I like Nat's priorities.
Goddamn, don't you wish you could incinerate every spider you saw? That would be my superpower. I'm Peter Parker's arch nemesis.
This chapter is for Sensical Deficit whose review made my day! Thanks so much! 3
Pepper
As the team got better and better at working together, they also became faster at getting jobs done, leaving much free time.
There would be stretches of days at first, then weeks, where they had simply nothing else to do but train. When renovations of the training rooms at Avenger's tower finished, reasons to leave their new luxurious home were far and far between.
That quickly got boring for everyone.
Tony went back to throwing lavish parties and travelling back and forth from New York to his home in Malibu.
Bruce, on his better days, would go out and talk to local scientists to share discoveries and offer advice to them.
Clint just got drunk. He had no home or life outside his work and found he was almost always bored.
Thor was on Asgard, doing Odin knows what.
Natasha dedicated herself to her training. She never tired of it, and rarely left the tower.
Pepper noticed this and felt bad. The group would often go out together to some restaurant Tony owned, or cause mayhem around the globe, but Natasha never really got into it.
Pepper strived to be a good friend to her. They grew close and she learned that Natasha doesn't like leaving and going out for fear of being spotted.
After a while, Pepper announced a girl's night in, and sent the boys away to some bar she only heard of once through a friend.
When everyone had gone, and they were alone, they started their fun. Their brand of fun, not toe-painting, ghost summoning 'fun'.
They indulged to Tony's fine liquor cabinet until they were fuzzy, not drunk. Then Natasha tried to teach Pepper her signature knee flip, only to almost snap her neck.
They decided to just go watch a movie before they got hurt.
They spoke softly on the couch as they watched 'Gone with the Wind'. One of Pepper's all time favorite movies. Natasha was indifferent.
Halfway through, Pepper excused herself to the bathroom.
A few moments later, her shrill scream broke through the door.
Natasha, fearing the worst, ran and kicked down the door to find Pepper standing on the toilet, crying, and spraying hairspray on some invisible force.
"Pepper! What's wrong!" She was still spraying.
"Kill it! Please! I'm afraid of spiders!" Natasha felt her blood go cold. And then she saw it.
A large, hairy dot cornered under the counter.
Spider. Oh no. Not now.
"Natasha! Kill it! It walked right over my foot!" Nat froze. No way she could do this! She needed one of the guys to!
She did the most instinctive thing she could summon with such little blood flow.
She shouted to Jarvis to call everyone home as she lurched forward, swatted the hairspray away, scooped Pepper up bridal-style and shut them out of the bathroom. Shut out meaning they moved two feet down the hall from the wooden remains.
Pepper still had watery eyes and Natasha was heavily breathing. Jarvis announced the men were en-route.
"Why-why couldn't you do it?" Pepper turned her head to her friend.
"I can't."
"You can't? It crawled over my foot! I felt every hairy little leg!" Natashsa knocked her head back on the door.
"I just can't, Pepper." It dawned on her.
"The Black Widow is afraid if spiders? No way."
"I could've left you in there!" She glared at Pepper, who promptly shut up.
"Do you feel—soiled?" Nat gestured to her foot.
"Incredibly." Pepper whispered.
They stayed in this position until Steve and Tony were the first to burst through the door. Tony lifted Pepper, who could barely blubber 'Spider' while Steve located it and stomped it out. Tony then gave Natasha a hand up.
"Russian war-lords and rogue ex-employees compared to a tiny rock spider? For shame, girls, for shame." Natasha jabbed Clint, then escorted Pepper to her bathroom where she could scrub her foot until it bled in peace.
Spiders and bathrooms. Aajfghgfrgjfnhgjeak NO. Seriously, why there? And what's with the house centipede things crawling in bedrooms.
One crawled under my bed once. I didn't sleep there for a week. 0_o