A/N: Thanks for bearing with me while I was away from home last week and unable to post. As promised, I'm back today, with a totally Bruce x Natasha chapter which I hope was worth the wait! My gratitude, as always, to my beta reader and MCU partner in crime, malintzin.

12. Let's Get Physical

Bruce gritted his teeth, his concentration as focused on not baring them in a grimace as it was on pushing the barbell up from his chest. He managed, but couldn't stop a grunt behind his closed lips as his elbows extended fully.

"You've got this, Big Guy," Natasha's voice rasped from above, where she stood at the head of the weight bench, spotting for him.

Beneath his furrowed brow, he kept his eyes focused on her hands. Skin pale against the black leather of her fingerless gloves, they hovered just beneath the bar, never quite touching it to help him lift it onto the rack or even to balance it for him. His biceps trembled. They were sore, but then wasn't every muscle in his body?

Although he wasn't able to argue his way out of working out with Natasha, he convinced her to put it off till the following morning, under the guise of needing sleep. Of course, he'd lain awake a good part of the night anxious about the coming gym session. But he survived it, and here he was, on the fourth day of a new workout regimen.

The barbell clanked onto the pegs, and Bruce huffed out the breath he'd been holding.

"And ten," Natasha said and turned to adjust the weights for her own turn on the bench press.

Bruce didn't budge , but lay there rubbing his aching jaw. He really needed to quit grinding his teeth.

"This takes me back to high school PE," he joked, voicing coming out a little stiff from the muscle tension. "I keep thinking you're going to make me climb a rope."

In fact it wasn't at all like gym class, where every day was a lesson in public humiliation rather than physical education. He expected nothing less from a workout session with Natasha, who was the terrifying coach and pretty coed in this scenario rolled into one. He probably ought to have his head examined because his primary concern about training with an assassin-turned-special-agent was that he would make a fool of himself in front of her. If she did think him foolish, she kept the thought to herself, even masked it from her facial expressions. Wise, considering the alter ego likely to emerge if anyone seemed to be picking on puny Banner.

"College the other day, high school today," she mused. "Are you always this nostalgic?"

Bruce looked up. She paused sliding a weight off the barbell to look down at him with one of her little lopsided smiles.

"Me?" He said, incredulous. About my past? "Not hardly."

Running his hand upward from his jaw, he felt the moisture slickening his skin, plastering his hair to his forehead. He grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, bending his head as he drew it up to wipe his brow. When he lay back again, still clutching his shirt, Natasha's gaze had left his face. She was staring at the hair which trailed downward from his exposed navel and disappeared into the band of his sweatpants. Quickly he lowered his shirt again, heat prickling across his cheekbones. For once in his life, he was glad his face got bright red when he exercised.

"Does that mean when you're with me, you feel young?" she asked.

Bruce choked on a laugh. "Believe me, kid," he said as he scooted himself down the bench, past the bar so he could ease himself upright, wincing at the protest of his abdominal muscles, "young is definitely not how I'd describe the way I feel right now."

"If it's any consolation, I don't, either."

Metal scraped against metal as Natasha slid a weight onto the bar. Bending to reach for his water bottle on the floor, he watched her black Nikes with purple laces come around the edge of the bench. She spoke again as she lowered herself to sit beside him, voice husky:

"I've never felt young. Not even when I was."

The water rolled down Bruce's throat, and he swallowed it painfully as his thoughts turned to the little girl who'd lured him to the hovel in Kolkata, where Natasha awaited him. Like a spider, weaving a web for her prey, he'd thought afterward, once he knew who she was. But there had been no guile on her face when she told him she'd been a spy from that tender age. Funny, he'd never thought to question the truth of that, even when it became clear other parts of that conversation were lies.

"Obviously that's not a consolation," her voice drew him back to the present setting of the gym. Maybe she was right about him being nostalgic.

"No." His voice cracked a little, like the adolescent in PE. "It's not, at all."

How could there be any comfort in a woman's childhood having been stolen in exchange for being made into a weapon? The hairs stood as he felt a snarl at the back of his mind as the Other Guy stirred. The Other Guy, who in part had been made to protect another child whose innocence was taken away.

Although what he felt at the moment was unusual, not precisely the anger he was accustomed to rousing the Hulk.

Bruce pushed to his feet, calves and thighs protesting, still sore from his lower body workout two days ago. He tried not to hobble around to the head of the bench.

"Sorry," Natasha said, lying back. "Didn't mean to be such a downer." Flexing her fingers around the barbell, she smirked. "Guess I'm still a bit Russian after all. You're doing great, by the way."

"Thanks. For convincing me to do this. It's good to get a change of scenery sometimes."

"Is that your way of saying you want me to be your lab partner?"

All the talk of high school made Bruce think of how his teenaged self would have reacted to a proposition like that from a girl like Natasha. More embarrassingly than anything that ever happened to him in PE, probably.

