"I retract everything I said about you not having that much stuff to move," Bruce jokingly complained, and Natasha grinned as she wiped sweat from her brow.
Moving day'd dawned hot and humid, and the kind of June morning where the hum of air conditioners drowned out all the birds and cicadas. Natasha'd drank her morning coffee in front of her living room window, watching sweat-soaked runners rush by despite the crippling heat.
Some moving day, she'd texted Bruce.
We can shower after, he'd suggested, and she'd smiled.
They'd worked together slowly, loading up both their cars with Natasha's boxes and bags, her personal belongings that would be of no use to Peter as he sublet for the summer. Standing in the doorway as Bruce'd played backseat Tetris, she'd felt the hot pinpricks of nervousness crawling through her stomach again. It'd become a familiar sensation over the last couple weeks, one she'd tried her best to ignore.
Clint, predictably, had been no help. "Look at you, nervous over a boy," he'd teased after dinner one night. It'd been the last night before she'd moved in with Bruce, and she'd dodged inviting him to the dinner for what felt like the final time. She wasn't even sure what made Clint think she was nervous, but when she'd flipped him off, he'd laughed. "Trust me, it's totally natural."
"Because you felt it with Phil," she'd deadpanned.
"I still feel it with Phil half the time," he'd corrected. "When it matters, it's worth being nervous over."
She really hoped he was right.
She left Bruce to close up the cars and flopped onto his couch, closing her eyes. Her hairline and back felt damp and sticky with sweat, and for the first time all day, she stretched out her legs and lolled her head back against the couch cushion.
When a familiar weight landed on the couch next to her, the corner of her mouth kicked up almost involuntarily. "I need ten minutes before any shower gymnastics," she warned.
Bruce chuckled. "Who said I won't do all the work?"
"History," she shot right back.
"Nice," he replied, but his voice was filled with laughter. A second later, blunt fingers slid through her curls. She jumped a little at that, twisting to glance over at him, and her stomach sunk when he rolled his lips together. "I didn't mean to—"
"Sneak up on someone who's imagining what it'd be like to have you do all the work?" she asked. His mouth twisted into a little smile, and she leaned her shoulder against his. "I already did the heavy lifting."
"And when was this?"
"All the times you weren't looking."
He snorted. "Ah," he said. After a few seconds, his body relaxed, and he fell into an easy pattern of running his fingers through her hair. It was easy to close her eyes again, to imagine that living together would actually be this easy and comfortable. Except the pin-pricks kept tingling in the pit of her belly, sharp little jabs she couldn't entirely ignore.
When she opened her eyes, she found that Bruce'd closed his eyes somewhere in the last few minutes, his face peaceful and slack as he half-dozed next to her. She admired him for a moment—his messy hair, his thread-bare t-shirt, his basketball shorts that he probably borrowed from Tony—before she planted a hand on the side of his neck and kissed him. He released a little content noise, and within a few seconds, she'd shifted on the couch to straddle him, her free hand clutching at his shoulder as they kissed greedily.
Like teenagers playing house, she thought, and her gut twisted one last time before she pulled away from him.
"Shower?" she asked, her fingers sliding into the damp hair at the back of his neck.
He blinked in surprise. "I thought you didn't want hard work," he reminded her.
"No, but I want something hard," she informed him, and he groaned before he kissed her again.
"Most embarrassing college moment."
"Oh no," Natasha laughed, and when Bruce grinned at her, she leaned into his personal space just enough to elbow him in the ribs. "That's too much like Tony's attempts at truth-or-dare."
Bruce raised his hands. "Guilty as charged," he admitted, and she crinkled her nose at him as she stirred the last of her ice cream around in its paper cup. "I just thought we could talk for part of our walk."
She raised an eyebrow. "Since when has silence made you uncomfortable?"
"It doesn't," Bruce assured her, and she hummed in response.
It was a beautiful, balmy Saturday morning, the kind where most of the neighborhood appeared to be out at the local park, eating ice cream or walking their dogs. Every few minutes, a handful of children ran or biked past, and Bruce smiled every time. He recognized a few incoming kindergarteners from the spring's kindergarten round-up, although none of them seemed to recognize their future teacher.
Natasha smiled at them too, but less warmly. Eventually, Bruce forced himself to stop watching them on the playground and to focus on their walk.
