Author's Note: Here's another one for you guys. I, of course, underestimated my skills of dealing with visual stimulation for more than ten minutes at a time. So this didn't get up as fast as I had hoped, haha. Oh well, sorry about that. I should be up to par shortly.

Here's to levi97100. :) Always love chatting with him. Enjoy the much lighter chapter as opposed to my usual!

Chapter 13:

Natasha had learned a few things in the decade that she had known Clint and Laura. Typically, if Clint called and said that he needed her to come to the farm, it really just meant that he either needed help with some project he hadn't yet finished on the house, or that he and the kids missed her if she hadn't come around enough. If Laura called and asked her to come to the farm, Natasha knew for a fact that it mean something was wrong with Clint, or Laura was quite nearly on the verge of killing her husband herself.

This was a Laura Barton call that Natasha deemed to be the latter version of an emergency once she arrived at the house. Her indecision about what to do with whatever was currently going on between herself and Bruce got pushed aside as Laura greeted her at the door. The usually stoic and calm wife of her best friend looked like she might just maim anyone who said the wrong thing and Natasha wisely said nothing as she went inside and took in the scene in the living room.

Clint looked like a pitiable mess on the couch with two sniveling and sickly kids snugly tucked into his sides, and he looked about as terrible as they did. Laura herself looked just as bad and Natasha knew from the last two pregnancies that the usually pleasant woman could turn into quite the epitome of hormonal rage.

The fact was, Clint Barton could take a bullet or any other life-threatening wound like the professional he was, but he turned into a petulant child when he caught something as petty as a cold.

So Natasha did the only thing she could think of; she dropped her bag in the doorway of the living room and sent Laura upstairs to vehemently ignore what was now to be considered the quarantine zone.

Laura gave her the most preposterous and grateful little disheveled smile she had ever seen, "I'm naming this child Natasha for this, I swear it."

And Natasha was pretty sure that was a joke, or rather, she hoped it was. No one in their right mind would name their child after her, though she didn't exactly consider her friend's wife to be in her right mind at the moment. Pregnancy hormones were downright frightening, even at twenty weeks into the pregnancy. Secretly, Natasha enjoyed the more hostile side of Laura, it was a hilariously drastic change of pace and it was probably a horrible thing to think.

"You're a sad excuse for a man, Barton," she said dryly as she stepped into the living room with her arms folded across her chest.

Cooper and Clint didn't budge, but they did give her rather moronic looks.

Lila, on the other hand, was on her feet and she moved at lightning speed, "Auntie Nat!"

Natasha grinned as she scooped the little girl up and onto her hip, "Now there's my favorite Barton, you're not gonna be as much of a pathetic little stick in the mud as your father and brother, right, Li?"

"No way!" Lila agreed with a giggle. She chuckled as she carried the, for now, youngest member of the Barton clan with her into the kitchen. "Are we gonna make soup?" came the first question, one she was sure wouldn't be the last.

"Mmhmm," she agreed with a nod.

She couldn't resist the smile that remained planted on her lips when Lila kissed her on the cheek and wormed her way back down to her feet. "Chicken noodle?"

"You bet, kiddo."

The sly little grin that came across the little girl's face was one Natasha recognized as her own. It was fleeting moments such as this that shattered her a little more in her core; moments where she wondered that if the option hadn't been so thoroughly removed from her by Red Room, if she could have ever had this. Normally those thoughts never crossed her mind, she still wasn't sure she would want this, but it didn't stop her from wondering if maybe she could have been good at it. Lila made her think that it was possible she could have been, even for just a few seconds of a few days, out of each passing year.

The child's comment that went along with the sly grin let the unbidden thought pass, "Daddy hates chicken noodle."

Natasha couldn't resist another chuckle as she winked at her, "I know." She gave Lila a playful flick on the nose, "There's something in my bag for you, scoot and go get it."

She didn't have to tell the girl twice, because Lila took off at the speed of light and was digging through the bag. "Sir Lambs-a-lot!" came the squeal of happiness. When she came bounding back into the kitchen with the tattered lamb in tow, Natasha smirked at the next question, "You don't need him?"

"Nah," she assured her, "I'm better now." Not entirely true, it was a little hard and painful to look at Clint after having that nightmare where she killed him. That one didn't creep up nearly as often as it used to, but that just made it even worse since she never knew when to expect it.

"Might hav'ta go to the store tomorrow," Lila informed her after nodding to Natasha's answer. "Mommy's felt too yucky to shop."

She huffed out a little laugh at that, "I'll take care of it." She watched Lila sniffle, rub her index finger under her nose, then hug the stuffed lamb a little tighter. "Go back on the couch with Coop and your dad, I can take care of the soup."

"M'kay."

