I finally finished writing "A Place on Earth" and it comes in at five chapters. Two more to go after this one!

Also, I took forever and a day to post this chapter because I was vaguely ashamed of the extreme fluff and the complete lack of smut. I hope it's okay?! Let me know what you think...

Warning for SO MUCH FLUFF OMG.

Part III: Confessions

Natasha woke and became aware of several sensations all at once: the warmth of the sun spilling over her back and half of her face, the distant, steady beating of Bruce's heart under her right ear, and the tingling of her scalp. The conclusions came rapidly after years of learning to wake and analyze situations instantly: she was in bed, it was well into the morning, she was using Bruce as a pillow, and the pillow was awake… and playing with her hair. She opened her eyes. A long strand of her hair hung suspended between Bruce's fingers and gleamed red-gold in the morning light. Bruce stared with the look of fascination that was usually reserved for his projects with Tony. It took him a moment to feel her gaze.

"Oh," he said, letting her hair slide from between his fingers. "You're awake."

"You always say that like it's a surprise," she commented with a smirk. Bruce laughed.

"I guess it is. I'm not used to waking up with you."

"Get used to it," she said quietly. Bruce looked at her with his unique mixture of doubt and awe and she had just decided to kiss him when he beat her to the punch. "That's a nice way to wake up," she whispered when he pulled back.

"Get used to it," Bruce replied instantly. He brushed her hair away from her face and his hand lingered, fingers weaving absently through the strands.

They remained in the warmth and the silence for a few undisturbed moments. Natasha distantly noted the pitiful state of the bedroom; it was all blank walls and dusty surfaces, with only two plain suitcases to break the monotony. They were lucky there had been a single blanket in the closet, even if it was thin and musty. She added a supply run to her mental to-do list. She sighed; the list was already a long one.

"What?" asked Bruce with a curious glance.

"Lots to do," she replied, sitting up reluctantly. She was pleased when Bruce's face reflected the same reluctance. She climbed out of the bed and hunted through her suitcase for some clothes. She hadn't brought very many - another thing to take care of. Getting established in a new life was always a colossal pain. Of course, part of the trick of undercover work was having fun in spite of all the difficulties. She glanced at Bruce and suppressed a smile.

"Heads up," she said, tossing his phone at him. "Did you text your boyfriend to let him know we're okay?"

"I sent Tony a message, yeah." He blinked. "Wait. Boyfriend?"

Natasha smirked at him. "You knew who I was talking about, didn't you?"

"That's fair." Bruce grinned and the rare mischievous look entered his eyes. She couldn't look away.

"What about you? Did you send a message to your boyfriend?"

She assumed he was making a lame joke about Clint. Of course, after a lifetime of twisting unforeseen circumstances to her advantage, Natasha knew precisely how to handle this moment. "Not yet," she replied smoothly. "But I will." She reached for her phone and tapped out a short message. "There," she said after a moment, laying the phone aside with a private smirk. Behind her, Bruce's phone pinged. He glanced down and reached for his glasses. She knew the message that was waiting for him.

we're okay :)

He stared at the text wordlessly for a long moment before sliding his glasses from his face and laying them carefully on the bedside table. "I'm your boyfriend?" he asked finally.

"Bruce," she said, "after last night, you better be."

This time she was certain: Dr. Bruce Banner blushed.

The days melted into weeks in their tiny house under the trees. Natasha loved the seclusion and the quiet (sometimes she was even able to relax), but most of all, she loved spending an unprecedented amount of time with Bruce. She had first begun to enjoy his company after the Battle of New York and the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. when friends had been hard to come by and trustworthy causes even harder. The days of Hydra-busting as a team had been good times, but the quiet moments in between missions were even more treasured memories. Bruce had always proven himself to be Natasha's favorite type of company: quiet and undemanding.