"Tony invited us to his Fourth of July party," he said after a few more minutes, and Natasha paused in eating her last bite of ice cream to glance over at him. He shrugged. "I didn't know if you had other plans, but if you want to go—"
"We always went separately," Natasha pointed out as she dropped her spoon and bowl into a nearby trash can. "It makes sense we'd go together now."
"Unless you'd rather do something else," he suggested. She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he wet his lips. "We could spend a few days at home, or go away for the weekend. Whatever you want to do."
She smiled. "I think we spend enough time together, just the two of us."
"I don't know if I'd ever agree with that," he replied, and her smile faltered a little as they continued walking.
Bruce finished up his ice cream cone in the relatively comfortable silence, Natasha's arm close enough that they brushed against each other every few steps. After a while, he slung his arm around her waist and she leaned into his touch a little. She smelled like the summer breeze when he tipped his face close to her curls, and he resisted the urge to just breathe her in.
"I'm glad we did this," he said finally, and the little surprised expression that flashed across her face almost stopped his heart. He felt sometimes like he always snuck up on her, surprising her in strange ways. He smiled. "I'm glad to have you in my life."
After another beat or two, Natasha smiled back at him. "Me too," she said, and leaned further into his grip.
It happened slowly, like tectonic plates drifting apart from each other and slowly leaving behind a canyon in their wake. Bruce thought about the various holes in the ground he'd seen over the years—a trip to the Grand Canyon when he was five, looking over the side of a cliff while hiking in the mountains in college, staring at pictures of craters in grad school for a class he could barely remember now. Each moment involved feelings of awe and appreciation of nature and its beauty.
He totally missed the fact that he was looking at gaping maws, keepers of nothingness.
Drifting was something that occurred slowly, subtle shifts in the landscape that happened right under your nose until one day you looked over your shoulder and noticed a crack had formed. It went ignored, and then a bit later, you realized it'd opened up. And then suddenly, there was a river basin separating you from the other side.
Bruce didn't know exactly where he and Natasha fell on the erosive spectrum, but there was definitely a crack between them.
The first few Tuesdays of the summer after Natasha moved into his house, he came along to dinners at Clint and Phil's. But with each progressing week, Natasha grew quieter and quieter over dinner. Bruce assumed she, like he, was feeding off the tension of their hosts and the stress in their lives. When Bruce made up some excuse to stay home on the fourth Tuesday, he was surprised to watch relief roll off Natasha's shoulders for a split second.
But he wasn't the only one making excuses to slip away for a bit.
Natasha had developed of slipping out of the house an evening a week or so. She only gave vague details about going "out". The only upside to her sneaking away every now and then was that she came back more relaxed. She didn't jump under his touch or spend as much time staring off into space.
Bruce never pushed for details as to where she went, and Natasha certainly wasn't going to give them freely. He was fairly certain she wasn't cheating on him. He'd known that one night stands were a thing in her life, but he'd never known her to be unfaithful.
If anything, it brought feelings of shame and guilt down on him. The sensations of inadequacy led him to a mixture of coming on too strongly—suspiciously cooking all her favorite meals inside of a week—and simultaneously distancing himself. He even thought back to the afternoon in his classroom and that flicker of whatever emotion had crossed her face. Bruce should've pushed harder, ensured moving in with him was something she actually wanted and not a stunt to keep her even with Steve and Bucky. But he hadn't, because he was a miserable, lonely man who'd rather just be miserable than just alone.
Or so he thought.
He began to try being alone instead of miserable. Their normal routine was to eat dinner, then keep a running score on who'd win the most money on Jeopardy, but Bruce began to pull away from that a night or two during the week. He'd say he was going to call Peter about planning out activities for the science curriculum they were building while walking around the neighborhood. That wasn't a lie, but he rarely fessed up to walking an extra meandering mile through the suburb after ending his phone call.
It was fine, right? he thought to himself while strolling down sidewalks. They were both private people who hadn't been in a serious relationship in years. Alone time wasn't necessarily a bad thing, was it? He desperately wanted to say that it wasn't, but his gut churned whenever he tried to give the answer.
A few nights later, Bruce sat in bed half-reading, half-staring at a science journal. He heard Natasha unlock the front door, and they mumbled greetings at each other before she moved to the bathroom. Bruce listened to her go through her normal routine: brushing her teeth, splashing water on her face to remove her makeup, and tossing dirty clothes onto the bathroom tile to be cleaned up in the morning. She walked out in only her underwear before pulling on an oversized t-shirt and crawling into bed. She pulled the bedding up to her shoulders, mumbled a "good night", and settled in with her back to him.