It was a little bit later after she finagled enough ingredients and made the soup, and when she was handing it out, that Cooper gave her a rather lazy hug and a grateful smile along with the words, "Missed you, Aunt Nat."

And at least Cooper wasn't as pathetic as dear old dad was, "Missed you too, Coop." She ruffled his hair, went back to the kitchen and brought Lila's and Clint's with her at the same time.

Lila took hers greedily whereas Clint regarded her like the devil incarnate, "Really, Nat?"

"You better eat it or I'll actually let your hormonal wife end your existence," she warned, "And I really don't feel like breaking in a new best friend, though they probably wouldn't be as much effort as you. Rogers, for example, doesn't get sick at all, so he'd be a good replacement."

She smirked when he begrudgingly took the bowl and made a rather exaggerated show of sticking a spoonful of the soup into his mouth. Then her supposed best friend did the most immature thing that threw Lila and Cooper into a fit of giggles, he poked his tongue out at her, "Guess you're stuck with me, I refuse to be replaced by Captain America."

All she could do was roll her eyes at that as she retreated into the kitchen. She filled one last bowl and made her way up the stairs with it, not bothering to knock as she pushed open the bedroom door. She scrunched up her nose at the sound of Laura retching in the bathroom that was connected to the room and she placed the soup on the end table before she dared to go inside with her. It certainly wasn't the highlight of her life, but really, she had dealt with worse things than a puking woman. She crept in, held up Laura's hair and gave her an awkward pat on the back to ride it out.

There were a few minutes of silence before the proof it ever happened was flushed away. "Thanks," came Laura's always appreciative voice. Really, she wouldn't have done this for one single other person besides a member of the Barton clan, and Clint was excluded from that small list. "Well—you know, for everything, not just this," and then she was rinsing out her mouth and brushing her teeth, "Some women get morning sickness. I swear, I always wind up with all day long, all pregnancy long sickness."

Natasha just smiled a little at that. "Anything for you guys," she told her as she followed her back into the bedroom. Of course, she had the unbridled thought that Laura was testing the limits of that statement when the brunette took the bowl of soup, sat down on the bed, looked at it; then proceeded to burst into a water fountain of tears. A crying human being alone, not just Laura Barton, was something that Natasha Romanoff wasn't just ill-prepared to deal with, but was something she was fundamentally and utterly in the dark about. Red Room dealt with crying with a swift death and she was pretty certain Clint would be against that answer here. "Uh..." was about all she could managed to utter out in response before she tried to figure out what to do, "I mean—there wasn't much else to make..."

Wrong choice.

Laura's tears weren't just a fountain, now they were Niagara Falls. Shit... "I—I can try and find something else." And the only thought that flitted across Natasha's brain was that pregnancy was freaking terrifying because the other woman only proceeded to cry harder. "Or maybe when I make a run to the store I can grab you a pack of condoms..."

She hadn't meant to say it, but the comment had the desired effect when the sniffling turned into a combination of crying and laughter. "Oh God..." Laura muttered out between what Natasha thought was a huff of a laugh, "I'm so sorry, Nat... I just—the soup is really great."

And the tears were back.

"So you—you like the soup?" Natasha asked with uncertainty. She knew her own eyes were wide as she stared at the weeping woman.

"I cry when I'm happy!" came the exasperated cry.

Well, crap... "Okay... so..."

"Go, go ahead and get out," Laura insisted, waving one hand emphatically, "Really."

Natasha didn't need to be told twice, she escaped the room in seconds. She blew out a breath of relief when she hit the stairs and sat down at the top. The Hulk's containment cell was safer than that room was. This was going to be a rather uncomfortable few days.

It wasn't until she went shopping with Lila in tow on the next day, which she did across state lines over an hour away from the farm itself, that she turned her phone on and bothered to look at it. She had Lila's hand clasped into one of her own as they headed towards the store and her phone in the other, and she gave the phone an odd look when she saw the little square with a smiley face in the corner indicating a text message.

Typically, Clint or Steve were the only people to text her. Though she didn't doubt her partner would text her when she had only been gone for an hour and a half, she didn't assume it was him. She expected Steve, and instead found 'Banner' across the screen and she actually paused just at the entrance to the store, forcing Lila to stop too.

'Friends?'

That was it. Nothing else, just a one word question that she still didn't have the answer to. She stuffed the phone back in her pocket and gave a small smile to the little girl who was giving her a questioning look. She let Lila push the shopping cart around as she piled in the food but the stupid little question kept poking and prodding at her, burning a hole in her pocket.

"These are silly."

Natasha glanced over to see what Lila was talking about, only to see the spinning wire rack that held a bunch of postcards, it caused her lips to involuntarily twitch into a small smile, "Which one is the worst one?"

Lila spun the rack several times before she handed one over.

