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Natasha sauntered into the kitchen. She’d tracked Bruce here—with some help from FRIDAY—to talk to him. He was busy cooking what looked and smelled like his butter chicken recipe and she perched herself on the edge of the kitchen table where she was out of his way but had a perfect view. There was something Natasha loved about watching Bruce cook.
There was the obvious fact that when Bruce cooked, she could be sure the food would be edible, which was not a guarantee when most of the Avengers—including herself—cooked a group meal…
But it was mostly because in the kitchen cooking was one of the few places where Bruce moved with pure, unwavering confidence. He’d confided in her, once, that it was his mom who’d taught him how to cook—or started to, before she’d died—when he was young. That cooking reminded him of her in a good way in a way few things did. Seeing Bruce confident, the way he deserved to be, was always a wonder. It made her want to push at him, show him that he deserved to wear that confidence without fear or recrimination.
She liked to think she’d helped, in the time since they’d met, and particularly in the time since they’d started this… thing between them. Love was for children, it was something she’d told herself time and time again, but… Well, she didn’t name what was between her and Bruce and he didn’t ask her to.
Admittedly, for all her gentle nudging and what she hoped were helpful manipulations—it was who she was, manipulation had been trained into her soul, even if these days she tried to use it for mostly good—she had to admit that helping Bruce come out of his shell was one of those places where Tony might have outmatched her.
Natasha pushed Bruce gently; it was who she was, how she’d been trained. Tony pushed Bruce like an excavator. He also poked, nudged, prodded, and jabbed, with a certainty that Bruce could handle it—more, that Bruce needed, wanted, that from someone, someone so entirely unafraid of him but who did it out of care. Natasha honestly doubted that there was anyone else who would ever be able to pull off that sort of behavior with Bruce—mostly because most people would be too afraid to try and those who weren’t ranged from too polite to too subtle to too removed.
Tony was just a special brand of determined and reckless, in that way.
Speaking of Tony… There’d been a quiet reserve in the compound, since Pepper had broken up with him. Because the blinding smile and quippy retorts meant to mask his emotions might work on the world, but they didn’t work on them; everyone could feel Tony’s grief. It was funny, she couldn’t help but think, that Tony knew he was charismatic, magnetic, dynamic—he certainly used those things to his advantage often enough—and yet he didn’t realize that the absence of the brilliance and vibrancy he brought with him was felt so keenly by those around him.
He would certainly scoff if he said that he played such a central role in making the compound feel like home, made all of them feel like they belonged there with him. The Avengers were Natasha’s family, and she knew with quiet certainty that Tony had played a central—though unknowing—role in giving them to her. To all of them. And Natasha took care of her family.
Which brought her to now. Tony had actually been the reason she’d decided to track Bruce down, which meant taking a pause from enjoying the sight of Bruce cooking to get on with doing her self-appointed job.
“Do you and Tony have anything exciting on the research docket?” Natasha asked Bruce, keeping her voice light. Because she hated seeing Tony in pain—they all did—and pushing Bruce and Tony into a science binge would do at least something to help Tony come back to himself. Tony had loved Pepper—still loved Pepper—but science was the one love of Tony’s life that had never left him, never hurt him. She might miss Bruce in the intervening days—maybe weeks—where science dragged them under, but it’d be worth it.
Bruce looked at her over his shoulder, reading the intent behind her question with startling ease. “He’s fine, you know.”
It was sweet, really, that he would lie to her about that. Not the lying itself, per se—Bruce was really quite terrible at it—but the way she knew the lie was a testament to the fact that Bruce would never reveal Tony’s secrets. It was a comfort in the way she knew he’d never reveal hers, either. It also meant that Tony had said something to Bruce, sparse as it had probably been. If Tony hadn’t said something to Bruce, then Bruce would voice his own concerns to her. Concerns Natasha knew Bruce had. But once Tony had said something, Bruce would keep Tony’s confidence to the end.
Natasha just arched an eyebrow. “Tony’s always fine, especially if you ask Tony.”
Bruce didn’t say anything to that, just shrugging and turning back to the butter chicken he was making.
“Still, even if he is fine,” Natasha continued, ignoring the fact that they both knew Tony wasn’t. “It’s been a while since you two have had fun in the lab.”
“We always have fun in the lab,” Bruce corrected. Which was probably true, both when together and separate, Bruce and Tony loved what they did, were eager to share it with both each other and the rest of them. She liked that about both of them.
Still, Natasha rolled her eyes. “I mean the sort of fun that has you two binge-drinking coffee for a terrifying number of days straight and rattling off words at a speed that leaves the rest of us spinning and always results in some sort of scientific breakthrough that would probably earn you a nobel if the two of you were the sort to accept that sort of thing.”
Bruce laughed, looking at her again with a glint of amusement in his eyes. “You mean the sort of fun that makes Steve want to pull out his hair because he’s pretty sure Tony and I are either going to accidentally starve ourselves or accidentally blow something up on day five of sleep deprivation?”
The smile that tugged at Natasha’s lips at the many memories of Steve’s increasingly not-quite-frantic-not-quite-fussy behavior as he tried to ’take care’ of his teammates was hard to stop, and in the end, she let herself smile anyway. She was allowed. “That would be the type of fun I’m talking about, yes.”
“Nothing currently on the docket,” Bruce said, turning his focus back to the butter chicken.
Natasha stared at his back, waiting.
A few minutes later, Bruce turned to look at her, undoubtedly aware of her expectation. “I’m trying to think of something that will really distract Tony,” he admitted. “But I haven’t had any bright ideas, yet.”
That meant she and Bruce were on the same page. Good. Bruce would come up with something, of that she had no doubt. And while she’d miss Bruce while the science whisked him away, it would be worth it.
