"Bedtime for a certain young Stark," Tony declares as he approaches where his daughter is seated on the beach, next to Natasha.

"But Dad, Aunt Tasha is here!" Morgan protests immediately.

"Sorry, kid, your mom sent me with specific instructions to bring you back to the house. And she used the 'no-exceptions-to-this-instruction' look, so no getting out of this one," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"But—"

"Nuh-uh, we just covered this," he says while holding up a finger to silence her and flashing an expression with a hint of warning.

Morgan huffs and then turns to her aunt. "Are you gonna come again?"

"If you want me to," Nat says, and Tony wonders if she really thinks Morgan would not want her to visit again.

Morgan nods enthusiastically. "Tomorrow?"

Nat chuckles. "Soon, okay? Now you better get a move on. You don't want to keep your mom waiting."

"Goodnight," Morgan says as she throws her arms around Nat for a tight hug.

Tony sees Nat's arms reciprocate and pat Morgan's back gently. "Goodnight. Sleep well," she says with a smile as they break apart. Tony picks up Morgan at her request and then begins to head back up to the house. "Don't let the bed bugs bite," Nat adds.

"I'm taking that as an insult," Tony calls over his shoulder. "Bed bugs? In my house?! That's just rude!"

A few moments later, having passed a now sleepy Morgan off to Pepper and made a quick pit stop to grab a couple of things, he heads back to the beach to rejoin his friend.

"She's a pretty cute kid," Natasha remarks once he's seated beside her on the beach.

"Yeah, well, can't take all the credit. Pepper had a little to do with it," Tony says breezily.

"A little more than a little, I think," Nat replies and a smile curls on her lips, like a soft shadow of their banter from days gone by. She'd rebuffed his efforts at engaging her in verbal sparring at first, opting instead to shoot him irritated looks. Eventually — once they'd all grown a little closer — she rarely disappointed with her viciously dry, sarcastic comebacks.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's not quibble about the details. Besides, I come bearing a gift."

"Oh?"

"Vodka, for my favourite Russian," he declares before holding out a bottle and a camping mug he'd scrounged from the kitchen cupboard.

He watches her eyebrow inching up into the barest hint of an arch and the corner of her mouth twitching into a brief smirk. "Pretty sure I'm the only Russian you know," she says dryly as she accepts the bottle and mug.

"Well, there was that Vanko fellow a few years back. Can't say I was a big fan of him though."

"Oh, well, good to see I rank higher than the man who tried to kill you and hijack the Stark Expo," Nat says with a roll of her eyes as she reads the bottle's label, glancing up only briefly.

"Low bar, but you sailed over it, Red," he says, miming the action with a hand. "Even with the stabbing in the neck incident."

She lets the little playful dig go and instead cracks open the bottle of vodka's lid before flicking it off deftly and pouring herself some into the mug he'd brought. "None for you?" she notes, having spotted that he'd only brought out one mug.

"Nah, you know me, goes straight to the asshole part of my brain," he answers with a wave of his hand. The truth was, while he hadn't given up drinking altogether, he just wasn't driven to drink like he used to be. The peace that came with stepping away from being an Avenger and starting his family, it seemed, had helped quiet the things he'd once turned to alcohol to dull.

Nat hums non-committally before she takes a drink. He sees the appreciative smile — he'd made doubly sure it was good vodka instead of the "awful American stuff" as she liked to say — before it fades away in favour of a contemplative expression again.

"So, you out here admiring the fireflies?" Tony asks knowingly, and she turns to look at him with a furrowed brow, silently surprised at his knowledge. "What? I pay attention," he protests, feigning offence at her assertion. "There was that night after one of our failed attempts to find Loki's sceptre. I saw Steve find you in a meadow, looking very much like the main character in a tear-jerking drama. You were all… contemplative and oddly withdrawn, even if you verbally eviscerated us on the quinjet after," he explains. He remembered being surprised by how quickly she'd turned from quiet and contemplative to confident and almost snarky.

"I used to see them a bit as a kid. There were so many in the forest that night... just sparked a memory."

Her honest answer surprises him. She'd never been a straight shooter when it came to her personal life, instead choosing to maintain the veil of mystery by giving half answers and letting rumours swirl to fuel the assumptions. "Good one?" he asks hopefully, all too aware of the horrors from her childhood.

She takes another drink and then tilts her head, considering. "Bittersweet, I suppose," she says after a moment.

"You really were going for the main character role, huh?"

She snorts and then takes another sip from her mug. "Around you five boys? Never had a chance at the main role. Barely qualified as a supporting character if you ask me. More like a guest star with an extended run."

"Oh, come on now. That's not true. I mean, yes, obviously I was the lead role, but the rest of you were admirable supporting actors," he quips with a smile. He knows she read between the lines. He knows she understood he was telling her she was far more than a guest star on their team.

