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“Hey, Peter. What are you doing up?”
Peter turned to find Natasha leaning in the doorway, dressed in her gym sweats.
It was a valid question, Peter was sitting on the living room couch at three in the morning, staring out the window. He had been sitting there, unmoving and unspeaking for the past two hours.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He had been itching to go out patrolling but his suit was damaged the night before so Tony had implemented new protocols for Friday to keep him from sneaking out with the damaged suit, and he hadn’t figured out how to hack them yet.
Normally that would mean he would do homework, tinker in the lab, watch a movie, do anything to keep him entertained, but he was so thoroughly exhausted that he just ended up sitting and staring, not realizing that hours had passed until Natasha interrupted him.
“Any particular reason?”
Yes. Uncle Ben’s killer had been caught that night for an unrelated robbery. Peter had heard of an arrest matching the man’s description over his police scanner and confirmed the man’s identity with Friday. When she had pulled up the recent mugshot, he nearly threw up. It was him. He was finally in jail. But it wasn’t to pay for Ben’s murder. Peter wasn’t the one to catch him.
He should have brought him in. He should have done more.
He thought it would give him closure to have the man off the streets but his lack of control in the matter made his stomach churn and his lungs squeeze with the beginnings of a panic attack he had to snap himself out of before Friday notified Tony. He didn’t know how to talk about it, so he went and stared into the night.
With a shrug, he turned to look at Nat. “Just thinking. You?”
Natasha regarded him with curiosity. “Same, kid. Come with me.”
Before Peter could ask for any elaboration, Natasha turned and walked back down the hall towards the elevator, not waiting to see if Peter followed. He scrambled off the couch after her and into the elevator which they rode down in silence.
“Where are we…” Peter trailed off as he realized Natasha had led them to the training room.
“What are we doing here?” Peter breathed. He was pretty sure he wasn’t allowed to be in here as Peter Parker. Sure, Spider-Man trained in here, but he wasn’t Spider-Man right now. He was a scrawny teenage intern.
“Well, when I can’t sleep because I’m thinking too much, I like to work it off in here. And it’s better with a sparring partner. What do you say? Up for a couple rounds?”
Peter’s jaw dropped as Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, gesturing for him to join her in the sparring ring she had climbed into.
“Um, Ms. Romanoff, ma’am, I totally would but I really don’t think I could spar with you. I mean, you’re the Black Widow! I’m, well, me,” Peter squeaked, gesturing at himself. The pink hello kitty pajama pants and oversized shirt really helped with the ‘pathetic nerdy teen’ look.
Natasha smirked. “Oh really, Паучок? I think we’re both aware that you can spar me.”
Peter took a moment to run through the Russian he knew (a combination of a duolingo obsession and his super senses subconsciously overhearing his Russian neighbors in his sleep let him pick up the language fairly easily). Паучок. Baby Spider. Peter’s eyes widened as he took a small step back.
“Uh, I don’t know what you mean! I’m just Peter Parker! I can’t fight! Totally not!”
“Sure.” Natasha looked at him unimpressed, still holding the rope to the ring up for him to slip under and join her.
Peter sighed, realizing he had no way of getting out of this. She knew. “How…?”
“I’m a spy. You can’t hide that kind of thing for long. Especially you, Peter. You’re not the best liar.” Her smile was fond despite the jab.
“Does that mean Clint knows?” He muttered, reluctantly stepping into the ring.
She huffed a laugh. “No, of course not. He may be a spy but he is also really bad at reading people. Plus, no one is as good as me.”
Peter nodded. “I believe that.”
They exchanged smiles, Nat’s far more amused than Peter’s grim, nervous expression. They took up fighting stances and Peter let out a long sigh. This was going to hurt.
Sure enough, within seconds she had him pinned to the floor.
She held out a hand to help him up. “You can dodge well but you need to be better at actually defending. You can’t just jump around every blow. After you learn that, we can work on your offense.”
True to her word, Nat spent the following hours teaching Peter how to defend himself, and towards the end, how to improve his offense. Several painful hits and falls, and many bruises later, Peter finally took down Natasha.
With a whoop, he jumped off of her, pumping his fist. “Yes! I did it!” Sure, he only managed it once and he was sure she was taking it easy on him, but he did it nonetheless.
Nat gave him a proud smile as he helped her up. “Great job kid. We should train more often. You can actually put up a fight.”
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Peter panted, the exhaustion of the past few hours finally catching up to him. “I think it’s time for bed now, though.”
Natasha chuckled and ruffled his hair. “Yeah, I think so, kid.”
The two made their way to the elevator and slumped against the wall as it brought them up to their floor. Peter had to put all his effort into walking to his room instead of collapsing and crawling across the floor.
“Good night, Ms. Romanoff” he whispered as he limped towards his room.
“Good night, Peter. Get some sleep. You earned it.”
Peter smiled at that before pulling himself through the door of his room and collapsing on his bed. He fell into a deep sleep, his mind no longer plagued by worries about Ben’s murderer. It was the best sleep he had gotten in months.
He found himself wandering to Nat’s room anytime he couldn’t sleep to see if she had the same problem (she often did). Whenever she did, the two would wordlessly make their way to the training room and spar until one would claim ‘bed time’. They both got more sleep since the establishment of this comfortable routine than they had in years, becoming each other’s go-to person to work out issues unquestioned.
That’s how Natasha was the first of the Avengers to move up to a normal name basis with Peter — well, that and her threatening him when he called her “Ms. Romanoff” one too many times during an especially late sparring match — earning many shocked and outraged shouts the first time he called her “Nat” in front of them. Peter just smiled at Nat, who winked back when the others weren’t looking.