She had discovered that he was an excellent listener (despite Tony's periodic complaints about that one time he fell asleep during a heartfelt conversation; Natasha had still never asked for the full story). She had also been intrigued by his flashes of humor. His sense of humor was sometimes morbid and always self-deprecating, but it was funny. And sometimes the only way to shake off horrors was to laugh about them.

Bruce had also proved to be one of the most accepting men she had ever encountered. He hadn't so much as glanced at her differently when her tightly-guarded secrets became a matter of public record during the initial Hydra crisis. She had steeled herself for the moment when she would catch a hint of judgement or and echo of disgust in his eyes, but it never came. It still hadn't come, even though she was positive that he knew it all by now. After all, she had personally confided a lot of it to him herself. Nevertheless, he only ever looked at her like she was something wonderful and their precious balance of understanding and acceptance remained undisturbed in their quiet home by the pond.

She discovered new things about him, too. She discovered just how much Bruce liked to read, so she made sure that their path to the market took them past a number of bookstores and libraries. Occasionally she pretended to see something she wanted in the windows so she could pull him inside and tempt him to get something. He caught onto her game very quickly, but he usually got the books anyway. He had a habit of reading at night, and he put all his books in stacks in the kitchen and living area until she had insisted that it was alright for him to read in bed. She could sleep through anything, let alone one reading lamp. (It was, however, getting difficult for her to sleep without his warmth beside her.) She pressed herself close to him and sometimes fell asleep while he read, sometimes read his books with him, and sometimes tested how much he liked a given book by kissing him until he tossed it aside. (Either he wasn't truly a devoted reader or he was just terrible at that particular game so far; he had never made it past two kisses.)

She discovered that sometimes mundane tasks like shopping were difficult for him because crowds made him so nervous. The haunted look that had appeared in his eyes after their encounter with the Enhanced girl Wanda Maximoff still surfaced occasionally when he had to go out alone. Natasha worked to minimize that damage the only way she could; she went with him. He relaxed when they were together, even in the midst of crowded plazas and markets, and even under the curious stares of the locals who could clearly see that they were neither tourists nor natives. She called herself his "safety blanket" sometimes, although Bruce always responded with a pained look and the statement that she was much more than that. Still, wandering through markets of flowers and fruits and fish was fun when they did it together. Natasha found it odd that so many things became significant and enjoyable just by the fact of his presence.

Finally, she discovered that Bruce wasn't a magnificent cook despite the fact that he enjoyed cooking. He liked to alter recipes or - worse - cook with no recipe at all. They ate quite a few bizarre pastas and strange stir-fries before Natasha discreetly made certain that a few cookbooks found their way into the kitchen. She said nothing, however, because the few times that she attempted to cook a meal, the results were even worse. After she managed to burn bread rather than toast it for the second morning in a row, Bruce intercepted her and slipped the bread out of her hand on the third. "Let me handle that," he said sweetly and flashed a winning smile. Ever since she had begun to think of him as handsome, that smile had been a thorn in her side. She studied him suspiciously as he cut a few slices from the loaf. She suspected that he was catching on to that particular weakness… and making the most of it. He always was too perceptive for a scientist.

"What's wrong, Bruce? You don't like my cooking?" she jabbed with a smirk.

Bruce was lining up the slices of bread on a broiling pan and didn't look up, but she saw the smile starting on his face. "Oh, your cooking is great," he said lightly. "If you're the sort of person who likes having screwdrivers for breakfast."

"You're never going to let that go, are you?"

He slid the pan into the oven and turned to smile smugly at her. "Nope."

"It was my lunch, just for the record."

Bruce shrugged. "Whatever you say, sweetheart." She tried to be offended, but she ended up kissing him instead. She slid her fingers into his hair and waited until she smelled burning bread to pull away. Bruce looked dazed.

"I think your toast is burning," she said sweetly, and pressed one last kiss to his lips. Bruce just sighed as she moved to slice more bread. She smiled privately; he was catching onto her weaknesses (and she found somehow that she didn't mind), but she also knew his.