"Those were the days, huh?" Nat says with a smile that tinges a little into sadness. He realizes then that she, perhaps more than the rest of them, had suffered the most with the team's ugly fracturing. She'd told him once — in the height of the Accords nonsense when he'd been attempting to understand why she'd sided with him over Steve and had tried to get a straight answer out of her — that staying together was more important than how they stayed together. He'd thought, at the time, that it was a bit of a naive position but had understood it too.

"Yeah," he answers with a light sigh. She's not wrong — in their heyday, the team had been one of the best things to happen to him. But now, those days seem like a million years away.

"You miss 'em?"

"The good old days or the guys?"

"Either. Both," she answers with a shrug.

"I do," he admits. He blows out a quick, heavy exhale before he continues. "Me and Cap— It's—"

She holds up a hand to stop him. "It's okay. I don't know everything but I know shit went down. You don't need to rehash it. I'm not asking you to forgive him. It's between you two."

He sighs again. "I don't want to hate him, but what happened isn't easily forgiven." His feelings about Steve Rogers were complicated at best and always had been. Even with time and distance, he's still not sure he can ever forgive the man.

"Believe me, I get it. There are people who I should forgive but can't bring myself to."

"One of those people yourself?" he says before he can stop the words. He knows they'll probably hit their target and elicit a grumpy reaction from her, but he also knows she needs to hear them. He'd spent a good chunk of his life unable to forgive himself for all those weapons he'd made early on. With time he'd begun to understand it wasn't his burden to bear alone, but he isn't sure that Natasha, with all the dark corners of her history, had yet come to the same conclusion.

She scowls, but her expression relaxes as she brings her hand up to massage her temple. "I think we're all in that same boat to some degree."

"Maybe so," he agrees with a slow nod. "It's a long road, and it gets to a point where I guess we ought to get off that road though, huh?"

"We're mixing metaphors," she says, sidestepping an actual reply.

"Uh-huh," he counters, making known his feelings on her thinly veiled avoidance with an arched brow. She takes another drink, and he knows he won't get more out of her down that road. "So, bittersweet memories, huh?" he says instead, hoping maybe she'll feel more comfortable delving into that.

"Something like that." Okay, so maybe not more comfortable, he thinks wryly.

"I remember seeing them as a kid when we were here in New York," he says with a gesture to the fireflies.

"In the city?" she says, a little surprise in her tone.

He shakes his head. "No, we had a place upstate we stayed in often. It backed onto a huge green space, so there was no shortage of space for them."

"Must have been quite the sight."

"Yeah, my mom used to watch me chase them with a jar. I was convinced I could harness the energy for something."

She smiles. "How old were you?"

He brings a hand up to stroke his chin as he thinks back. "Five?" he guesses. "Maybe six?"

"I was eleven the last time I saw them," she offers, surprising him. He'd figured she wasn't up to sharing things after her previous sidesteps. "Well, at least as a kid. I've seen them a bunch as an adult."

He wonders if she'd already been in the Red Room at that age. He knows she had been young, but he's quite not sure how young. That wasn't the sort of thing available in SHIELD files and definitely wasn't on the 'okay to ask about' list either.

"And do tell, what was young Natasha Romanoff like?" Tony ventures, using a distinctly casual tone. He isn't trying to pry into what he knows are painful memories, but he is curious about the kind of person she'd been before he'd met her.

She smirks and then takes a drink. "I chased my share of fireflies too," she answers after a moment of Tony staring expectantly.

It's a non-answer, he knows, but at the same time, it's something. "Uh-huh. You did cartwheels and backflips as you chased them, didn't you?"

Nat snorts. "No, I stuck to running. But I could've done those. I loved doing back handsprings."

"Oh, yeah, that's a real shock," he says sarcastically. At her arched eyebrow, he elaborates. "I've seen you fight, it's all flippy and spinny," he explains, gesturing with his hands for emphasis.

"Flippy and spinny? Decades of training, and you're reducing my skill to flippy and spinny?"

He holds up a hand. "Oh, relax, Red. It's graceful as hell in a way the rest of us could never be. I just meant there's a lot of spinning and flipping," he says, even though he knows she's winding him up.

She grins and takes a sip from her mug. "I suppose there is," she relents.

"Happy would agree wholeheartedly. Maybe not out loud though. He's still going with the excuse he slipped when you took him down the day we met."

She smiles fondly. "That was a fun one."

"Did you plan that, by the way? Or was it instinctual?" he asks with a tilt of his head.

"It was a calculated move. Obviously, I didn't know you'd make Happy give me a lesson, but once you did, I knew exactly how to get your attention."

"I think you came this close to giving Pepper a heart attack," he says with a chuckle, holding up his thumb and finger nearly pinched closed.

"She was the one variable I wasn't totally sure of. Thankfully you were enthralled enough to make her opinion moot."

"Yeah, enthralled is a good word for it," he agrees with a nod. "It was mesmerizing," he adds with a chuckle.

