FIC: the weight of the gun in my hand, darling... (MCU, Bruce/Natasha, NC-17)
the weight of the gun in my hand, darling, does not compare to the weight of you in my heart (MCU, bruce/natasha, nc-17)
Written for escritoireazul's prompt first snow of the year and inspired by this post on tumblr (link contains spoilers for both Civil War and this story). One small spoiler for Civil War at the end.
On thawing, and getting lost, and that Mona Lisa smile.
It is the first snow of the year, but Natasha has been waiting for it. She could feel it coming for days, the sky grey and open, the atmosphere taut. She is perched on a rooftop when the first snowflakes fall to melt in her red hair, looking at the world through the sights of a rifle. The metal of the gun is cold against her cheek, and she takes the kickback to her jaw as she squeezes the trigger. The shot is silent, but she can hear people screaming below as she turns and runs.
***
Some things she doesn’t do anymore. But most things she just does under different circumstances. She’s idealistic, she supposes. Just like all of them.
***
Steve is pep talking in the next room. His voice is strong and clear-he is confident. He doesn’t question the mission, because for him, the mission is always freedom. Natasha sees things differently. She spreads the map across the table, her eye caught, for a moment, on the abstract shape of Sokovia. She had looked down at the crater from the aircraft carrier, and thought of how impossible that was, to just erase something from the map. To have something just be nowhere.
It’s an easier concept to come to terms with now. She crosses the city they’re leaving off the map; no Bruce there.
She looks for him. She is so used to being a shadow on the radar that it surprises her when he finds her first.
***
They are in Nigeria, in a city where there are more handguns than actual residents. They have been there thirty six hours, and are preparing to leave. It seems like they are always preparing to leave. The sun and moon share the sky, and Natasha waits on the balcony of her room, eating fried plantains and sipping hibiscus tea. There is a knock on the door; the porter brings her an envelope, which was delivered for her at the front desk. She frowns, walking back to her seat on the balcony, sliding the envelope open with her index finger.
Inside, she finds a single white card with black lettering in angled pen strokes too light to leave impressions on the paper. Coordinates.
***
She has never been to the South Pacific before. She steps off the boat, and is offered a fragrant tiare, a Polynesian flower with curved petals. The woman before her tucks it behind her right ear, and Natasha does likewise.
The sand is white, the water blue and clear. The streets lining the beach smell sweet with hibiscus and gardenia. Vendors offer fruit for coins.
Not a bad place to get lost, Natasha thinks.
A man in an apron slices a yellow-orange fruit in such a way that the pieces look like stars. Natasha buys a little star, takes a bite. The skin is tough, but the flesh so sweet. She asks the man where the doctor is, and he points.
Natasha walks to the end of the boardwalk, to a whitewashed building behind a vendor selling whole coconuts that he cleaves with an enormous knife, spilling the sweet milk and baring the white flesh.
Bruce has his back to her. He is packaging powdered medicines, carefully measuring spoonfuls into little envelopes. Natasha walks behind him. She waits until his hands are empty, and then places hers on his shoulder. Instead of tensing, the muscles below her palm relax. He turns, stands.
“Natasha.”
He extends his arms, hands curved, like he is imagining the feel of her in his arms. Natasha can feel herself flush.
“I got your invitation,” she says, trying for nonchalant and missing.
Bruce’s eyes are on the tiare. “Do you know what that is?”
Natasha reaches up, runs her fingertips over the creamy texture of the flower’s petals. “It’s just a flower,” she says.
He shakes his head. He’s looking at her now, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “The local women,” he says, “wear that to show whether they’re available. Behind the right ear if you’re single, behind the left if you’re taken.”
He looks at her silently for a long moment, then plucks the flower from her hair. He places it behind her left ear, his fingers lingering in her hair, over the curve of her neck.
He takes her in his arms, finally, and she feels her spine go liquid with his hands on her. She holds him against her as they kiss. Bruce’s hands are on her hips, lifting her up, holding her like she weighs nothing, with the same ease as the Other Guy. Behind a curtain, there are beds for patients, and Bruce lowers her gently to one, and she pulls him down over her. She pulls at him, the tenuous threads holding the buttons to his shirtfront snapping, raveling. He kisses her face, her neck, her breast; his hands are up under her skirt. Bruce’s fingers against her sex are gentle; Natasha grips at Bruce’s shoulders and thrusts up against his hand, everything in her hungry. He takes the hint; he rips her underwear, enters her with the zipper of his pants scratching her thighs. It has been so long; there has been so much tension in the waiting and the wanting, and it’s not only that Natasha wants, that she craves, but she is so fucking relieved that there are tears running down her cheeks as he moves inside her. Bruce misunderstands; he brushes her hair away from her face, slows, whispers to her. She kisses him hard, drawing the taste of copper into her mouth, and she pulls his hips, thrusting against him, and he finds a strong tempo. It is everything they both need.
***
Somehow, the flower makes it through intact. Bruce is running the silky soft petals over Natasha’s bare skin, touching her without touching her, and it is making it difficult for her to speak.
“So,” she gasps, “what now?”
“I have some ideas,” he says.
He draws the flower across the inside of her thigh, and she shudders.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says shakily.
He frowns. “Natasha, I-I can’t-”
“I’m not saying come back, be an Avenger,” she says. “I meant...what happens now, for us?”
Bruce smiles. He tickles her with the flower until she whimpers, then lets it fall to the sheets, replacing it with his steady hand parting her lips, rubbing firmly over her clit.
“Well,” he says as Natasha’s eyes roll back, “I guess we’ll just have to keep meeting secretly like this, until one of us is ready to change.”
Natasha gulps for air. “That-that sounds like a great idea,” she says, and raises her face to be kissed.
***
“It’d be great if we had a Hulk right about now,” Tony says, and Natasha smiles, and for a moment, doesn’t speak. She has kept many secrets over the years, but this one-this is the first one she’s keeping entirely for herself.