"You made a pretty convincing scientist at the Fridge, Dr. Vance."

"It's Ms. Vance, remember, Dr. Huxley? You recruited me for SHIELD before I finished my Ph.D."

"That's right. See, you're already a better scientist than I am a spy."

"You liked that whole professor, protégé dynamic we had going on?" Her voice pitched low.

His throat tightened. "We had a dynamic?"

"Apparently not."

Natasha looked amused and Bruce, feeling a little off-balance from the brief flirtation-if it had been that-tried to laugh it off.

"Tony would be so jealous if he got back to find you in the lab."

The more likely scenario was that Tony would give him hell when he got back and discovered Bruce had a new workout routine…and a new workout partner. Could he possibly keep it secret? If anyone could, it would be Natasha.

She hmmed. "Or suspicious. I don't think Stark's ever really gotten over me not actually being his assistant."

"He hasn't gotten over me not actually being his therapist, either. Guy knows how to hold a grudge."

The playfulness faded from Natasha's face, leaving a blank mask of concentration as she gripped the bar and pushed up. Bruce helped her lift it off the rack, letting go when he felt that it was stabilized over her chest. He diverted his gaze from her sports bra to the shoulder with the gunshot wound. For a few repetitions he watched to make sure the weight of the barbell wasn't a strain, but her movements were smooth. He studied her face, too, for signs of being in pain; although she didn't appear to be, that of course didn't mean she wasn't.

"What about you?" he asked after she pushed the bar up for the tenth time and re-racked it. "Is this helping?"

"My shoulder?" She pressed her elbow across her chest to stretch the shoulder joint.

"No," he said quickly, embarrassed that she'd been aware of his gaze. "I mean, yeah, I hope all this training isn't aggravating your injury, but I was actually referring to your…" How had she put it? "…mental acuity."

When she gripped the barbell and began another set, Bruce thought she wasn't going to answer. The only sounds for some time were the sharp steady puffs of her breath, the clang of the bar on the rack when she completed the set, the glug of her water bottle as she drank. Then, as she stared up at the ceiling, her softly rasping voice almost startled him.

"Not sharp enough to figure out what the hell Maria Hill's keeping from me," she replied, as though there had been no break in the conversation. "Or who. She sent us me to the Fridge as a distraction, presumably because I was close to discovering secret SHIELD."

"Sounds reasonable," Bruce said. Not that he knew, but Natasha didn't seem like the kind of person who was very often unreasonable. "You haven't been in contact with any other agents? Former agents, I mean…Barton…?"

"There weren't many we knew for sure we could trust. A lot of those are off the grid, or dead. And those who aren't may not trust me."

Her eyes rolled up to his, briefly, and the corner of her mouth quirked in a bitter smile. Something inside Bruce twisted, too.

"You did what you had to do, Natasha."

As a former target of Project Insight, he had a personal stake in this.

She set her jaw, nodded, and gripped the barbell once again.

"The thing I keep running up against," she said after she completed the set, "is why the hell didn't Nick just tell me? Even if I have to distance myself from SHIELD to be an Avenger…why the subterfuge?"

"Wait." Bruce felt the same sense of mental whiplash he often did when talking to Tony. "Did you say Nick? As in-"

"Fury." She slid out from beneath the bar and sat up in a fluid movement. "Reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated."

"I see."

The throb returned to Bruce's cheek as he ground his teeth again. He bit back the urge to comment on the SHIELD director's own trust issues, if he was willing to do something as drastic as fake his death.

"Hey, Natasha. Let's get out of here."

"Done working out?"

"Literally, out. Of the Tower. We've both been cooped up in here too long. Let's get some fresh perspective on this. Or at the very least, fresh air."

A dark red eyebrow hitched upward on Natasha's high forehead. "You sure you aren't in cahoots with Maria? She says I need some distance."

"Not in cahoots. But in this case, in agreement."

Natasha's reply was the sound of tearing Velcro as she unstrapped her gloves.

"You do realize this completely negates our workout, right?" Natasha said, not so much a question as a comment as she speared gooey apple and flakey crust with her fork.

Bruce shrugged, said around a bite of pie, "Depends on your reason for the workout. Were you exercising for weight loss? Then maybe."

"Mental acuity. Emotional control. Getting fighting fit."

"I never explicitly agreed to any of those reasons." Bruce swallowed and reached for his coffee.

"Oh really?" Still holding her forkful of apple pie, Natasha leaned back in the metal chair and eyed him across the round patio table. "Okay then, Banner, enlighten me. What are your reasons for working out?"

"Reason, singular." He gestured to his plate. "The pie doesn't negate the workout. The workout enables the guilt-free enjoyment of pie. Plus, there was that fifteen-minute walk here from the Tower. And a fifteen-minute walk back again. Win-win."

