roll his eyes at Natasha.

"What did he do after that?" Bruce pressed.

"He went back to flirting with the chorus girls, like everybody else," Steve replied flatly. Natasha snorted.

"Poor Captain America," she said in mock-sympathy. "You weren't the star of your own show…"

"I wasn't much of a hit with the troops," he admitted with a shrug. "Not until I joined them in the field, anyway. Nobody has patience for a performing monkey — and they shouldn't."

"You met Clark Gable…" Bruce muttered to himself, slumping back against the couch to stare at the ceiling in mute contemplation.

Steve considered himself very well-versed in Natasha's many expressions, both genuine and false, but the hint of softness in her smile as she glanced at Bruce's starstruck face was entirely new to him. There was something vulnerable in that particular quirk of her lips, something that cracked her peculiar aura of agelessness and made her look far younger than he had ever seen her. But the moment passed, and her usual smirk was firmly in place when she caught his eye a moment later.

"So are we going to watch this movie, or are you two starting a fan club?" she asked with her usual sharpness. But her eyes snapped over to the hallway before he could answer. "Stark," she acknowledged suddenly. Steve finally heard the approaching footsteps.

"Don't mind me," Tony called as he strolled into the living area, making a beeline for the bar on the second level. "Just going on a supply run." He disappeared behind the bar, and the clink of bottles was loud in the silence. He stood a moment later, a wine bottle in one hand and two goblets in the other.

"Pepper's here?" Bruce asked with a grin.

"How ever did you guess?" Tony replied, settling the wine on the bar just long enough to fish for a corkscrew. Loaded down with his spoils, he finally stepped back towards the hallway.

"You guys are welcome to join us, you know," Bruce offered, sounding genuine enough. But he exchanged an amused smile with Natasha that Steve didn't understand.

"Bruce, if this is your idea of a good time, then I think Old Man Rogers is rubbing off on you."

Steve had long ago given up on Tony being anything except sarcastic where he was concerned, so he let the remark pass. Bruce, however, mistakenly thinking that arguments against Starks could be productively won, defended himself. "I happen to love this movie," he protested.

"With taste like that, you're lucky you have brains, Banner," Tony replied with a reproachful shake of his head. "Anyway, I have a date that does not involve any ancient movies, so goodbye and good luck to you all." He stepped towards the hallway again.

"You sure you don't want to join us?" Natasha pressed, grinning in Bruce's direction. "I'm sure Pepper would enjoy a movie night."

"Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that offer," Tony replied. "You see, there's a word for this sort of thing — what is it? Oh yes. Boring. I'll see you and the rest of the old fogey club in the morning." And with that benediction, he disappeared into the darkened hall.

Bruce and Natasha looked at each other and laughed.

"You just gonna let him lay into you like that?" Steve asked, wondering what reference he had missed now.

"Are you kidding?" Natasha asked when she finally contained her laugh. "Riling Tony is one of my favorite hobbies."

"He hates old movies," Bruce added. "He used to come in here and criticize everything about any movie made before the 1970s. We were forced to come up with the no talking rule."

"To avoid murder," Natasha agreed.

"So your rule isn't hard and fast?"

"Steve," Bruce said with a conspiratorial smile. "Talk as much as you like."

"Especially if it's about Clark Gable," Natasha added with an amused glance at Bruce. He was nodding enthusiastically.

"You really don't care that Tony hates your movies so much?" Steve asked, still feeling slightly bewildered. Natasha shrugged and a slow smirk spread across her face.

"Frankly, my dear..." she started, glancing at Bruce in expectation.

"...we don't give a damn," he finished dutifully.

Natasha pressed play. Steve noticed that she slumped back until her head rested against the arm that Bruce had forgotten to move, and he wondered again if he was missing something between the two of them.

But Scarlett O'Hara's problems soon trumped his own, and Steve let all the concerns and confusions of the day slip away. Here in the dark, watching a movie he remembered on a huge projector screen, he could almost imagine that he was back in his old cinema in Brooklyn. Bucky would have nagged him to take some girls dancing afterward.

His slip through time was fleeting; he blinked and remembered where and when he was. The faint sting of loss flared in his mind like the burning afterimage of a brilliant light, but he was familiar enough with the sensation to know how to handle it. He glanced at Bruce and Natasha beside him, at the huge screen in front of him, and out the window at the glittering cityscape of New York. He might have lost his original place in the world, but there were worse things than finding a new one.

Besides, despite what Bucky would have said on the subject, a movie night beat a night out on the town any day. He was glad that in one timeline, at least, he had friends who shared that opinion. And maybe one day soon he'd find Bucky again and they could revisit the old argument.

Beside him, Bruce and Natasha were taking advantage of their more relaxed talking policy.

"Bad move, Scarlett…" Bruce muttered, shaking his head.

"She never learns," Natasha agreed with a scowl.

In the pale light of the projector, Steve smiled.

NOTES: Everything I included about Gable in WWII was true. A lot of stars' acting careers were interrupted when they went off to war, and I thought that Steve must have met some of them, right? Especially during his performing monkey days when he would have seen loads of soldiers all over Europe.

Of the people in this room, which one is A) wearing a spangly outfit and B) not leaving reviews?

Don't be that non-reviewing guy. As for spangly outfits, wear them. I am in full support of Cap cosplays. ;)

(Please review!)