The lights were off, except for the flickering glow from the TV which spilled into the hall as Natasha approached the common room. Laptop in hand, she padded quietly toward to the doorway, the bare soles of her feet making only the faintest scuffing sound as they stuck to the cold stone tile. Peeking into the spacious room, she saw Pepper curled up on the sectional sofa, alone, wrapped in a blanket, a large bowl in her lap. A black and white movie played on the TV, illuminating her laughing face as she munched what was, presumably, popcorn.
Kind of weird, wasn't it, for Pepper to watch a movie in the Avengers' part of the Tower, instead of upstairs in the penthouse? No sooner had the thought flickered through her mind than she caught a glare from the corner of the room, the light from the TV reflecting off the eyeglasses worn by someone sitting in the leather club chair. It could only be Bruce. And it answered the question about why Pepper was watching TV down here.
Natasha pivoted to go, when Pepper called her back. The movie dialogue went abruptly silent as she paused it, and a light flicked on.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," Natasha apologized, adding when she saw that Bruce had knocked over a bowl of popcorn in the process of turning on the lamp beside his chair, "Or to startle you."
It was a struggle not to laugh at his sheepish expression, not terribly different from the one he wore when he showed up halfway through the Battle of New York in ill-fitting clothes. She didn't entirely succeed, cracking a smile which made him break eye contact to get up from his chair, stumbling a little over the ottoman as he got tripped up by the throw blanket tangled around his legs.
"You're not interrupting," Pepper said. "Tony passed out, but it always takes me a few days to adjust to New York time, so Bruce and I have this little tradition of watching old movies together."
Bruce obviously was used to the time zone, so what was his excuse? Night owl? Or maybe he slept badly. Natasha was intimately acquainted with that condition.
"That's brave of you, Doc," she said. "Knowing what a jealous type Stark is."
Crouched on the floor to pick up kernels of popcorn from under the chair and the crack between the cushion and the arm, Bruce looked up at her. "It's a risk I have to take, if I'm ever going to watch a movie without his running commentary."
Natasha smiled, not so much in appreciation of what an annoying personality quirk this was, as simply because Bruce's initial awkwardness had passed enough for him to joke with her.
Or at least it seemed to have passed-until her gaze lingered a little too long on his uncharacteristically relaxed appearance: shirttails untucked, feet bare, curls more unruly than usual from leaning against the back of the chair. He quickly returned his gaze to the floor in search of errant popcorn.
"Well," Natasha said, clutching her laptop, "since you've escaped Mystery Science Theater, I won't keep you from your movie."
Natasha started to go again-she'd only come up in the first place to watch the news on the big screen while she did a little more work-but once more Pepper drew her back.
"Do you want to watch with us? We're only a few minutes in, and there's plenty of popcorn."
"Or there was, till Bruce decided to share his with the floor?"
"Thirty second rule, right?" he darted a sideways glance at her as he rose with his bowl.
Natasha hadn't meant to embarrass him-not that it was difficult to do-and his potential discomfort made her hesitate to accept the invitation.
"I've got some work left to do before I turn in." She indicated her laptop.
"No working on Friday nights," Bruce said, voice even, sounding as sure as he ever did. "Pepper's rules."
For a moment Natasha watched him resume his seat, tugging the chenille throw over his feet on the ottoman before settling back in his chair, then she placed her laptop on a console table.
"In that case I'd be a fool not to comply."
That, and she realized she didn't want to be confined to her room after holing up there most of the day. She seated herself at the end of the sectional sofa, between Pepper and Bruce's chair, reaching for a handful of popcorn from his bowl.
"That was on the floor…"
"Thirty second rule," she echoed his earlier remark. Lifting an eyebrow, she added, "Unless you're worried about catching my girl cooties?"
"No, I…" Bruce went red in the face, but suddenly he gave one of his short chuckles and combed his fingers through his hair. "So glad you think I have the maturity of a third grader."
"That's what happens when you spend a lot of time with Tony," Pepper said, resuming the movie.