He rolled his lips for a second warring within himself if he wanted to pick this fight now. "Are we okay?" he asked, his tongue loosening before he was ready for it.
She rolled over, green eyes staring at him for a moment. "Yeah," she answered.
Bruce really wished he could believe her.
"Bruce," she panted, a prayer and a plea all in one, and his teeth grazed along her collarbone. She moaned then, rolling her hips without a second thought, his breath hot against her neck.
Some days—most days—she felt like she'd been set adrift, a ship without a mooring or a destination, but sometimes she felt like flying. Like right now, with Bruce's dangerous mouth on her skin and their bodies pressed together in the insufferable July heat. Like yesterday, and like tomorrow, when words finally fell away and they could just be for a little while.
Both of them lost, maybe, but lost in each other.
Bruce gripped one of her wrists, pinned it above her head, and she released a noise like a growl, demanding and hungry as she bucked up against him. He grinned at her, his movement more erratic, more needy than in days.
Or a week.
Natasha thought, for a moment, that it might've been a week.
But then, her mind grew too distracted by other things to worry about issues like time.
Afterwards, her head on his shoulder and her heart slowing gradually, she closed her eyes.
"You're good at that," Bruce joked, his voice warm, and she elbowed him in the ribs instead of answering.
Later, she'd wish she was better at other things. Like just about everything else.
are you sure you don't want some super high-quality bro time? skip out on the meeting, go bowling and eat junk food, cause the kind of mass chaos that'll leave pepper mad at me for at least the next 24 hours?
Bruce snorted at the text message. No, Tony, he replied, and turned off his phone.
The Thursday night AA meeting at their usual church was the week's smallest, featuring less than a dozen people. Most were new to the program and going multiple times a week, but they always offered Bruce an easy smile and a handshake. Bruce knew because he'd started going in the last few weeks, offering Natasha a chance to be alone with her own thoughts.
Alone in the house they were meant to share, he thought sometimes, and he hated himself for it. Alone, avoiding him, closing herself off to—
"Good to see you, Bruce," the group leader said as he entered the meeting room.
Bruce smiled. "Good to see you," he said, and it sounded halfway genuine.
He didn't share—he never shared—and after, he drove over to the diner for a milkshake and some quality time with a crossword puzzle. "On the house, sweetie," the waitress said, and squeezed his shoulder. He forced himself to thank her before he ducked his head and tried to focus on his puzzle.
He failed, but he tried.
He left enough money to cover the milkshake and a tip on top of that and snuck out before the waitress wandered back to check on him. He called Peter on the drive home, and they talked for a while before he pulled into the driveway. But even after he ended the call, he spent a few minutes sitting and staring at the house, unable to convince himself to walk inside.
Inside, the house was as cold and dark as outside, but he still toed off his shoes carefully and left his keys and wallet on the front table before coming all the way in. He slunk past the hallway like an unfaithful spouse and ducked into the kitchen. He'd check his e-mail, maybe text Tony to apologize, and then head to bed.
Except when he flipped on the kitchen light, he froze.
On the counter next to the stove was a covered plate. When he went to investigate, he discovered it was a meal from his favorite Indian restaurant, a place he'd taken Natasha maybe twice in the whole time they'd been friends. Next to the plate was a note that simply read: I wanted Indian and you'd gone out, so I thought I'd order you your favorite.
She'd signed it with an N.
He stared at the plate for a long time before he placed it in the fridge and headed straight to the bedroom.
"You're wonderful," he murmured into Natasha's shoulder when he curled up behind her, and when he slid an arm around her waist, she sighed happily against him.
Natasha threw her suitcase into the trunk of James's Corolla, dropped into the passenger seat, and slammed her door shut. "Drive," she ordered.
"Good to see you, too," James replied dryly as he backed out of Bruce's driveway.
Natasha fought to keep her breathing even and did her best to keep her eyes on the road ahead of her. She didn't want to look back and see Bruce's sad face peering through the curtains. Or worse, not see him at all.
"I thought you weren't going to see your dad this summer," James commented.
"Change of plans," she answered. She was quite proud of herself that her voice hadn't wavered, but his words threw her into a tailspin.
