A/N: To all my American readers, I hope it's been a wonderful Fourth of July weekend for you all! And for all my non-American readers, I still hope it's been a wonderful regular weekend. ;) I'm so grateful for your lovely feedback on the previous chapter, even though there wasn't any Bruce x Natasha interaction. To make up for it, here's a whole chapter entirely devoted to them! As always, special thanks to my beta reader, Malintzin, who I've been working on another MCU fic project with…so if you're a fan of Phil Coulson, keep an eye out for that in days to come!
9. Clearing the Air
With only two Avengers currently living full time in the Tower, Natasha didn't often have to wait for the elevator. When she pushed the button after her workout and the doors didn't immediately open, she considered taking the stairs instead. It seemed lazy to take the elevator, anyway, when she only needed to go up a few levels from the training room to her quarters, especially when she'd just exercised. But she'd overdone it a little with the leg routine, already felt the protest in her thighs at the mere thought of climbing stairs, so she took out her tablet, leaned back against the opposite wall, and perused her own Fridge report again as she waited.
She was glad she did when the elevator arrived a moment later and the doors slid apart to reveal its occupant: Bruce, with grocery bags hanging over each shoulder-the reusable cloth kind-and a half-smile on his face.
"Need a lift, kid?"
Natasha's cheek muscle twitched. She might have created a monster with this role-play thing. But after the conversation she'd had with Maria, even after the intense gym session she'd followed it with to work out her frustrations, she welcomed the banter. They hadn't had much chance to talk since they returned from the Fridge the night before.
She didn't immediately join him, though, in character or in the elevator. Instead, she closed the cover of her tablet, asked with an arched eyebrow, "Was that an elevator pun?"
The lines of Bruce's face deepened, transforming his grin into a cringe. "How do you feel about elevator puns? Or puns in general?"
A chime from the elevator, and the doors started to slide shut. The contents of the grocery bags rattled as he lurched to push the door open button. He lifted his eyes to meet Natasha's again.
"I appreciate a good pun," she said.
"In that case, yes. Pun intended."
He looked so damned relieved as she pushed off the wall and approached that she almost resisted the urge to tease him. Almost. She stopped just outside the elevator.
"I didn't say it was a good pun."
His mouth fell open, eyes rounded behind the lenses of his glasses before the corners crinkled and his hunched shoulders shook with a silent chuckle.
"Let's try this again." Natasha gave her sweat-dampened curls a little flick and said in an exaggerated mid-Atlantic accent, "Going my way, mister?"
"Depends which way you're going, sweetheart."
"Only one way to go from here."
She breezed into the elevator, reached past him to press the button for her floor, hand brushing against his as it lingered on the control panel. She heard his intake of breath as he quickly withdrew it and pivoted to stand with his back to the wall. Her smile fell, and she looked down at the tablet clutched in her hands. So they were back to this, huh?
"Technically, we could go down," Bruce said. "To the Stark Industries floors. And the Arc reactor. Though I could tell you a cautionary tale about coming into contact with radiation."
Natasha looked up again but couldn't quite meet his eyes. She fixed her gaze a little above them, on the thick greying waves that were a little more disheveled than usual. Windblown, from his walk to the supermarket. Of course he had that habit of raking his hands through it when he was nervous, which she imagined he would be doing now, if he weren't holding groceries.
"You grew a full head of hair back since the last time I saw you," she said. "Unique effect of being gamma irradiated?"
The instant the joking words left her mouth, she realized they was probably ill-advised, given his skittish reaction to her touch.
"About that...Can I get a clause in my Avengers contract: no bald caps on undercover missions?"
Her surprise at this reply gave way to a smirk. "Itchy?"
"Probably why the Other Guy got a little twitchy."
Bruce, talking positively about his experience going undercover, and making light of his alter ego, too? Seemed like they'd found something in the Fridge after all.
"Ordinarily we go more high-tech," Natasha replied, relaxing her hold on the tablet. "Photostatic veils, that kind of thing. Alas, my resources are limited these days, so it's old-fashioned spy stuff."
"I'm sure Tony can come up with something." Bruce's grin faded. "Although from what Maria Hill tells me, we're not going on any more missions for a while? Did she tell you that, too?"
Another chime accompanied the elevator's stop on the floor with the common area. Bruce would be taking his groceries to the kitchen, of course. The doors opened, but he made no move to exit. Just kept looking at Natasha, expectantly, until she nodded.
He glanced away, the open collar of his shirt revealing a bulging vein in his neck.
"We know Hydra has Loki's scepter, but she doesn't think we should have a meeting, at least, to discuss it? Or call the guy's brother? Half-brother?"
"He was adopted."
"Doesn't that feel, I don't know…off to you?"
It did, but not in the way Bruce was thinking. Maybe not in the way she was thinking, either. Hopefully not.
"I trust Maria," she said. "I'm not sure Maria entirely trusts me."
Bruce opened his mouth as though in retort, but the elevator doors sliding shut diverted his attention. Natasha pressed the button, and they opened again. One of his bags bumped her as he stepped out into the hall.
"It was nice," he said, turning back, "what you said to her. About not being able to do it without me."
"It wasn't nice. It was honest."
Maybe it was impossible for him, for anyone, to conceive of honesty from a spy. A former KGB one at that.
On the other hand, he apparently found it equally impossible to conceive that a professional spy had found his undercover work invaluable.