"What are we watching?" Natasha asked.
It was Bringing Up Baby. She hadn't seen it before and probably wouldn't have watched it on her own, neither classic cinema nor screwball comedies being her thing. Or so she thought. Maybe it was because Bruce and Pepper's laughter was contagious, or maybe she was more tired than she realized, but she found herself laughing at the ridiculous plot along with them. It didn't hurt that Cary Grant was easy on the eyes. Her mind and body relaxed for what felt like the first time since she'd picked up Steve in DC, until their laughter faded into the background, and so did the movie.
"Hey!"
She startled upright, eyes snapping open, throwing off the weight of a blanket that she didn't remember covering up with. Bruce was blinking hard in the direction of the doorway, and she turned that way herself, Pepper raising her head from the arm of the sofa.
Tony glowered at them from the doorway, in his underwear.
"You guys are having a slumber party and didn't invite me?"
Although Natasha conceded to not doing any work on Friday night, she made no promise to skip her Saturday workout. It didn't hurt that she'd actually fallen asleep at an hour no one, least of all any of her colleagues-with the exception of maybe Steve-would describe as ungodly. Unlike the hour at which Pepper joined her in the gym.
Hair pulled back in a ponytail, she wore grey leggings and a lavender sports bra that matched her sneakers. Her perky good morning echoed through the space, but Natasha didn't reply until the other woman seated herself across from her on the mats where she was in the midst of her own warm-up routine.
"I thought you still had to adjust from Pacific Time. Isn't it like 4AM to you?"
Drawing her feet together for butterfly stretches, Pepper replied, "There's not a lot of point in adjusting when Tony and I are headed to Portland tomorrow."
"What's in Portland?" Natasha asked as she stood, rocking onto the balls of her feet as she reached her arms over her head, then slowly rolled her shoulders downward. "Romantic getaway?"
"We're going to hear the Philharmonic. Do you remember Audrey Nathan?"
"Coulson's girlfriend? The cellist?" Natasha hadn't thought about her in years, though she remembered seeing Audrey at the funeral as if it were yesterday. Her devastation had been striking.
"It's been a long healing process for her," Pepper went on, "and SHIELD's fall was pretty triggering. We thought we'd go see her."
"That's kind of you," Natasha said, making a mental note to look deeper into this later, as Pepper didn't seem inclined to speak more about it.
Bending one arm at the elbow, she pressed against the joint as she stretched her arm across her body. Her shoulder ached enough for her to grimace, but she didn't let up until she noticed Pepper watching, forehead scrunched beneath her bangs in an expression of concern. Turning away, Natasha went to the pull-up bar, hopped and caught it easily in her gloved hands.
As she began her first set, Pepper continued stretching-and the conversation. "Do you prefer to work out alone? I try to take advantage of the gym here whenever I'm in town, but if I'm in your way I can come back later."
"Are you kidding?" Natasha grunted out.
The gym occupied an entire floor of Avengers Tower, so it was more space than she was used to at SHIELD headquarters, which she'd never had to herself, agents coming and going at all hours of the day as their shifts allowed. Sometimes Maria joined her, and as they sparred together, Natasha forgot for a little while where they were, and that they were here because their world collapsed like a house of cards.
"Knock yourself out," she said. "Train like an Avenger."
Pepper smirked as she went to the weight rack and picked up a pair of dumbbells. "I could be wrong, but I haven't gotten the impression that a lot of Avenger training actually happens here. Except you, of course."
"Tony works out," Natasha replied, out of a sense of solidarity for a fellow Avenger; however, her sense of solidarity for a fellow woman compelled her to add, "Occasionally. Not as much as he should."
The conversation lapsed briefly as Pepper started to do lunges up the length of the room, but she picked it up again as she reached the pull-up bar, where Natasha paused between sets to take a drink.
"You were shot, weren't you? By the Winter Soldier?"
By Bucky Barnes. Made by HYDRA into a killer more monstrous than she.
Through her teeth, Natasha gritted out, "Twice."
