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“Er,” Bruce said, stopping behind the couch where Clint and Natasha were sprawled together, watching a movie. “Sorry to interrupt, but wasn’t there half a pizza left in the fridge this morning?”
Clint peeked out over the back of the couch. “Yeah, I ate that. To be fair, Tony had a slice too, so it wasn’t entirely me.”
Damn. Well, that’s what he got for spending all day in the lab, Bruce supposed.
Then the top of Natasha’s red head popped up. “Actually there’s three pieces in the freezer.”
“There is?” Clint said in surprise.
“I thought you might forget to eat and we live in a tower full of animals,” Natasha said, ignoring Clint as she met Bruce’s eyes.
Bruce looked away from her, taking off his glasses to wipe the lenses with the edge of his shirt just for something to occupy himself with. He felt flustered, the back of his neck flushing, though he wasn’t entirely certain why. The idea that Natasha had paused to think of him, gone out of her way to pay him a kindness was…
“Thanks,” he mumbled, feeling in adequate, but something in Natasha’s eyes made him think that was okay. She had this uncanny knack of understanding even when maybe Bruce didn’t understand fully himself.
“Why don’t you join us?” Clint offered.
Natasha backed him up. “The movie sucks but the company’s good. Or at least, half the company’s good.”
“Excuse you, this movie is a timeless classic,” Clint insisted. Much to Bruce’s amusement, he seemed offended only by Natasha’s slight on his cinematic taste rather than the dig at Clint himself.
“It sucks.”
“All right, that settles it. Bruce, you need to be the tie-breaker. Sit your ass down.”
“I can’t fairly judge a movie when I haven’t seen it from the beginning,” Bruce pointed out.
Clint was already bringing up the main menu. “That’s okay, we can start over.”
Natasha groaned.
“Ignore her, Bruce, she’s trying to influence your opinion. If it were up to her we’d be watching nothing but bad ‘80s sci-fi.”
“I happen to like bad ‘80s sci-fi,” Bruce said, inserting himself into the tiny corner of space that Clint and Natasha weren’t occupying.
“And you’ve just dropped like five coolness points,” Clint, his nose wrinkling in disgust.
“I had coolness points?” Bruce asked. That seemed wrong.
Natasha, though, was eyeing him with approval. “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” she said, her voice warm. “You want to get your pizza first?”
“In a bit, maybe,” Bruce said. Then he found himself getting jostled while Clint and Natasha rearranged themselves on the couch.
Somehow Bruce ended up in the middle, Clint pressed up against his shoulder while Natasha lay lengthwise, her legs stretched over Bruce’s thighs so that her feet rested in Clint’s lip.
Clint started rubbing Natasha’s calves, like this was easy and normal and he was perfectly content, but Bruce held himself still, feeling frozen, his muscles tense. It wasn’t like he hadn’t sat with them before but he could never quite get used to their comfortable familiarity, the way they accepted him and acted like he was a member of their partnership and not a mildly annoying hanger-on.
But Natasha was smiling at him, soft and affectionate, and Clint raised one arm to drape over Bruce’s shoulders. He didn’t pull Bruce closer or anything, just left his arm there, casual, welcoming, and slowly Bruce relaxed, sensing his muscles easing.
So maybe the movie would be terrible but at least, Bruce decided, he couldn’t fault his companions.
End