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She leaned against the door frame. The usual frown was plastered on her face, not that he cared, to tell the truth he could hardly dislike any of Natasha's facial expressions, he had in his mind that as long as she was looking at him everything was fine.
"Did some bedbug bite you while you were sleeping, darling?" he said with a mischievous little smile as he watched her, sitting behind his workbench, where the Iron Man armor casing was open.
She squinted slightly and crossed her arms. "It's three in the morning," she said sulkily as she entered the lab. "Why the hell aren't you in bed?"
Tony sighed, it had become a recurring thing actually, him getting out of bed in the middle of the night, it was even surprising Natasha had taken so many days to finally confront him.
"I couldn't sleep." He sank into the chair.
She stopped beside him, looking down at him with a gentler gaze than before—well, as gentle as Natasha could be—placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Nightmares?”
He took a deep breath before holding her waist and resting his forehead on her stomach, her hands automatically cupping the back of his neck. “I was there again, in the black hole,” the words barely came out, a murmur so low and muffled that only someone with ears as well-trained as Natasha’s could understand.
She ran her hands over his shoulders in a comforting way, and for a moment Tony thought she wouldn’t say anything. Natasha also had her share of nightmares and usually preferred just to hug Tony at night rather than actually talk about them. So it was a surprise when she held his chin and made him look directly into her eyes.
“You’re not there anymore,” she guided one of his hands to her heart. “You’re here, with me.”
His heart raced, “Yes, for now, but what if it ever happens again, or worse, what if something happens to you—”
“Shut up, Stark.” She said, using that same authoritative and firm tone she used when they were just teammates resenting each other, with an undeniable sexual tension hanging over them, but still with that underlying affection that Tony now wondered if it had always been there. “I’m here, you’re here, everything’s going to be okay.”
Everything’s going to be okay, not I’m going to be okay, or you’re going to be okay. Because they both knew Natasha couldn’t promise that, not after all the things they’d both done and all the things they hadn’t done. But somehow, that was enough to calm Tony’s frantic mind, maybe not forever, but for today, and since they’d decided they’d make it work one day at a time, it was enough.
The next morning, when Tony woke up with Natasha wrapped around him and the California sun streaming through the windows, he looked at Natasha's face, at her fiery red curls that spread across the bed, and decided that he would no longer fear the horrors he saw every night, because when the sun rises, ah, when the sun rises...Natasha is there with him.