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"...would have been nice if you'd tried to avoid dropping the roof on him—"
Steve walked in, freshly showered and changed out of his uniform, to see Natasha addressing Bruce. She was standing ramrod straight, and her voice sounded flat and a little acid, that particular tone he associated with combat, with the moment just after a call from SHIELD that she was about to be sent on a solo mission.
Bruce looked cornered, which was never a good sign. He was stiff-backed and seemed somewhere between wariness and irritation. Natasha usually differentiated between Bruce and the Hulk, so Steve wasn't surprised.
She got like this after bad missions sometimes, like she couldn't get out of combat mode. Normally Clint was around to tug her down onto the couch and watch silly movies or ridiculous telesales ads, depending on the time of day or night. After a while of that she'd relax her posture and lean against Clint's shoulder, and sometimes join him in mocking whatever was on TV.
But Clint was in the SHIELD surgery suite, and Fury had ordered Steve to take Natasha back to the StarkTower to sleep. He hadn't really agreed, because frogmarching a hollow-eyed Black Widow out of the building and into a chopper was on his list of least favourite things to do, ever - but orders were orders. They'd get a call when Clint was out of surgery, and if she'd showered off the layer of brick dust and caught some sleep, she could come back.
According to JARVIS she'd spent the time since then agitatedly bouncing around from her tower apartment to the gym to Tony's lab.
If she wanted a fight Tony was usually the one who'd oblige, because no matter that they'd worked out their difference since, there was enough history between them to provide two short-tempered people with an argument or ten. Apparently he'd managed to work her out of his lab without bloodshed though, which was to his credit, because Steve knew Tony had his own demons to deal with right now. It was probably how she'd ended up in the communal kitchen, trying to pick a fight with Bruce.
Which really told him all he needed to know about her state of mind.
Steve was pretty sure that Agent Coulson would have known what to do when she got like this, and he got the uncomfortable feeling that he was failing the man by not taking proper care of his charges.
He was flying blind here, having no idea what it was she needed that he could provide. From Bruce's face it was clear he needed to step in now though.
"Natasha."
He pitched his voice quiet and commanding, and he saw in the set of her shoulders that it was the kind of tone that hit a nerve. Bruce just looked exhausted, and relieved.
"Captain." Sharp and clipped. She didn't turn around, though he had no doubt that she knew exactly where he was standing from his voice. Could put a bullet through his throat without even looking around.
"Walk with me," he said.
For a moment it looked like she might argue, but then she turned around to face him, all dangerous grace. He gestured for her to come along, and crossed the hallway to the communal den.
She didn't make a sound on the hard wooden floor, but he knew she followed by the scents of battle that were still on her - gunfire, blood, brick dust, soot.
"I know this was a hard mission," he said when he'd closed the door behind them, "and that you're angry that I made you come back here, but do you really thing goading Bruce into a fight is a good idea?"
She was looking back at him, head back a little to meet his eyes, but with the flat, expressionless demeanour of somebody far away inside their own head.
Steve was aware that of the team, Natasha was the one he had the least understanding of. Not that the others were all uncomplicated, but he had at least a handle on how they operated, how they'd gotten that way, and what they needed from him to function in the field and as a team. After a few missions that had started to extend to friendship, but even before that he wasn't usually baffled by them.
Natasha though – he knew just enough about her past to know that there were layers upon layers of training and programming stemming back to her childhood. She'd broken free of the most restrictive things, and SHIELD had unpicked some of it, but co-opted the rest to make her useful to them. There was a reason SHIELD agents had handlers, and Steve didn't think it was a coincidence that Natasha had been with the most senior handler.
Or that Clint tended to stick close to her after missions, a buffer between her and the world, sometimes even between her and the rest of the team.
Steve repressed a sigh. There were times when he really, really missed Agent Coulson.
Because maybe there was some kind of routine to get her out of mission mode. And maybe not having Coulson anymore, not to mention Clint being in the infirmary, meant that it fell to him to do something to help her. If only he knew what it was.