Bruce tossed the ruined toast out and Natasha decided that the old saying about serving revenge cold was ill-informed. Revenge was clearly a dish best served broiled.

Weeks passed, and the international news coverage of Bruce's uncontrolled Hulk-out died down, along with the persistent calls for his arrest. Once the furor had faded and Natasha was certain that no one had trailed them, she began hunting for a job. Their emergency funds would only go so far.

Private security work was the highest paying gig in the immediate area and with her false identity and her real skill sets both airtight in the resumé department, she found landing a lucrative bodyguard contract to be rather low-hanging fruit. Bruce had a little more trouble.

"Calificaciones para la posición…" He sat hunched over their recently-purchased computer, squinting at a handful of job listings and muttering to himself. He sighed and pulled off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "There's a reason I dropped Spanish in high school. Natasha," he called to her from his position on the worn couch. "Can you read this?"

She left her half-cleaned handgun on the kitchen table and settled on the sofa next to him. "It's a list of job qualifications," she translated easily. Spanish was a breeze compared to half the languages she'd been made to learn over the years. "Medical degree, lots of references, position open to students…" She paused and glanced at him. "You're looking at clinic work?"

"Just trying to do something worthwhile," he said with a half shrug. "I spent years doing odd jobs and factory work," he trailed off and looked tired. "I'd rather not have that kind of life again. Monotony isn't great for me." She thought back to his words on the helicarrier so long ago. I got low. I didn't see an end… so I put a bullet in my mouth and the Other Guy spit it out.

Distant horror slid down her spine like a trail of ice water and she nodded. "Right." She held out her hands and Bruce surrendered the laptop. She adjusted his search parameters a little and found a list of clinics looking for volunteers. "Start at the bottom," she explained as she passed the computer back to him. "In a position that doesn't have all that many qualifications. They'll see how good you are and then you can rely on word of mouth to get the better jobs. You need people to support you and trust you to get the good positions. That takes time and planning."

"But what about money-"

"I've got that covered for now. And you've got some birthday money left," she said with a smirk. Bruce looked torn between laughing and protesting, and Natasha headed him off. "There are benefits to teamwork, Bruce. Enjoy them."

"All right," he agreed after a moment. A look of mischief crossed his face as he turned back to the computer. "I guess I can be a trophy husband," he said to the screen as he scrolled through the volunteer positions. Natasha couldn't help herself; she laughed.

It didn't take very long for Bruce's mechanical and medical skills to garner notice. His practical skills were stellar and, when paired with his kind bedside manner, he was becoming increasingly popular among the clinic patients. He was also frequently asked for by name when a house call was required for patients who couldn't make the trip into the city. He took the house calls whenever he could, and made a fair amount of money for his trouble, but Natasha suspected that he refused payment on many occasions as well. But she didn't press him for details; she enjoyed the look of contentment that he wore more and more frequently.

The look was becoming so familiar to her that his disgruntled expression on one particular evening came as something of a shock. She came home late into the evening after a grueling security detail and found Bruce dozing on the upstairs sofa. He had developed the adorable habit of waiting up for her when she worked late, and Natasha was always moved by the simple gesture.

"Hey," she whispered, careful as always not to startle him. "I'm home." He woke up, smiled and kissed her like he usually did, but she could feel his distraction and tension simmering behind the affection. She studied the line between his brows when he sat down. "What happened?" she asked.

"How did you know-" he paused and shook his head. "Nevermind. I…" he sighed. "I'm terrible with Spanish and it's becoming a real problem for me. I spent twenty minutes today just trying to ask what was wrong and I couldn't understand what they were trying to tell me…" He scrubbed his face with his hands and rested his forehead heavily against his fingertips. "Have you ever had something that you were really awful at?" he began again, lifting his face to look at her. "I was always terrible with languages. Aced pretty much everything else, but languages…" he sighed. "Languages just never clicked with me."

Natasha was in two minds about whether to commiserate… or to laugh. "You poor genius," she said after a moment. "Something was hard for you?" Bruce's response was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "Yeah. It was - is - terrible." She sat down beside him and he settled his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands.

