Work Text:
“Just keep your eyes on me, I said you’re holding back…”
The Stark wedding was in full swing; a rather humble affair out on the lakefront, about a dozen picnic tables surrounded by fairy lights and speakers blasting upbeat music. Tony and Pepper were mingling and dancing with their guests, while Nat stood off to the side mixing herself a drink at the bar, lost in her thoughts. Until suddenly…
“How’d a nice girl like you wind up working in a dump like this?”
She turned to see Bruce, with his charming shy grin and dapper gray suit, closing the distance between them by leaning on the opposite side of the bar. She smiled back and looked at him fleetingly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. (Which was now about shoulder-length and slowly transitioning back to her signature shade of red.)
“Fella done me wrong.” She responded behind a teasing curl of her lips.
Bruce laughed to himself as he looked her over again.
“You look…really great, Nat.”
“Thanks. Great party, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. Tony and Pep, they really deserve this, with all that’s gone down. We all do.”
“No kidding.” Nat responded, fiddling with the arrow charm draped around her neck and clearing her throat before continuing. “Do you ever miss how things were, Bruce?”
“What, before the snap?”
“Well, yeah, but…before that. Before you left.”
“Before you pushed me, you mean.” He retorted with a joking raise of his eyebrow, causing Nat’s gaze to fall sheepishly to the floor.
“I guess I never did apologize for that.”
“Hey, I kissed you once and then ghosted you for two years, I think we’re even.”
Nat chuckled softly, her fingertips just brushing his knuckles as she sat her glass down.
“I think about it all the time. If we had just…run away from Clint and Laura’s.”
Nat stiffened at the mention of her missing friends.
“If we had never looked back.” She added, meeting his eyes and trying to convey a million things that should have been said over the past three years. “Gone back to Calcutta, or something. Helped people the old-fashioned way.”
Bruce nodded, scanning her face as if to take in every last detail.
“But we didn’t.” He said with a near imperceptible shrug.
Nat shook her head behind the rim of her glass.
“But…we still have tonight.”
He looked at her questioningly, just as the music changed to a slow, romantic number.
“I know there’s no making up for lost time, and everything, but…would you like to dance with me, Bruce?”
“I’d love to.” He said with a smile, as she took his hand and they walked together to the dance floor. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he placed his arm softly and comfortingly on the small of her back. As they swayed together, next to their beloved friends and the newlyweds, they could almost believe that all was right with the world.