"In any case," she went on, mustering a lighter tone, a smile, "mission: accomplished. Which, if memory serves, means you owe me a song and dance."
"I realize I'm older and a little closer to senility, but the way I remember it, you were the one who was doing the dance. You definitely don't want to hear me sing."
"What other talents you got then, Doc?" Natasha asked, folding her arms as she stepped forward to lean against the elevator doorway, keeping it open.
"Besides pumping myself full of gamma radiation? I make a decent eggplant parmigiana." He tapped the grocery bags.
All at once, Natasha became aware that she'd worked up quite an appetite for carbs and fried stuff and tomato sauce; the top of a bottle of wine stuck out of the top of one bag, even though Tony kept the bar fully stocked at all times.
"And to think we had our victory meal after the Battle of New York at Shawarma Palace," she said, stepping fully out of the elevator.
"Actually I was thinking more in terms of gratitude. Or apology. Maybe a bit of both."
"You don't owe me either one. If anything, I owed you." When Bruce blinked at her in confusion, she went on: "Remember the Helicarrier? I swore to get you out of a Hulkout. Better late than never, right?"
"You say it like it's a joke," Bruce replied, shaking his head slowly, mouth twisted into a rueful smile, "like it's no big deal to you. But it is to me. Of course I remember the Helicarrier. Well. Some of it. The rest I have to imagine, but it's not that difficult to fill in the blanks. Or to imagine it happening again, somewhere. I'm grateful you stopped it."
As he said this, he'd backed up-unconsciously, Natasha thought- almost against the wall. Consciously, she took a step toward him.
"I didn't stop it. You did. I only helped a little."
She reached out toward him, his gaze dropping to her hand as she closed her fingers around his wrist as she had on the mission. He didn't flinch like he did then, though she did feel the flutter of his pulse beneath the pads of her fingers, saw the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, hard.
"I'm sorry if it took you back," he said, hoarsely.
For a moment Natasha studied him as he stared down at her hand around his wrist. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers as understanding dawned.
"Did you think I was traumatized?"
A bitter laugh rasped from his throat as his dark eyes flicked up to meet hers again. "I didn't mean it as an insult. It's a traumatic thing, being chased by a monster through a small confined space. The stuff of nightmares."
"Are you trying to get me to admit I was afraid of the Big Guy?"
He didn't deny it. He didn't look away, either. His jaw tensed, the muscles beneath his cheekbone flickering.
"Fine, I'll humor you," Natasha opened her hands wide, one still holding the tablet. "I woke up in a sweat a few nights. You know what? Now I wake up in a sweat because of the Winter Soldier. It's safe to assume that in my line of work, soon it'll be someone else chasing me in my nightmares."
"It's so comforting to know I'm just one of the things that keeps you up at night."
Natasha couldn't stop a smirk, and Bruce's sarcastic expression melted into self-consciousness.
"That…didn't come out like I meant it to."
"You're such a dork, Bruce." She moved to stand beside him, leaning against the wall, and nudged his shoulder with hers. The bag slipped off. "I don't mean that as an insult," she added, starting to push the strap back up, but he let it slide to the floor, did the same with the other one.
"Are you kidding? I prefer dork to a lot of things you could call me."
"A traumatic experience isn't one of them," she said. "And I'm being honest again. Not nice."
"I believe you," Bruce said. "And I still think it's nice."
They stood quietly for a few minutes, side-by-side, their reflections distorted in the stainless steel elevator doors like images in a funhouse mirror.
After a moment, Natasha broke the silence. "Is that why you asked whether I'd be okay staying here? You were afraid I'd have flashbacks or something?"
"Isn't that why you asked whether I would be?"
She turned her head to look at him, nonplussed. "No. I meant exactly what I said. I wanted to know whether you'd be okay with me."
Bruce mirrored her position, brow furrowed, clearly not understanding her meaning. For a smart guy, he sure did miss a lot sometimes.
"Because of SHIELD," she said. "Because of what I've done."
"Oh. That…never crossed my mind."
Natasha was relieved to hear it though, surprisingly, not as much as she should be. It didn't sit well with her that Bruce was so myopic that he felt like the lone Avenger with a dark past.
The only one who was a monster.
She looked at their hazy reflections again.
"I'm a thing that keeps people up at night, too," she said. "If I get to wipe the red from my ledger, so do you. As far as I'm concerned, you did when you showed up to fight."
"I appreciate that," Bruce said. "Really, I do. I hoped that would be the case when I joined the team, but I also hope that more violence isn't my only option for righting my wrongs. Believe it or not, I'm a pacifist. Our mission to the Fridge made me feel like maybe I could do that. Be that."
Natasha looked at him, feeling as if she were seeing him again for the first time, the shaggy-haired man in a shabby suit who couldn't possibly be the one and the same with the Hulk. Though she'd watched Bruce Banner transform before her very eyes, played the moment over in her mind like a recording, she still had trouble reconciling the unimposing height and build, the mild face whose warm brown eyes were crisscrossed with as many smile lines as troubled ones, and self-effacing half smile and the greying curly hair with his raging green counterpart. It spoke volumes that he could live with the Other Guy and remain so self-possessed. That he believed he could rise above what he'd been made to be. She'd never entertained such an idea about herself. Then again, what else did she have, apart from that very specific skillset?
As if in answer, her stomach growled, loudly.
"You know what else you can do?" she said.
Bruce bent to retrieve his shopping bags, hair falling over his forehead as he grinned up at her. "Make eggplant parmigiana."