"I could help you," she said after a moment. "If you wanted. Languages are my thing. Well," she corrected herself, "one of my things." (Although sometimes she wondered if it was actually a predisposition or just a product of long conditioning. She wasn't always sure what was her and what was the Red Room.)

"Would you?" he asked with palpable relief, shattering the suddenly dark thrust of her thoughts. "I could really use it. I'm lost out there," he muttered and looked so bewildered that Natasha put a supportive hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, Bruce. We can get you whipped into shape."

Bruce, Natasha soon discovered, had a mind that thrived on facts and figures and memorized them with ease. He understood the pieces of machinery both mechanical and biological with a shocking lack of effort, and he saw in an instant how things worked and fit together. His mind could also twist easily toward the abstract, but apparently the rarefied planes of nuclear physics and biochemistry required far different skills than those necessary to gain traction with a new language. He had a much harder time adapting to the fluidity of vocabulary and the loosely woven connections of sentence structure. Language was very like ballet in her mind, or like the controlled movements of the trained fighter: fluid, shifting, connecting in a million subjective branches. It had always made sense to her. It was harder for Bruce and his progress was slow.

"Okay," he said one night when Natasha had pulled out the vocabulary book despite his protests. "Soy un doctor."

"Yes," she affirmed. "And?"

"Dónde duele? Cuál es el problema?"

She replied with a string of physical complaints in Spanish and Bruce hesitantly picked apart her words and translated them. He did very well, only missing the part where she had described being shot in the head and it wasn't as if that was going to be a regular occurrence for his patients.

"Not bad," she complimented, tossing the book aside. Bruce's look of relief was instantaneous. "Thank goodness," he muttered. "I need a break. Actually, we could both use one." He leaned forward. "How do you say 'Would you have dinner with me?'"

"Vas a cenar conmigo?" she supplied.

"And at a restaurant? A fancy one?" he added.

"Vas a cenar conmigo a un restaurante caro?"

He repeated the question to her haltingly, but correctly. "Sí." she answered with a smile.

"Good," he replied. "Um, I mean bueno." He paused and his face grew thoughtful. "How do you say 'thank you for helping me'?"

She supplied the words again, and again he repeated them back.

"How do you say 'you're beautiful'?" he asked in a quiet voice. She was tempted to say "eres un idiota," but the sincerity in his eyes made her heart clench. She gave him the correct words.

"Eres hermosa," he repeated, staring at her with a half smile. "And how…" he hesitated for a moment, but she saw the determination awake behind his eyes. "How do you say 'I love you'?"

She couldn't think of the words for a moment, because for a moment she couldn't think at all. A strange, buoyant feeling rose in her chest, terrifying and almost painful, pressing against her ribs with every beat of her pulse. They had spoken an approximation of those words in the past weeks (I adore you), and she knew how he felt about her after seeing the way he looked at her and feeling the way he touched her, but somehow… somehow this moment felt important. No one had ever spoken those exact words to her, not with real feeling and conviction behind them. They seemed almost mystical, a powerful incantation to speak into being… or a powerful curse. Maybe that was why she had to work to unlock her jaw and force the words past her suddenly dry lips. "Te amo."

Bruce absorbed that and nodded. "Better save that one," he said with a secretive smile. "For the right moment, I mean." He stood up, brushed a kiss against her head, and walked up the stairs. His footsteps crossed into the bedroom and the house fell silent. Natasha sat in the living room and wondered distantly at her feeling of disappointment.

Bruce went to bed before Natasha that night, and she delayed a little longer than usual before pulling on her sleep shirt and shorts and climbing into their bed. She had been staring at the moon in silence for only a few seconds when she felt Bruce shift beside her. He reached for her, wrapping an arm around her stomach and settling himself against her back. "I hope this is an okay moment, because I don't think I can wait after all…" he whispered just behind her ear. "Te amo, Natasha." He pressed a gentle kiss to her neck. "I love you."

