It was really hard to milk your injuries for all they were worth when the Black Widow volunteers herself to be your physical therapist.
Tony tries to resist, but she (apparently) has all the proper training and a valid license (bullshit). And Pepper thought it was a good idea. Tony has a very long track record of not being able to resist things that Pepper thinks are 'good ideas'.
(It's probably as long as Pepper's track record of being able to resist the things that he thinks are 'good ideas'.)
Which is how Tony ends up here, with Natasha staring at him, neither of them saying anything, or breaking eye contact. Tony feels like this is a lot harder for him than it is for her. He's not good at not talking. But he does not want to do another five 'reps'. He's done a lot already, and this is boring.
He opens with mouth to express the depths of his displeasure. Natasha's eyebrow twitches.
Tony does five more reps.
In fact, Tony does the entirety of the work-out (torture session) that Natasha had planned. And he doesn't even get to yell at her. Creepy fucking ninjas.
And then, because having him pick up and then put down heavy things isn't enough torture for his exceptional(ly bored brain), she then makes him do yoga. Like, a lot of yoga.
God, this sucks.
It's at some point when Tony's head is stuck into his crotch (which is really not cool) that he decided to ask, "So, uh, excepting this moment right here, where I actually hate your guts, you're not being nearly as mean to me as you're supposed to be."
"Why am I supposed to be mean to you?" Natasha said placidly, though there was the tiniest bit of a smirk around her mouth, and her eyes were all indulgent and - ah hell, she was just humouring him, like you do with children who get ridiculous notions about microwaves who talk back and robots that can think… Actually, Tony sees this look a lot.
"You're supposed to be mean to everyone, who isn't Clint. I think that asshole's super power is annoying people into liking him. And Steve. Because there is a special place in Hell for people that are mean to Captain America. But everyone else, you don't like," Tony explains, very coherently he thinks, considering the current proximity of his face to his ass.
"I like you, Tony," is all she says, looking way too amused for a woman who's twisted herself into a remarkably apt imitation of a pretzel.
"That's good, I prefer when creepy ninja assassins like me," he remarks agreeably, and she snorts. "Why do you like me?"
Now, the sound she makes is much closer to one of disgust. "Tony, are we about to have a conversation about our feelings, here?"
"Oh, God," Tony groaned. "Okay, if we can keep the feelings talk to under a minute, my seriously underdeveloped emotional maturity should hold out. Go."
"I like you because you know what it means to have more deaths on your hands than you can ever make up for," Natasha says quickly, doing them both a favour by not making eye contact with Tony while she says it. He freezes anyway. "And you don't care - it doesn't scare or worry you. Clint is similar, in that he doesn't hold my past against me, because he thinks I can't be like that again."
"And I don't?" Tony prods, even though he knows the answer.
"No, you don't," she replies (correctamundo, give the lady a prize), "Because you know that the ruthless killer is just a part of who I am, and I will never be free of that. You know that I can choose to be like that again, and that until I do, you have nothing to worry about. That's why I like you. You know what it's like to not be good with the power that you have."
Tony grunts in agreement. That is not the kind of admission that is followed with words. Well, not any words that Tony knows. He's not good at words that mean anything.
"Your turn, Stark," Natasha teases. "We have twenty seconds left of emotional over-sharing time. Why do you like me?"
"You're not going to get on my back about being bad at teamwork," he replies immediately. "You're used to working alone too."
She snorts. "Not wrong."
"I'm never wrong," Tony says, before falling out of his own twisted-pretzel-bend. "Oww, God, that hurts. Can we be done for the day?"
\./
[Hello, dear readers, this is your Captain speaking! Thanks so much for reading, and for every single one of you that reviewed, I adore you all! I added a snippit to the end of Chapter Two, so make sure you read that if you missed it! This is the first fic I wrote and then decided to publish, so any and all constructive criticism is more than appreciated! Thank you again for reading!]