"I hope you're not overdoing it. Bruce says you spend a lot of time in here."
Banner paid attention to how she spent her time? Made sense, if he didn't trust her. Placing her water bottle on the floor, she jumped up for another round of pull-ups.
"Sorry," Pepper said, "I don't mean to be a mother hen. Force of habit, with Tony. You save-the-world types have a tendency not to take very good care of yourselves afterward."
"Valid point," Natasha conceded, and released the bar.
"I'm not trying to tell you what to do." Pepper bent to set down her dumbbells, and approached her. "Just…it's okay to rest. To take it easy. Hell, take a vacation, if you want, no one is more entitled. You're welcome in Malibu any time, you know."
A grin cracked as Natasha remembered showing Steve the old scar in her side. Bye-bye bikinis, she'd said, and hereplied, Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now.
"Tempting as that is," she said, "beach party with America's most notorious billionaire doesn't exactly fit with the plan to lay low."
"Who said anything about Tony? If we ditch him in the lab with Bruce, they'll never know we're gone."
Natasha almost said yes on the spot just to see how long it would take them to discover she'd left the tower. The humor of the idea was undercut by the thought which immediately followed, that Bruce would probably be relieved.
"Honestly," she said, "I'm not sure I know how to take a vacation. Pathetic, right?"
"Between you and Maria, I'm kind of getting the idea personal time wasn't a big part of SHIELD operations. Terrible HR."
"Yet you hired her for exactly that job."
They went back to their respective workouts. Mindful of Pepper's watchful eye, Natasha modified her usual morning routine to give her shoulder a rest. When she went to the punching bag to practice kickboxing, Pepper abandoned the weights and asked for a few pointers. By the time they'd finished, Natasha's sweat-wicking top had long since ceased to perform that function, and she was surprised when she glanced at the clock above the door and saw more than an hour had gone by since she'd thought about SHIELD and the hearings and her own quest for redemption.
"Can we do this again tomorrow before I fly out to Portland?" Pepper asked.
"On Sunday mornings I go to church."
Pepper blinked in surprise, but quickly recovered her poise. "Russian Orthodox?"
Natasha smirked, but she was aware the way for a former spy to win friends probably wasn't to try to pull one over on the unsuspecting. "Believe it or not, the Black Widow program didn't include a lot of religious instruction. Steve's your man for keeping the Sabbath holy."
"And that's why he's Captain America," said Pepper with a laugh.
"You keep training in the Avengers' gym, and I'm going to recruit you for the team. I hear you're a natural in the suit."
"Much as I agree that the Avengers could do with a little more female representation, I think I'm more cut out for corporate battles."
"Hey, we need women CEOs, too," Natasha said. "Aliens and former Nazis scare me far less than the people you go up against. Frankly I don't know how Maria made the transition to the private sector."
"You faked it well enough, back when you went undercover as Tony's assistant."
"The operative word being faked."
At the reference to her past, not the first one since Pepper arrived, Natasha decided it was time to address the proverbial elephant.
"Not many civilians would volunteer to kickbox with someone who's done what I've done."
Not many of the Avengers, either, she thought. Only Steve, but he was off chasing his own past.
"I'm not afraid of you, Natasha, if that's what you're asking."
Pepper's clear-sightedness, and her habit of not beating around the bush, were breath-taking.
"Why not?" Natasha asked.
With a slight, sad smile and a shrug, Pepper replied, "Extremis."
"So the Widow finally crawled out of her lair."
Absorbed in taking inventory of the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator, Bruce registered Tony's words belatedly, when he turned around and saw him standing in the middle of the kitchen.
"I'm not sure Natasha would appreciate-"
"Appreciation," Tony cut him off, wagging his index finger. "That's exactly what I'm talking about, Banner. You're always on my wavelength."