Her mind stuttered to a halt and in the sudden haze Natasha suddenly remembered a cold street in Budapest where she had once seen Clint lodge an arrow directly into a enemy combatant's heart. The arrow had buried itself deep in his chest, but it had given a single lurch as the man's heart convulsed one last time. It was all over after that. She thought as she lay with Bruce's arms around her and those words ringing in her ears like the flight of an arrow, that she had an idea of what that must have felt like. Her heart was pierced instantly, his words striking deeper and truer than any other words ever had, brushing against deep places she hadn't known existed and stirring something new and foreign into life. Her eyes prickled just a little, shocking her, but she suppressed the sting of the tears and reached instead for the warmth swelling in her like a sun-kissed tide.

Of course, she had one thing to get off her chest first.

"Eres un idiota," she grumbled. But she turned towards him and kissed him senseless so she was confident that he understood what she meant.

Notes: So… I'm not a smut writer. Don't hate me! I know a lot of people love that sort of thing in their OTP-tastic fics and, hey, it's great when it's done well… but I am in no way confident of my ability to write that element of their relationship in a way that doesn't make us all die, puke, or both, so I'm going to leave that to all our overactive imaginations lol. Besides, as a fic writer I'm more interested in the beats of their developing relationship and the disgustingly fluffy moments that might happen.

About Bruce's language difficulties… I was having too much fun with that lol. He does have to pick up a few different languages over the course of the MCU movies, and I was intrigued by the fact that he was having trouble with Portuguese during his time in Brazil in The Incredible Hulk. That was a great idea, I thought, and it led to one of the funniest scenes in the movie ("You won't like me when I'm hungry… wait, that's not right."). It's also an interesting idea that Bruce is such a genius and a world-renowned expert scientifically speaking… but he must have some weaknesses, right? What better weakness than language, the very thing he is forced to learn? I also think that as someone so extensively trained in the sciences, that language might be harder to pin down since it doesn't always conform to patterns. Language is a lot like music in my mind: there are established forms and patterns and ideas… but occasionally all that goes out the window, and you can only learn how to really communicate through long experience. I don't imagine that Bruce had extensive musical OR language training in his academic life, at least not until he was on the run and had to pick up languages to survive. (Side note: according to my googling, there are actually plenty of English books available in stores and libraries in Lima, hence Bruce's book obsession lol.)

Also, please forgive my Spanish. I took Spanish in high school and college… but it's been years. I relied on my rusty knowledge and Google translate (which is always celebrated for its accuracy, right?!), but if I've made a mistake, bring it to my attention so I can edit! Thanks for bearing with me.

The "screwdriver for breakfast" is a reference to the backstory I concocted in my first BruceNat fic "Blank Walls, Empty Spaces." (Ah, the fond memories of my initial spiral into BruceNat insanity…) So I guess I'm treating that as my own personal canon.

Finally, I have to mention that Natasha's response to Bruce's "te amo" was partially based on a couple I knew who always amused me with their interactions. The girl was not exactly touchy-feely and the guy was a super sweet dork who occasionally said incredibly cheesy and romantic things. The girl's initial response would invariably be to roll her eyes and say something about him being a loser or something equally deprecating… but then she would melt and give him a kiss or something else sweet because she loved him and because he was genuine in his cheesy affection. Their dynamic reminded me a little of Natasha and Bruce, so I thought I would incorporate it. Natasha has such a hard shell and she had no experience with genuine romantic affection, so it would be foreign to her. But she responds to Bruce, we see that clearly in Age of Ultron. Even Steve comments on it. ("With you she seems very relaxed.") So how would she handle expressions of love and affection? This is what I came up with.

Me: Don't forget to review my fic. You won't like me when I'm unreviewed. *Hulks out*

(Full disclosure: my version of a Hulk-out is less a transformation into a rage monster and more being aggressive...ly sad. :p)