She snickered the second she looked at it. "Yeah... that'll work," she decided out loud. Besides, Bruce had already said she had already completed her intrusion of friendship into his life. It was, in the terms of Tony Stark, a dick move, to back out now. She figured if she was going to do the whole friend thing, then she would do it much like Clint had done to her, dive in head first and hope it will actually work out.

"Work for what, Auntie Nat?"

Natasha glanced down at Lila's look of confusion, "I have a friend that'll like this." She pressed her index finger to her lips like it was a secret and watched as Lila gave a covert smile and nod in response. She figured it was safe to assume the little girl would likely take the 'secret of the postcard' to her grave.

Bruce didn't actually send the daring question in the form of a text until the third day Natasha was gone. He supposed it was what she would call 'dorky', but much like the postcard, once he hit 'send' it was far too late to take it back. Unfortunately, there were no 'takebacks' on a cellphone text message. He wasn't really surprised to never get a response to it, but he was little let down, mostly because she had said she would only be gone a few days.

The no reply from the text and no return after a week, actually had him mildly uncertain if she had been lying, if maybe she really wasn't planning to come back. It wasn't until Pepper came into the theater room on day eight and handed him the postcard with a rather confused shrug that he decided that wasn't the case. When he saw the front, it had to be one of the most ridiculous things he had ever seen in his life.

'Greetings from Nebraska!' And there was a rather large red tractor going through a cornfield, a giant flatbed attached to the back, and one phenomenally large stalk of corn going up the flatbed and over the top of the tractor. On the bottom it said, '...where you can hear the corn grow!'

Bruce laughed. There was absolutely no stopping it from happening. Just like the less joking one that he had sent her, this one also had absolutely nothing written on it besides his name and the address of the Tower. Still, there wasn't really any denying that it was Natasha who sent it, because really... who the hell else would have? The only other thing he wondered was if she was even really in Nebraska, though knowing her, she had been, but probably not for very long.

You could take Natasha out of the spy game, but you couldn't remove the spy from Natasha, that was one of the things he had learned that first time she had shown up in India.

Still, he was left a little worried since that was the only thing he had to go by. Now he knew how frustrating his postcard must have been for her, although, his life wasn't quite so near-death and dramatic as hers was. Usually...

By day fifteen, he was more than a little worried, but Tony kept him preoccupied with getting his suits back up to par. They were just testing the chips in his arms again that would call his suit to him, so he sat back with his mug of tea and watched as Tony clapped his hands and told Jarvis to start the music.

What Bruce imagined should have been one of the usual AC/DC songs to blare through the lab at a record decibel, instead came out as Britney Spears' 'Toxic'. He choked and spit the tea back into the mug when Tony was so thrown off that the chest piece of the Iron Man suit knocked him onto his rear.

And that was the moment he knew Natasha was back. He tried to hide his smile behind the mug as he made a hasty retreat from the mess now stirring in the lab and he found her standing just outside the door, arms folded with a rather smug smile planted on her lips.

"Worth it," came her only comment and he grinned at that.

"Did it have to be Britney?"

She shrugged a little at that as she lifted her back off the wall and headed down the hallway, "I didn't think that Tchaikovsky would have nearly the same effect."

Bruce couldn't help but smile at that. "So, Nebraska?" he finally questioned as he followed her.

"I was passing through, and that stupid postcard was too dorky to pass up." He let that go. "Besides, found it a little after that goofy little text message."

He laughed a little now, "So... we are friends then?"

Natasha gave the smallest roll of her eyes, "Don't be so sappy and sentimental about it, Doc, or I'll change my mind."

"Noted." She looked over her shoulder and gave him a smile at that, and it was then he actually got a good look at her face. She looked tired. "Are you alright?" he finally questioned.

"I could use a movie."

It sounded like a pretty good idea to him, he could use one too. "I'll make popcorn," he offered up, "You pick the movie."

There was that tiny but real smile, "Deal."

He found her ten minutes later in the theater room and he actually laughed when he saw what was on the giant screen. She gave him a rather innocent smile, "I never said it would be a classic."

"Fair enough," he agreed as he joined her on the couch and sat the bowl of popcorn between them. It was a little hard to believe that she would pick this out of any number of possibilities, but he supposed it wasn't a terrible one.

Apparently, Natasha was in the mood for Sci-Fi, because they were watching Starship Troopers. He wasn't expecting an explanation, but she gave one anyways, "Steve's friend, Wilson...he kept saying it was his favorite movie."

"It's not bad..." he tried to assure her.

"But it's not good?"

Bruce wasn't really sure, so he gave the only honest answer he could think of, "Not what I usually watch, is all."

She seemed to mull that over for a moment as she took a few pieces of popcorn and ate them. After she finished chewing she finally spoke again, "We can change it."