Footsteps down the hall caught Natasha’s attention and it only took a half second to match the gait to Tony. Bruce turned back to his butter chicken and Natasha leaned back, so that her hands held up some of her weight where she perched on the table, and made a subtle shift so that her body language was one of her merely appreciating the sight of Bruce cooking. She doubted Tony would realize they’d been discussing him, but the shift meant that all Tony would see was Natasha and Bruce spending time with each other.
A moment later, Tony walked in. Bruce sent a hello over his shoulder but didn’t turn to look.
Natasha, however, found herself experiencing a rare case of genuine surprise, greeting temporarily faltering at the sight of Tony.
Tony was smiling. And not the practiced, blinding smile that Tony wore as an unfaltering mask—Natasha didn’t count those as smiles at all—but a real one, small as it was. He was also holding a bouquet of flowers in his right hand, a fact that had Natasha mentally searching for an explanation.
“Butter chicken?” Tony asked Bruce as he searched the cupboards for something, as though there was nothing strange at all about flowers in his hand or a the small smile on his face or the slightest touch of relaxation to his shoulders. “Who am I thanking for putting you in a good enough mood to make butter chicken?”
A moment later Tony found a vase, filling it up with water as he bantered with Bruce about whether butter chicken was really a special occasion dish or not and whether Bruce was going to share. The banter wasn’t quite up to par with Tony’s normal, still closer to the banter he threw out on automatic to distract and blind.
Natasha watched as Tony carefully slid the bouquet into the vase, one finger coming up to gently touch the petal of one of the daisies. She wasn’t quite sure which she was more surprised about, Tony’s smile—the real one, the one she hadn’t truly expected to see for several more weeks—or the bouquet itself.
She was well aware that it was Tony giving Pepper flowers—the wrong flowers, it had turned out, and even if Natasha had known and dreaded what was coming, the exact tipping point had surprised her—that had preceded their breakup. The last thing she had expected was for Tony to have gone and gotten more flowers, much less to be smiling—clearly because of them.
For a moment she debated with herself, subtle or direct? Which would serve her better? Which would help Tony most?
Direct, she decided. “Special occasion?” she asked. She nodded at the flowers. “They’re beautiful.”
Tony shrugged. “No occasion. Didn’t actually plan on them. They were a gift.”
A gift? Someone trying to capitalize on Tony’s newly single status? No. That wouldn’t have Tony smiling. “A gift?” Natasha asked lightly.
Tony hesitated, but then answered. “I… stopped by the flower shop for a minute.” There was a twist of self-loathing in the words that told her why he’d done that; Tony had clearly gone back trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong, if he could have gotten it right, fixed things if he’d just been… better. Or at least that was how Tony undoubtedly saw the situation. Tony was a genius, but this was an arena where that brilliance couldn’t help him. ”The employee working was apparently feeling generous.” Tony shrugged again, clearly trying to indicate it wasn’t that important.
Oh. This was definitely important.
“Well, I can’t blame him for flirting with you,” Natasha prodded, even if that didn’t feel quite right considering Tony’s reactions, but it was the best way to get to the underlying motive. Or the underlying motive as Tony had seen it. “You’re quite a catch, you know.”
Bruce let out a feigned “excuse you, I’m right here,” that belied the smile on his face. He’d noticed, too, that Tony was smiling.
Tony touched the bouquet again, specifically, the daisy—Natasha made a note to figure out why the daisy had twice earned that special attention—even as he shrugged. “I don’t think he was flirting,” Tony said honestly. Natasha expected that was probably true, then. Tony’s radar wasn’t perfect, but he had a lot of experience with people flirting with him; he recognized it when he saw it. “I think he was just… being kind.”
The words had an undercurrent of confusion to them, as though Tony didn’t understand why someone would do that. Natasha understood that confusion herself. Even now, she sometimes found herself surprised at the way people could be kind, could be genuine. Tony had different reasons than her as to why that sort of behavior was rare, but they understood each other all the same.
“Well, the flowers are nice,” Natasha said, diverting from that confusion, because Tony didn’t want to hear about how he deserved kindness. Even if maybe he needed to hear it, but that was something she would make far more progress on with subtle nudges. She’d leave it for someone like Bruce to tackle in more direct fashions. “They make the place feel homey.”
They really did make the kitchen feel brighter, warmer. The feeling was surprisingly visceral for something so innocuous. The flower shop employee had excellent taste. She eyed the daisies again, wondering. They meant something. They had to, with the way Tony looked at them. But she didn’t know what yet.
Tony snorted. “Homey?” He gave the flowers a critical look. “I guess,” he acknowledged.
“I like them,” Bruce declared. “Natasha’s right, they make the place feel just a little more right.”
That flicker of a real smile appeared on Tony’s face. “I suppose,” he said, tone meant to convey that he thought they were both ridiculous for crediting flowers for that. A pause. “I like them, too.” That quiet confusion was there again, something that said he didn’t understand why anyone would have cared enough to give him flowers and not want anything. That said he didn’t understand why anyone would just… be kind.
Natasha wasn’t dismissing the potential plan to nudge Tony and Bruce into the workshop for a science binge—a single smile this much ahead of schedule was remarkable, but not necessarily meant to last—but she couldn’t help her own smile at the thought that maybe Tony might actually be starting to heal, just a little bit, and far ahead of her expected timeline, from the broken heart Pepper had left him with.
Sudden gratitude burned in her chest for the unknown flower shop employee. True, it probably hadn’t meant all that much to him, whoever he was, giving Tony flowers. It had likely been a random act of kindness that anyone was capable of, even if not everyone—even if not most people—would.
But it had made Tony smile and that might not have meant much to the flower shop employee, but to Tony’s friends—to those of them that loved him—well, that meant the world.