Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for love of this film franchise and personal pleasure.

A.N.: Also set in AoU, while they're laying low at the Barton's, after Nat and Bruce talk and before Fury joins them at the house.


To Build a Home

8. Relationships

After braving through her cold shower, Natasha came out of the bathroom of the Barton's attic suite, which had been reformed and had become her official bedroom during her extended stay with the family last spring once Clint had decided it would be ridiculous to have her sleeping in his sofa-bed for more than a couple of days. She'd been impressed with how quickly he'd put it all together and Laura had confessed to her that he'd just been waiting for an opportunity to remodel yet another part of their house.

She had only on a pair of underwear and bra under the robe covering her otherwise nude body, but she wasn't concerned, even as she found Clint sitting on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, apparently just lounging around and waiting for her. After all, the two of them had run too many missions together and patched each other up after taking hits and getting injured, so they'd reached this level of familiarity as if they were actually siblings.

"So is there anything you want to tell me on the subject of why my wife thinks there's something going on with you and Banner?" He said, turning to her with raised eyebrows.

"Okay." She said gamely, walking out into the room as she towel-dried her red curls. "There's something going on with me and Banner."

"And you never told me this before, why exactly?" His eyebrows continued raised high in his forehead even as he followed her around the room with his eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think I needed your permission to try and act on an interest I have on someone else," she said dryly, stepping over to the dresser as she started to go through her clothes. She'd left a considerable amount of clothes behind, once Laura pointed out to her that it would be easier to do so instead of bringing a bag over every time she'd stay over with them, which happened pretty often.

"Don't give me that," he said at once, frowning in concern at her now. "You know I'm only looking out for you and I want you to be happy."

"Then you should be glad for me." Natasha countered easily, keeping her back to him even as she slipped on a comfortable pair of black jeans. "Bruce is a great guy."

"He is, some issues with The Other Guy notwithstanding," Clint said, bobbing his head left and right for a moment. "But what about, oh who was that again─Steve?" He made an exasperated hand gesture at her and she turned around to face him and merely rolled her eyes in reply. "We haven't talked about that in a while, and when I saw the two of you flirting at the party I thought you were finally getting on the same page."

"I wasn't flirting with him." She countered, even as she pulled a top on and crossed the room to hang the bathrobe on the hanger behind the door.

"Ha! Right." He retorted not-so-eloquently and flickered an eyebrow in disbelief up at her.

"We were actually talking about Bruce." Natasha maintained, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared back at him. Well, technically by the time they'd joined the others at the lounge she'd been teasing Steve about fixing him up on dates and creating a Captain America version of The Bachelor, but it wouldn't have the same effect if she'd told him that.

"God, you two have some messed up dynamics there." Clint shook his head at her a little as he furrowed his eyebrows in bafflement before her statement.

"I already told you to drop it, Clint." She rolled her eyes at him once more, going towards the closet and retrieving a sweater. "There never was and there never will be something between Steve and I."

"Only because you won't let it happen," he pointed out to her, making a hand gesture at her. "You're scared of what you feel for him and what you might actually have if you allow yourself to go there, so now you're running headlong into this thing with Banner to hide away from it."

"That's not what I'm doing," she turned around and practically glowered at him at the accusation. "I like Bruce, I genuinely care for him."

"I don't doubt that," he said quickly, raising his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I know you wouldn't manipulate him like that, not anymore." She seemed somewhat placated by his words so he carried on. "But you know that I'm right about what I'm saying. You said so yourself after D.C., that Steve was someone who could break you and you wouldn't let that happen."

"You may 'ship us together all you want, Clint, but he doesn't want me like that," she said nonchalantly, going over to the mirror to inspect herself, adjusting and framing her hair around her face. "He only wants me as a friend. He told me so in D.C."

"I have a hard time believing that." Clint told her with another raised eyebrow and a rather dry tone.

"Believe what you want." She said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "It's what he said."

"Have you actually told him how you feel about him?" He challenged her at once.

"Yeah, because I want to make things even more awkward between us." Natasha deadpanned back at him. "Of course not."

"So that's it? You won't even try?" He raised his hands in a frustrated gesture at her. "You just want to get on with Banner and ride off into the sunset? How is that even going to work out after what happened in Johannesburg? There might be people after him, you would be on the wrong side of the law again."

"I'm not sure." She shrugged her shoulders unconcernedly, but inside she could feel a churning in her stomach at the thought. If that happened, she wouldn't be able to keep Clint and his family in her life, or any of the other Avengers. "We haven't worked out the details yet, but we'll come up with something."

"Unbelievable." Clint shook his head at her, then narrowed his eyes. "You always do that, you know."