She really wasn't going to spend a week at her Dad's in Chicago this summer. While it was a tradition to endure seeing him twice a year—summer and Christmas—she loathed the idea. But then something had changed between her and Bruce, and Natasha needed a place to escape.
Bruce knew it, too. "Is it so awful here that you'd rather be in Chicago? Am I worse that your father now?"
The fight that had followed was the most explosive thing Natasha'd ever witnessed. She'd heard stories from Tony about the rare instance of Bruce losing his shit, but she'd thought they were typical Stark exaggerations. If anything, Tony was watering things down.
But she had fought back just as loud and large as he did. Natasha wished she could say that it all happened so quick and furiously that it was all a blur, a hazy mess in her mind. But it wasn't. She remembered every syllable they both said. It was easy to do since that was the last time they'd spoken to each other.
Living together for three days since then, neither saying a word.
Natasha knew they were rocky before, that she'd pushed them into something they weren't ready for. She'd really hoped Bruce's goodness would make up for her deficiencies, but no man—not even Bruce Banner—had that ability.
He'd given up the bed in that time, electing to sleep on the couch. They both kept themselves busy and out of each other's space. Natasha couldn't really pin an exact time and date for when things unraveled; the whole thing felt like a mudslide. But however it happened, they went from being happy around each other, to uneasy, to avoiding being in the same room as each other.
"So I had lunch with Steve's mom last week," James announced. His words brought her back to the present. They were already on the interstate, and Natasha half-wondered if he'd been talking the whole time and she never noticed.
"Yeah?" she replied weakly.
For the rest of the trip to the airport, James attempted to replay every action and word spoken between his boyfriend's mom and himself. Natasha tried to pay attention and be happy for him, but couldn't. She spent the drive silently listing things she could've done differently over the last six weeks. It was an embarrassingly long list.
When they mercifully arrived at the airport, James helped her get her suitcase out of the trunk. He looked at her for what felt like the first time all afternoon. "Everything okay?" he asked.
Natasha wanted to scream, cry, and throttle him. Of course it wasn't alright, nothing in her life was. She looked like a mess—no make-up, hair pulled back in a barely there ponytail, wearing yoga paints and sneakers out in public on a non-work day—but felt even messier inside. She wanted to explode at him for not noticing until now, but she didn't have the energy for it. "It's fine," she said.
James grinned brightly at her. "Whatever's wrong will fix itself. Don't worry about it."
She stood slack-jawed on the sidewalk as she watched him drive away. Once she could finally move, she yanked her suitcase into submission behind her. "I miss my bitter, jaded, single best friend," she muttered to herself.
Once Natasha was through security and an even longer line at Starbucks for an espresso, she settled down into a seat outside her gate. Pulling out her phone, she opened up the series of texts between Bruce and herself. She'd hoped to find some piece of solace in them, but it was just another example of how distant they'd grown since moving in together. Natasha touched the screen to start typing, but her phone darkened three times before she could think of something to say.
I'm sorry, she eventually typed. I knew I'd be bad at this, but I didn't think I'd be this horrible at it. Sorry I dragged you down into my misery.
Natasha waited for a response. She imagined what Bruce would be doing now—mowing the lawn, tending to the small garden in the corner of the backyard, laundry, reading a science journal. All the peaceful things she imagined him doing in his home before she moved in. And now, she knew exactly what he looked like when doing those simple tasks.
But he didn't answer.
She shut off her phone and tried to rest on the two hour flight, but her mind and stomach churned too much. But it got even worse when she stepped off the plane and realized he still hadn't responded.
"We need to talk," Bruce said, and he watched Natasha bristle.
For the last week, the house'd felt silent and lonely enough that Bruce'd crept through like a ghost, trying not to disturb the dust or break the endless wall of quiet. Most days, he'd woken up early, dressed, and spent the rest of his day out somewhere: at AA meetings, at school, at the park, at the public library. He'd brought journals to restaurants and bad novels to coffee shops, avoiding reality by slipping into their words; he'd turned down dinner invitations from Tony, Clint, and (weirdly) Bucky, and all to pick at mediocre sushi before driving home.
The silence greeted him like an old friend, every night.
And every night, after he'd changed into his pajamas and turned on the television, he'd sit on the couch and survey all the little touches that Natasha'd added to his home, all the signs that she belonged there, with him.