Natasha looked skeptical, but put the bite in her mouth at last. "It is really good pie," she said, mouth full. "And a really nice place."

Her gaze drifted to take in their surroundings: a walled, paved courtyard canopied by honey locust trees which admitted the dappled sunlight while simultaneously blocking out the newly constructed condominiums that rose above the park, hedged with sculpted shrubberies and the last azaleas of spring, vivid pink against the dark green foliage and fragrant; the focal point, a twenty-five foot tall waterfall all but drowned out the noise of midtown Manhattan, as well as the conversations of the dozen or so other patrons of Greenacre Park.

For a moment Bruce sat silently, taking advantage of Natasha's inattention to him to enjoy the serene expression that settled over her features, before it occurred to him that just because she appeared to be focused on other things didn't mean she wasn't fully aware of everything happening around her. Especially from the close proximity of a table for two.

"I thought you of all people might appreciate one of the city's best kept secrets," he said, scooping pie onto his fork.

"When did you find it?"

"Not long after the Battle of New York. I needed some mental space, like today. Only it seemed like I was searching in vain, because everywhere I walked there was destruction. Or construction. I couldn't hear myself think any clearer than I could with Tony blasting AC/DC in the lab."

He chuckled now, but then it had been disheartening to see the extent of the damages to the city. Most of it done by the Chitauri, he knew that, but the Other Guy did his share, too. As if the Harlem Terror wasn't enough.

Feeling Natasha watching him, he realized he was picking at the plastic lid of his coffee cup with his fingernail. He took a drink, meeting her eyes again as he resumed his story.

"That water feature at the entrance?" He assumed it hadn't escaped her notice. "It was almost the only thing on this whole side of the street that was totally undamaged. I had to check out what was back here."

"A park."

"A sanctuary. I don't think there's a church in this whole city as peaceful."

"Or that serves hot apple pie at the snack bar."

"That, too."

"So…" Natasha drew out the word as she slid to the front of her chair and leaned her arms on the table. "You come here often?"

Bruce started to reply that he walked over on a semi-regular basis, to read or just to think-and eat a slice of apple pie-when he recognized the playful glint in her eye as she tucked a stray curl behind her ear.

"Every now and then," he played along. "Never brought anyone with me before."

"You sure do know how to make a girl feel special."

As she held his gaze, the roar of the waterfall receded, muffled by the rush of blood in his ears. When he managed to finally tear his eyes away, they darted around the park, looking everywhere but at her, at last settling on his half-eaten slice of pie. He picked up his fork, only to set it down again on his plate with a clink. It didn't seem right to eat at a moment like this, even if it weren't for the butterflies in his stomach.

"It's just that…I know what you're going through, Natasha."

He paused to gauge her reaction, but he couldn't read the slightly faded version of the smile from their little banter which she wore as she waited patiently for him to continue. Withdrawing his hands into his lap, he rubbed his sweaty palms on the legs of his slacks, and forged ahead.

"I know what it's like to feel…adrift. To be at a loss to atone for everything you've done. What makes you so sure the only way to do that is to fight?"

"Look, Bruce. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but after the Hulk smashes stuff, you can do your research, go all Doctors Without Borders if that makes you feel better. I'm not like you. I was trained to lie and to kill."

You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers.

For the second time that day, Bruce felt the rumble of the Other Guy in his mind. Apparently he had some latent Loki issues.

"You're not lying now," he said.

She considered this. "Here's something else that's not a lie," she said, almost in challenge. "I don't even know who I am. My whole identity is lost in all the lies I've told."

"Then find yourself."

The idea occurred spontaneously, but after he voiced it he feared it sounded flippant rather than profound.

"Find myself."

Clearly from the way she parroted it back at him, deadpan, Natasha thought it was stupid, or at the very most, was skeptical. Although he'd spoken off-the-cuff, Bruce stuck by what he'd said.

"You've got the time."

Natasha sat back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. She crossed her legs, bumping his with her foot beneath the table.

"You make me sound like a college student taking a year off from school to go off in search of adventure and inspiration."

Bruce shrugged. "We are in New York."

"That's only slightly less clichéd than Paris."

"Sorry."

He glanced away again, but another nudge of Natasha's foot against his leg, gentle, intentional this time, drew him back. Her smile was soft, as was her voice.

"Don't be. You're a smart guy, Doc. If I can't take your advice, whose can I? And a little experiment never hurt anyone, did it?"

"Well…" Bruce rubbed the back of his neck. "I wouldn't go that far."

"I think I'm probably safe with pie in the park."

A/N: Greenacre Park is a real place you can visit in Manhattan. When I discovered it online, I thought it seemed like just the sort of quiet place Bruce would go when he was in need of escape. If you Google for pictures, I think you'll agree. And if you take a moment to comment, Bruce and Natasha will take you with them next time they get a hankering for apple pie and coffee. ;)