"Nah, might as well see if you like it," and from the look on her face through most of it, he guessed she wasn't really a huge fan either.

Natasha never turned it off, but she never really reacted whatsoever as she watched it. "So, giant super spiders, that's—that's it? A war with giant spiders?"

He snorted out a laugh at that, "I think there were a few cockroaches... and that last thing was sort of like a giant tick."

"Yeah... that was gross," she gave an unpleasant scrunch of her nose at that. It didn't stop her from plucking a few more pieces of popcorn from the bowl and popping them into her mouth. "That could never really happen."

"Well... that's why it's science fiction," he reminded her with a chuckle. "Giant Chitauri behemoths of a worm-like variety flew through New York City and you think giant soldier spiders are unbelievable?"

Natasha didn't have much of a reaction to that, "I draw the line at giant spiders."

"That's where you draw the line, and aliens are on the acceptable side of the line?"

There was a near imperceptible shrug of her shoulders, "Maybe you should pick the movies from now on."

Bruce couldn't really disagree with her on that, and then he realized she was looking at him and waiting. "Wait—right now?" he questioned.

She gave a nod, "I need that whole movie out of my head."

He couldn't resist another laugh at that, "Alright..." When he changed the movie and got back to his spot on the couch, Natasha had the bowl of popcorn on her lap. It was about a third of the way through the movie when he felt her shifting over on her side of the couch. He kept his face on the screen, but he did cast his eyes in her direction. He watched as she laid back with her head on the armrest of the couch, then she stretched out with the bowl of popcorn on her stomach and her feet tucked dangerously close to his leg.

She never asked if it was okay, and he would never dare say that it wasn't, even if she had. It would seem that when Natasha decided to be your friend, she pretty much dove in and removed any previous barriers that might have existed, at least it seemed that way to him. Bruce barely hid the smile as he averted his eyes back to the movie, at least until her voice broke through the dialogue.

"So, you really want to let me work with the Big Guy?"

It gave him pause, "Honestly? The thought sort of scares the crap out of me..."

"Me too."

Certainly not the reply that he expected, "But you still want to do it?"

There was a tiny nod that he saw out of the corner of his eye and he turned his head to look at her more fully. At some point the bowl of popcorn had been moved to the coffee table and she simply laid there with her arms folded over her chest. "Yeah," and he supposed she did sound rather certain. Her eyes were still glued to the screen when she spoke again, "Of course, maybe we should work on you, too."

"Me?" and he thinks it sounds vaguely familiar, much like her disbelieving voice when he had told her she was his friend two weeks prior.

There's a little smirk playing on her lips now, "I'm just saying... it seems pretty feasible that trust between you and I would help with trust between myself and the Big Guy."

He's honestly a tidbit frightened by what she might deem to be an exercise in trust, but he can't deny that it's a plausible thought, even if the Other Guy didn't seem to care before. "So... you want to do what exactly, trust falls or something?"

"That's boring," she waved that off like it was the most nonsensical thing in the world. "Besides, you need to get a little more in tune with him too, otherwise what's the use?"

"That'll never happen."

Natasha didn't look entirely like she minded his thoughts on that, "Your choice." He felt her eyes finally shift to look at him now, "So when do you have your next pre-scheduled Hulk-Out?"

It sounded oddly funny when she put it that way, "Er... tomorrow."

"So we'll start tomorrow." Well, it was clear Natasha wasted no time. "And I'll think of something besides movie night to work on us."

She said 'us' like they were some sort of thing.

It threw him off kilter in the most extreme of ways and when he looked at her again, she was giving him a rather coy smile, then she unceremoniously plopped her feet onto his lap. Her gaze averted back to the screen before she spoke again, "Just remember, Bruce, you're the one who dug your heels in on this friendship thing." No doubt about that. "Now you're stuck with me."

Bruce released a nervous chuckle at that, and he gave her an odd look when he saw her nose twitch a little, then the tiniest noise came from her.

Natasha sneezed.

She seemed rather keen on pretending that it didn't happen, so he let it go for the moment. At least until it happened again, then a second later, again. When he looked over again, he could see the slight mortification across her expression, as though she could control sneezes.

Then he realized that was exactly the problem. She couldn't control it.

Having no control was clearly an alarming and embarrassing thing for her, and he couldn't stop the snicker that he released when a forth sneeze escaped her. Natasha's nose was a little red now, but even so, she continued to pretend like nothing was going on.

Apparently, the fifth sneeze was her limit, because she removed her legs from their perch on his lap and stood up. "I'm gonna call it a night, see you tomorrow," she informed him before she escaped the theater room without giving him a chance to reply.

There we go. Hope you enjoyed the somewhat lighter chapter :)