But Natasha'd left most of her belongings at her condo for Peter Parker to use. And she hadn't even unpacked all the boxes that she'd brought to Bruce's house.
Natasha maybe never planned on staying, the voice in the back of Bruce's head'd needled, again and again, and more than once, he'd taken a late-night walk just to shut that voice up.
"I just wish we would've figured out how bad it was sooner," one of the men at his and Tony's usual AA meeting'd said when sharing, one hand fisted in his hair as he leaned heavily on the podium. "And maybe it was the drinking, you know? Fogged everything up for me. But if we'd split six months, a year earlier, maybe we would've been able to save something. Even if we still ended up divorced, we could've kept talking to each other. Kept the kids from picking sides." He'd shaken his head. "Maybe we could've stayed human, you know?"
After the meeting, at the diner, Tony'd snorted into his milkshake. "Divorce guy was more depressing than last week's 'hurting my kid in a car accident' guy," he'd decided. "It's like they're rolling out the worst stories just in time for the start of the new school year."
"Yeah," Bruce'd agreed numbly, and he'd stared at the boxes on the crossword puzzle until they all blurred together.
But the man's words— Those'd echoed in Bruce's mind, the record skipping over and over again until Natasha'd arrived home twenty-four hours later.
She paused, her back to him, and he dragged a hand through his hair. She'd barely acknowledged him on her way to unpack her suitcase, and she stared down into it now. Tension swept in around them, its undertow threatening to pull them both under. Bruce forced himself to swallow before he said, "We can't live in silence."
She snorted and tossed her head. "You seemed to do pretty well for that last week."
The bitterness in her voice felt like a knife to the stomach, and for a beat, Bruce rolled his lips together. "I probably deserved that."
"Probably?"
"Natasha, I—"
"It's fine," she cut in, her voice sharp as she threw a couple shirts onto her untouched side of the bed. "We won't do the silent treatment anymore. That's—"
"We can't do this anymore."
The words sounded like a whisper to Bruce's own ears, and when Natasha whirled around to face him, he found himself unable to meet her eyes. He stared at the rest of her, instead: her tight shoulders, her slightly curled hands, her long legs, her bare feet. He'd missed her kicking off her shoes and socks, and for a split second, he almost smiled.
Almost, though, because then Natasha blurted, "What?"
"We can't—" he started, but his tongue tripped. He shook his head again, trying to clear the cobwebs, but nothing helped. He lifted his chin, determined to find and hold her gaze even as his stomach churned and twisted in on itself. "You were my friend," he said, his voice soft and shamefully desperate as he stepped out of the doorway. "Before everything else, before we ever decided to try this, you were my friend. You were important to me. You—"
"Were?" Natasha asked, her body tightening. "Past tense?"
"I don't know." She looked away at that, her jaw working, and Bruce rubbed a hand over his face. "I thought we could do this, but maybe— Maybe we weren't ready. Maybe we're not meant to live with other people. Maybe we jumped too soon, or put too much pressure on ourselves, I don't know. I don't know what happened, I just—"
His voice stuck, and he tilted his head up to the ceiling. The overhead light burned his eyes—but then again, his eyes'd burned for much of the last week.
For much of the summer, if he was honest.
He drew in a long breath, then released it.
"You were my friend when this all started," he said finally, forcing himself to look back in her direction. She tilted her face away until her curls hid her mouth and eyes. "I want us to be friends into the future. I don't want to completely lose you."
Natasha nodded slightly and shifted further away from him. She reached for her suitcase but ended up just wrapping her fingers around the sides, holding on. His whole body jerked, ready to reach for her, but he knew any comfort would be temporary, a bandage waiting to be ripped off.
Natasha apparently knew it, too, because she drew in a steadying breath and turned to face him. Her eyes were clear, but her expression reminded him of stone: hard, unyielding, and fearless. "What are you saying?" she asked.
Bruce swallowed. "I'm saying you should move out before we can't talk anymore," he said, and he watched her lips press into a tight line. "That we should go back to the way we were before you moved in, so we can at least be friends if we can't be together."
She stilled at the last word, her shoulders clenching, but only for a second. "Okay," she said, and twisted back to her suitcase.
"Natasha, I—"
"I said okay," she repeated, and when she started shoving her things back into the half-empty bag, Bruce turned away.