"Good. It was intended to be," Nat says with a slight upturn of the corner of her mouth like she's amused.

Tony is ashamed to admit he'd had some less than savoury thoughts when he'd first laid eyes on her. After all, he may have been head over heels for Pepper even then, but he hadn't been blind. He knows Nat is well aware of what he'd likely thought of her back then and is grateful that she'd allowed him to redeem himself for it.

"That must've sucked," he muses. At Nat's furrowed brow, he clarifies, "Having to do all that paperwork as a paralegal and your mission updates, I mean."

"Unlike some people, I can happily sit behind a desk. Yes, it was mundane, but that's not a bad thing. Clint and I were the highest-ranked agents Fury had, and I did more infiltration than Clint, so I was busy. And not always with fun stuff. Working as your and Pepper's assistant was a welcomed break, infuriating as it was at times. Besides, Pepper was a good boss."

Tony makes a face as a thought occurs to him suddenly. "Fury never made you do…you know…sketchy shit, did he?"

"He never asked me to, no. He always kept his word on that, but I offered occasionally. It drove Phil crazy that I did too because he was hellbent on making sure I never had to do that stuff again."

"Aw, Agent," he says with a smile, "what a good guy."

"Yeah, he was good like that. Phil and I spent time together in the weeks and months after I defected. He drew the short straw to oversee my integration."

"Seems like the right kind of guy for that. I'm betting Fury picked him specifically."

Nat nods. "We spent a while in the mountains to give me time to get my head straight. The fireflies there were beautiful too."

"Yeah?" Tony says, intrigued because this is information he doesn't know. It's new for her to share like this, and he wonders if it's the state of the world post-Thanos, the alcohol, or if she's changed. "Didn't know SHIELD had a facility up there."

She nods, and he can see that she's remembering it as clearly as if it were mere days ago. "The sky's so clear there. Dusk is this amazing mix of colours you can't see here, and then you have these little pinpricks of light floating around…very picturesque. I doubt a camera could capture it, but if it could, I'd have loved to have a picture of it."

His eyebrows raise in surprise. "Really?" She nods and then takes a sip of her drink. "Well, it sounds like it was a pretty impressive scene," he agrees with a nod.

They fall into silence then, and Tony's mind goes over ways he can try to get a read on how his friend is doing. The relationship between them is much better than it'd been in the aftermath of the Decimation, but it's not back to where it used to be either. There's still a palpable distance between them.

He turns and looks at her when he feels her gaze. "Ask whatever it is that you want to ask."

"How do you know I want to ask something? That's very presumptuous," he says, trying — unsuccessfully, he knows — to cover up his surprise at being read that easily.

"Tony," she scolds softly.

He sighs. "You okay, Nat? I mean, for real. I get that things are a bit of a mess for you now with… well… everything, but are you okay? I know how big that Compound is when it's empty."

She smiles fondly. "I'm alright, Shellhead. You don't need to worry about me."

He scrutinizes her for a moment. "Alright," he concedes finally, even though he doesn't quite fully believe her, "but if you need something, let us know," he says seriously. "I mean, maybe we won't be on board for spending another few million like your last idea," he says dryly, referencing the programs and facilities for the orphaned kids that she'd pitched to them, "but small things we can do. Like, you know, groceries getting delivered to the Compound."

"Rhodey is such a little snitch," she grumbled, scowling.

"Don't put this on him, it was FRIDAY."

She shakes her head. "I got tattled on by a computer. Unbelievable."

"FRIDAY isn't a—"

"Yeah, I know, I know," she interrupts, a little brusquely, though he doesn't sense any anger.

"Be nice," he warns, "I did bring you vodka."

"That's because I'm your favourite Russian," she replies cheekily.

"I'm regretting this already."

"No, no," she says with a grin. "You're stuck with me now; you can't declare something like that and take it back."

"Well, fine. Am I at least your favourite American?"

She snorts. "Not even close."

"Okay, ouch."

"You aren't even my favourite Stark."

He's offended for a second, and then he remembers his daughter. "I can't even argue with that," he says with a laugh. "Morgan's my favourite too."

"You are, however, my favourite vodka supplying genius."

"I… will take it. I expect a framed certificate for that, by the way," he quips.

A few months later, on his birthday, she sends him a framed certificate declaring him "Natasha Romanoff's favourite vodka supplying genius." He grins widely and hangs it up on the wall of his lab where he tinkers now and then, and every time he sees it, he smiles.

On her next birthday, he sends her a framed photo of some fireflies at dusk, with mountains in the distance behind them. He includes a short note:

A picture worthy of a main character, don't you think?

— T

(were there some not-so-thinly-veiled references to her character being sidelined in the movies favour of some others? yes.
am I sorry about this? not by a long shot.)

tried to keep this one lighter...hopefully no tissues were required!?

as always, comments are welcomed. enjoy it? didn't vibe with it? amused by the quips and banter? do let me know.