He looked at the calculating smile on her face.
"Stand down, Agent Romanov."
"I need to be with Barton," she said sweetly. "Just because you find it easy to walk away from a wounded teammate doesn't mean--"
He wasn't really surprised that she went straight for the jugular, because 'proportional force' wasn't really something in Natasha's arsenal. ("People only underestimate me once," she'd explained.)
And she had just deliberately tried to bait the man who turned into a giant rage monster. Now she was trying to get a fight out of him.
He let the words glide off his back.
"Natasha, stop," he said.
"Or what?"
She still had that calculating smile, but there was a plaintive note in her voice, and it didn't sound as challenging as he thought she'd intended it.
He looked down at her, still trying to work out what she was after. He'd assumed it was a left-over adrenaline thing, but she looked exhausted, and he thought she was just barely holding back the shakiness of post-combat fatigue.
She'd gone looking for a fight. With Bruce. And when she hadn't succeeded, she'd gone straight for the most hurtful thing she could possibly say to him, trying to provoke him into...
"Are you all right?" he asked, concern in his voice.
He felt maybe a little bit bad about using Clint's approach on her when her smile faltered. ("Verbal ninja tactics, man.") He understood why concern threw her off, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
Suddenly she didn't look calculating. Just... lost.
He didn't want to press the advantage, and grabbed the remote to click on the TV, finding something soothing on The Food Network. Maybe following Clint's post-battle strategy was the safest course of action right now.
"Come on, sit down."
When he turned back she still hadn't moved, and he thought there was maybe something pleading in her eyes, as if she had no idea what to do now. He hesitated before putting his hand on the nape of her neck. Clint was usually the only one who touched her. She glared at anybody else, and tended to avoid post-Hulk Bruce, who was usually lethargic and tactile.
She let him though, and he thought she might be pushing into his touch a little.
"Down," he repeated, gently pressing her down.
Her head drooped forward and she made a tiny sound deep in her throat, something small and desperate, and then she did indeed start sinking down. He frowned when he realised she was going to her knees, not sitting on the couch as he'd intended. Her hands hung limply down her side, and a few moments later she was kneeling at his feet.
He turned his body away slightly, uncomfortable with the sexual overtone of the position, and she rested her forehead against the outside of his thigh.
"Okay," he said, a little hoarsely, trying to sound like he understood this and it wasn't unsettling him at all. "Okay."
He kneaded her muscles gently, very aware of how large his hands were, of far his fingers reached around her slender neck. Of how he'd never thought of her as small or fragile until right now. Her breath shuddered out of her, and she pressed her face into the seam of his trousers. Smelling the scent of the laundry soap, perhaps.
After a long moment he moved back a little and sat down on the couch. She'd rocked a little on losing contact with him, but stayed motionless until he laid his hand back in the side of her neck and gently tugged her to lean against his legs.
She sat with her behind next to her heels, and he felt her body drape against his legs, one arm curling around his lower leg, forehead resting just above his knee. He slid his hand up into her hair, gently trailing his nails over her scalp, stroking her hair. Letting her feel his approval.
You're so brave, he thought at her. You stood with me and Hulk, so much more fragile than us, and faced off with that.. thing.
There were things that couldn't be said out loud.
I don't know what happened to you before you met Clint, he told her silently. I'm not sure I want to know. But I wish I could help, somehow.
He wasn't quite sure what had just happened, how they'd ended up like this, but her muscles were easing, and it seemed like a step in the right direction. Even if seeing her sitting at his feet, small and pliant, was one of the more unsettling things he'd seen today.
He wasn't sure if she was sleeping, but her breath had grown slow and even, and her body felt relaxed against his legs. She twitched a little when there was noise down the hall - the ridiculously complicated coffee machine - but he cupped the back of her head with his hand, and she settled again.
Steve ignored the television, and watched over her.