Natasha had never bothered fully unpacking her suitcase from visiting her father. Instead, she just quickly boxed up her things in whatever containers she could find so she could give Bruce his house back. She'd managed to not start crying while giving Peter Parker an eviction-and-apology phone call.
Natasha told Peter to take three days to get his stuff out. She knew he didn't have much since she was supplying him with furniture, dishes, et cetera. She felt extremely guilty for giving him the boot, but she didn't have the financial resources to find a second place and let the new teacher live in her condo.
She checked into a nearby hotel, one that was cheap enough to sustain her for a few days but didn't make her feel gross. Part of her mind said she needed to run out and get some food since the hotel didn't offer room service, just a hot breakfast. The other part of her brain never wanted to crawl out of the bed again.
She really wasn't planning on visiting her father this summer, but a couple weeks ago, she had the overwhelming need to do so. Natasha needed to reminded of what would happen to her if she didn't let Bruce into her life completely. She needed the visual of how empty and gray her life would be if she spent it alone.
Instead, she'd been worse than her own father. Bruce refused to speak to her. She and her father were never great communicators, and Natasha hadn't lived in the city since she was fourteen. What few friends she'd had coming out of middle school were long gone.
Natasha had ended up walking the sweltering sidewalks for hours trying to figure out how to make things right. Not that it made any difference now.
Once she'd dumped her suitcase onto the ground, she dug through for what clean clothes she had left and set them out. After taking full advantage of the ample hot water supplies, she pulled on underwear and a shirt. She didn't realize it was one of Bruce's until it covered her body. She stood there for a full minute debating on what to do before she figured screw it. She pulled all the curtains, and crawled into bed. She tossed and turned for twenty minutes before acknowledging the fact that she needed to talk to someone.
Opening her contact list just made her feel more alone. Bruce was obviously off limits. Tony was Bruce's best friend and was probably plotting her death. Pepper was more than likely on Bruce's side, too. James and Steve were a no go; she was nowhere in the mood to deal with the lovesick puppies. Clint and Phil had been married forever and couldn't remember what it was like to go through a break up. Jessica Drew would just want to drink and find out what it was like to have sex with Bruce, and while Natasha would appreciate the first thing, there was no way she was discussing the second. Rumors were going around that Carol was reunited with Stark's other BFF, and Natasha didn't want to smear her bad relationship karma on something like that.
Her phone contacts were full of people who either weren't in a position to understand, wouldn't take her side, or hadn't been in contact with her for months.
Fuck.
It was then that the crying started. Not a dribble in that movie starlet kind of way with a single tear running down her cheek. No, this was full on ugly sobs.
Once she'd cried herself out, she turned to her phone once more. Out of habit, she opened up Facebook. Jessica Jones had made a post celebrating her first wedding anniversary. It came complete with sharing a photo album from the ceremony and reception. Natasha remembered the dance she'd shared with a reluctant Bruce that night. It was then that she'd invited him to come home with her for the first time.
The experience was a mixture of exactly what she expected (Bruce sweetly and awkwardly trying to figure out how long he should stay after the deed was done) and things she never thought would happen. Like how the dorky kindergarten teacher could make her stomach drop, how extremely good he was in bed, and how she didn't want this to be some random hookup.
Natasha wondered if she would change anything if she could go back a year ago knowing what she knew now. Without a doubt, the answer was no. Yes, this was one of the worst nights of her life, but giving up the pain wasn't worth losing the love she'd received in the last twelve months.
Maybe this was how love worked. For a short period of time, everything was amazing. You got to have someone change how you view yourself, completely rewrite how your brain worked. For a little bit, it was the greatest feeling in the world.
And then, it ended.
Natasha wondered if she'd ever take that risk again. If she would just give up and become her father. Or if she would take up Bruce's offer and trying to take two steps backwards so they could take three steps forward.
She knew which path she wanted. It would take her some time to recover and start again. But she wanted to get there. And she hoped Bruce did, too.
"You know that I've gotta point out how bad this is, right? Like, as your brother in sobriety, I have to point out that this is kind of the worst sign imaginable."
Bruce snorted a little as he stirred his ginger ale around with his straw. "How'd you find me here?"
"You're asking a literal genius how he spotted your car in the parking lot of a dive bar six blocks from school?" Tony demanded as he dropped onto the stool at Bruce's side. "Yeah, you're worse off than I thought. Bartender, this man needs quesadillas and buffalo wings, stat!"