Bruce wasn't, nor was Tony on his, or he wouldn't be pouring himself a cup of coffee right now. For two years now, he'd been drinking decaf unaware. Stimulants of any kind, of course, were to be avoided when you were trying to keep your heart rate from ramping up, and it hadn't taken Bruce long to discover that Tony on caffeine was like a kid off ADHD meds. Which, come to think of it…
"I offer Romanoff shelter and the best damn legal representation money can buy, and this is how she repays me? By luring my girlfriend away?"
"Is this about movie night?" Bruce bent over the island, where his notepad lay. He reached for a pen from his shirt pocket, but found none, then remembered he'd tucked it behind his ear. Where were his glasses? He squinted at the paper and jotted down the items that had been absent from the refrigerator. "Because that was Pepper's idea."
"This is about the early morning gym session. I had plans for a couples' workout."
Deciding it was wisest not to comment on that, Bruce said, "Maybe Pepper prefers Natasha's company."
"To mine?" Tony snorted into his mug as he came to stand on the opposite side of the island. "You prefer my company, and we're not even dating."
"Is it that I have a preference for you, or that Natasha definitely doesn't have one for me?" Bruce mumbled as he added cauliflower to his list, but Tony didn't acknowledge that he'd heard him.
"Maybe Pepper's trying to make a point about how much time I spend with-Wait, were you just being self-deprecating?"
Bruce reached up to scratch his head, and found his glasses perched there. "When am I not?" he said, settling them on the bridge of his nose.
"You think Natasha doesn't like you?"
For some reason Tony's incredulity made Bruce even more self-conscious than talking about a colleague's less-than-favorable opinion of him did.
"Come on, Tony," he said, turning to open the pantry, "you've seen how she is around me. Maybe she doesn't dislike me, but she's definitely not comfortable. Justifiably so. Or did you forget the Other Guy tried to kill her on the Helicarrier?"
"A lot of people have tried to kill her since then, and she's not curling up right next to them and falling asleep."
"It wasn't exactly right next to me. She was one the couch, I was in the chair."
"Semantics. Even your old nemesis General Ross seems preoccupied by Black Widow at the moment."
Whiplash was not an unusual feeling for Bruce during conversations with Tony, but he nevertheless faltered at the reference to Ross, dropped so glibly. He watched the news, of course, heard the sound bites of the general questioning the integrity of SHIELD when they'd harbored former Soviet spies like Natasha Romanoff.
"Are you saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Not exactly the best foundation for a lasting relationship."
"I'm saying I read her files, and she's way scarier than you. Look at you, what are you doing?"
Bruce closed the pantry and turned to see that Tony had sidled around the island and picked up the notepad. He sprang to make a grab for it, but Tony elbowed him away.
"What are you, a teenager hiding her diary?" He scanned the paper. "See, I knew you were up to something totally un-scary. Writing a grocery list, with an old-fashioned pen and pepper?"
"Pepper asked me to cook tonight. Indian."
"Oh, wait. This is actually frightening. Nightmarish, in fact. There's no meat."
"There's tofu."
"Damn it, Banner, why did you have to tell her about the shawarma?" Tony slammed the notebook on the counter. "We're going to Portland and she's not going to let me eat enjoy the food scene."
Gripping the mug, he stalked toward the doorway, while Bruce tried not to smirk at his secret about the coffee.
"I'm sure if anywhere has great vegetarian food, it's Portland," he said, but as usual, Tony ignored any attempt to help him see reason.
"Anyway, I'm not going to be here to protect you for a few days, so I just want to say: don't let her spin a web for you, my friend."
"Wait, are we talking about Pepper, or Natasha?"
"Don't be cute, either," Tony replied, not glancing back as he strode down the hall.
"I'm not being cute," Bruce said as he stood alone in the kitchen. "Just confused."
A/N: Once again, I'm so grateful for each and every kind word and comment that has been left so far on this fic, and I hope you'll continue to let me know what you think about the story. It's a joy to share this fic with fans who love these characters as much as I do. There hasn't been much one-on-one with Bruce and Natasha, but I promise, it's coming soon! And Tony will be in Portland where he can't interrupt in his underwear. (Although I personally don't find much objectionable about Tony in his underwear... ;))