"Do what?" She raised an eyebrow back at him.

"Make things harder for yourself and go after the wrong guy." He elaborated, then rolled his eyes at her. "Like when you had that brilliant idea of getting involved with Murdock when you were working together on that case in San Francisco, even though he had that psycho ex-girlfriend after him."

"You're never gonna let that go, are you?" She rolled her eyes back at him and walked towards the window to avoid looking at him. Natasha didn't particularly feel like rehashing her history with the self-proclaimed Daredevil vigilante when they'd crossed paths during one of her missions and one of his cases back when he'd been in Law School and that mess she'd inadvertently gotten into with the Greek heiress Elektra Natchios.

"She almost killed you, Nat." Clint raised his eyebrows pointedly back at her.

"Please, as if she could have." She threw a rueful smile at him over her shoulder. "I handled that just fine."

"Debatable, but that's beside the point." He countered, making a bobbing motion with his head.

"Right. The point is that this is my life and I get to choose how to do things." She said, turning around to stare seriously back at him as she crossed her arms over her chest. "As my best friend, you should support me and be happy for me."

"I hate it when you use the best friend card." He shook his head at her, then heaved a sigh, raising his hands in surrender. "Okay, fine. I'll stop bugging you about this. For now." Then he got up from the bed and walked towards her, reaching out to place a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "I know you're not gonna disappear on us until this whole mess with Ultron is done anyway, so we can talk more about this later."

He squeezed her shoulder and gave her a soft smile as he left her by the window. Natasha watched him go, then she turned to look out once more and she watched for a while as Steve and Tony were outside chopping wood until it looked like they got into an argument. Shaking her head to herself, she then also turned to leave the room.

As she came down the stairs, she grabbed onto the wooden banister for a moment and shook her head, as she had another flashback of being in the Red Room, watching a younger version of herself being gruelled ruthlessly through her combined ballet and assassin training. She needed some air and she needed some time alone, as the conversations with Bruce and Clint were still rattling around her brain and she had too many conflicting thoughts in her head, so she walked towards the back of the house and sat down on the top step leading out of the small winter porch adjacent to the kitchen.

She'd only been alone for a few minutes when she felt rather than heard someone approaching and she wasn't surprised at the sound of his voice. "Hey." Steve said quietly as he stood by her, crossing his arms and leaning his shoulder on the threshold.

"Hi." Natasha looked up and gave him a small smile.

"Are you okay?" He frowned down in concern at her.

"Yeah, just thinking." She reassured him, her lips twitching up for a moment but soon the smile left her face.

"What's wrong?" He asked as he sat down next to her, his folded arms resting on his knees. As she maintained her silence and kept staring out, he nudged her gently with his shoulder. "C'mon, Nat. Talk to me."

She looked with warmth over at him, feeling better that he'd called her Nat instead of Romanoff once more and she just looked at him for a moment, before she shook her head. "I have too many things in my head. That girl, what she did to me…" Natasha kept shaking her head, and turned to face forward once more before she continued, her voice growing even lower and quieter. "She made me see so many memories all at once. Things I hadn't thought about in years and things I didn't even know I could remember."

"The Red Room?" Steve asked her gently, the two of them practically whispering to each other now.

"Yeah." She nodded and blinked her eyes a couple of times, before she turned to look at him again. "What about you? How are you doing?"

"I'm fine." He said at once, one corner of his mouth turning up.

"You don't look fine." It was her time to frown at him in concern.

"I don't?" He raised his eyebrows at her in surprise. He didn't think anyone had noticed. Tony certainly had thought he'd walked out of their encounter with the Scarlet Witch pretty much unscathed, as if he didn't have a dark side, as the inventor had said.

"You look… distraught." Natasha said, still frowning at him, as if she were looking at something deep inside him that only she could see. "What did she do to you?"

"I'm not sure." He sighed in reply, feeling some sort of weight lifted off his shoulders as he talked about this with her. "It wasn't memories. Fears and regrets, maybe." He shook his head slightly then turned forward to look out into the distance. "What could have been, if I hadn't gone down in the ice."

"Peggy?" She asked him simply, her tone just as gentle as the one he'd used with her before.

He turned to look her right in the eyes, feeling at the same time surprised that she'd ask him this but he had to admit a part of him had already expected that she would. They'd never talked about Peggy before, but he knew that she knew all about it. "Yeah." He admitted in a whisper.

Her lips twitched up into a sad, understanding smile and she reached over, squeezing his arm in a comforting gesture as she then leaned over and laid her head on his shoulder. He sighed and leaned his head on hers, and the two of them kept sitting like this for a long while as the sun dipped low on the horizon until suddenly Tony came back into the house accompanied by Nick Fury.