The bartender, the same gruff, messy-haired man who worked their happy hour nights, snorted at him, but he poured Tony a ginger ale of his own before retreating back into the kitchen. Xavier's tended to be empty any time before about four-thirty in the afternoon, but at eleven a.m., the only other patrons were two elderly men in trucker hats and a harried-looking woman in a Starbucks uniform. Bruce watched the men drown their fries in ketchup for a few seconds, mostly to avoid meeting Tony's gaze.
And he could feel Tony staring at him, his intent eyes waiting for some kind of explanation.
Bruce sipped his ginger ale. "You can ask, you know," he said after a few beats.
"Yeah, see, I don't have to ask," Tony replied with a little shrug, and Bruce rolled his eyes. "Sober guy in a bar at high noon, staring at his ginger ale like he really hopes it'll transform magically into the good stuff? After three days of avoiding my calls and texts? After a certain redheaded wife of mine happened to mention that Parker's sublet situation was turning into a 'scramble to find a new apartment' situation?" Bruce closed his eyes. "What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Yeah, but you probably need to talk about it."
Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Not everything needs a discussion, Tony."
"And I am a hundred and twenty percent in agreement except for the times when my bestie and his lady friend fall apart at the seams and—"
"Would you just shut up?" Bruce snapped. His voice, like his pulse, echoed loudly in his ears, and he realized a second later that three other patrons were gaping at him. He rubbed his face with a hand. For the first time in the last few days, he wanted nothing more than to sink into a dark room and not come up for air. He wanted to disappear, to fade to precious nothingness and drift away.
He'd felt that once before, after Betty died. He'd hoped to never feel it again.
"I failed," he heard himself say after a few long seconds, and the resignation in those two words rushed through his body like an electric shock. His fingers sunk into his hair, and he shook his head at his ginger ale. "I thought I could do this again, that I could be someone's partner, their other half, but instead of that, I just—"
He swallowed thickly, the words catching in the back of his throat. He tried to find them again, but all he could do was roll his lips together. Next to him, Tony sighed softly. "Listen, Bruce, buddy, it's not your fault," Tony said gently, and Bruce snorted. "It's not. You know all the clichés about how it takes two to tango, right? Because whatever happened here, it's as much on Natasha is it is on you, and blaming yourself just makes you the crazy guy who shouts at the wind to stop blowing."
Bruce rolled his eyes. "That one's not a cliché."
"No?"
"No."
Tony shrugged. "Well, maybe it should be."
He sipped his ginger ale to punctuate his point, and Bruce shook his head again. "I was naïve enough to believe that she wanted this," he said after a few more seconds, aware that Tony was once again staring at him. "And worse, I was naïve enough to think that I might be what she wants in a partner. I'm a middle-aged, graying guy with a paunch and stack of science journals. I'm not Natasha Romanoff material."
"Okay, I'm not going to argue with you on the gray or the paunch or the journals, because god knows I'll lose," Tony started, and Bruce tried not to snort at him again, "but I have to disagree on the Natasha Romanoff material. Because no matter what the hell went on between you two—details you will need to give me eventually, by the way—there's one thing I know for absolute certain." Tony shifted on his stool to face Bruce, his eyes bright and earnest as he stared him down. Bruce found it impossible to look away. "She picked you. Half the planet's male and she picked you to be her guy for a while. To sleep with and cuddle up with and, I don't know, assassinate world leaders with. She wanted you." He poked Bruce in the shoulder with two fingers. "And I am willing to bet a whole lot of my good money that she still feels that way about you now, even if it's all come tumbling down."
Bruce dropped his eyes back down to his ginger ale. "You don't know that," he said quietly.
"Yeah, I do, big guy," Tony retorted, nudging his shoulder up against Bruce's. "Because above all else, I know you."
The bartender arrived with their food then, heaping platters of hot wings, quesadillas, and the fried pickles Tony ordered every happy hour night. Bruce actually smiled at the last plate, a little wave of relief washing over him. Some things, it turned out, never really changed.
They were halfway through their food when Tony sucked wing sauce off his thumb and said, "After this, I'm taking you back to the house so we can mock shitty sci-fi movies and drive Pepper slowly crazy."
Bruce huffed a laugh. "If marrying you hasn't made her crazy, I doubt us watching Contact will."
"There's a first time for anything," Tony replied, and when he knocked his elbow into Bruce's, Bruce couldn't help but smile.