Tony rests his elbows on the workbench and appraises her thoughtfully. He followed the process of tracking her down and bringing her back in from a distance, helping mostly by providing tech and intel, and occasionally a shoulder to rant on when Clint was particularly frustrated with the situation. Not that Tony's much less frustrated. He's had to lie low in the tower for nearly two months now and he's starting to go a little stir-crazy. But she's back now and in theory - in theory - soon things can start getting back to normal.
Except...well, she's not her is she? He can't pin it down to anything specific, but there's undeniably something different; something in the way she carries herself, a tension that wasn't there before. It's a subtle thing, but it's enough to make it inescapably clear that she's not the same person. He scratches absently at his cheek, leaving a smear of slick black engine oil behind, and as her gaze flickers to his chest his hand unconsciously follows it. The warm, smooth casing of the arc reactor hums reassuringly under his fingertips. Would she know about the reactor? It's not exactly common knowledge, and he's not sure how much she's been told.
Her next comment dovetails in neatly enough with his own thoughts. "Whatever Clint told you, it's all lies," he responds automatically. His lips quirk in a smirk and he amends; "Unless he told you that you stabbed me. Because yeah, that happened."
Tony's right about the tension. Not all of it stems from the fact that the past self she's been thrown back into carried herself differently though. Sure, there's a difference to the body language of a girl who has come to expect nothing but violence from everyone in her life, from that of a woman who knows her place in the world. But, a lot of the tension singing through her muscles comes from the fact that she's in a strange place filled with strangers who all know her while she doesn't know anything about them. Or not enough, at any rate.
"He hasn't--" Natasha shakes her head. Clint hasn't told her much about any of the other Avengers. Hell, they're still on her. A decade and change is a lot of time to cover.
The little bit of information about their relationship sends her tension levels sky-rocketing though. She doesn't know how much more she can take of other people telling her who she is. She appreciates what Hawkeye -- fuck Clint -- is doing for her, but it's hard finding out about herself second-hand. Especially when she keeps doubting what she's told. It might still be a ploy, or him messing with her mind. And even if it isn't, she is still getting his side of things. Maybe she saw it differently. So, she isn't especially keen to add another voice that isn't hers to the re-telling of her history.
The worst bit is how curious it makes her. The little tidbit leaves her craving more. She wants to know the circumstances, the hows and whys and what-fors and everything. But the only way to find out is to ask, and her pride won't allow it.
"Yeah?" she asks with a crooked smile that holds no warmth. She folds her arms over her chest and leans a hip against the workbench, giving him a slow once-over. " Bet you deserved it."
He slides the goggles up and off, setting them down on the workbench next to the wishbone he'd been trimming before she came in, and runs a hand through his hair. This doesn't really achieve anything in the way of neatening it, but it does redistribute the grime and has it sticking up in new and interesting ways. His eyebrows go up at the aborted sentence. Huh. He'd assumed Clint would have filled her in. But then there's got to be a lot of ground to cover.
"Yep," he agrees without hesitation. He'd be the first to concede that he was being an asshole of truly epic proportions at that particular point in his life. He has absolutely no intention of apologizing for it, but he doesn't have any problem admitting it. Of course all that means nothing to her now; it's gone like everything else. In a strange way it's refreshing to have a blank slate. To be around her without that appallingly bad first impression coloring things.
For him, anyway. For her it's probably just one more thing to have to deal with; one more stranger who knows things about her that she doesn't. That has to suck. "Relax, I'm not holding out on you," he says candidly. "I don't know you all that well and I'm pretty sure you never liked me anyway." Not that he'd make any pretense at being able to read her in any way - people in general were very much not his thing, and she'd raised inscrutability to an art form - but he'd always received a distinct impression of being barely tolerated.
Natasha tracks Tony's every motion with her eyes. It's not obvious, but not as subtle as she'd like either. He's older than she (both compared to how she feels and her actual age), but surprisingly fit and more attractive dressed-up and greased down than in any of the slick publicity photos of him that she's seen. Her eyes keep coming back to that glow in the middle of his chest though. What is that even?
Tony's easy admission of having deserved the stabbing surprises a snorted laugh from her. It's momentary at best but it drives some of the shadows from her eyes.
It's a relief that he doesn't know her that well. No matter how well-intentioned Clint is, and no matter how much she likes him, being around him is exhausting sometimes. He knows the person she ought to be better than she does, and sometimes she catches him searching her for any sign that that person might still be in there, somewhere. He's her lifeline and when he isn't there she misses, but damn he makes her feel guilty sometimes. For not being right.
Of course, him telling her to relax has the exact opposite effect, winding the tension in her shoulders up a notch higher. She pretends that it doesn't though, walking leisurely around the workbench and trailing her fingers over the scattered bits of what she thinks might be an engine. Her eyes never leave him though.
"Don't feel bad. I usually don't. Like people, I mean," she offers with a smile that's slightly more solid than the last one, even though it's by no means real. Hawkeye's the one shining exception to that fact. "We could start over."
Once she's ended up within arm's reach of him (every damn inch of her screaming at her to back the hell up before he tries something), she offers him her hand. "Natalia. But, you can call me Natasha."
"I noticed," he says dryly. By no stretch of the imagination could any version of her he'd ever met be described as a people person. His gaze automatically tracks her hands, keeping an eye on what she's touching. Not that he thinks she's going to purposely interfere with anything. But those damn M4 washers have a habit of spontaneously vanishing and he'd rather not have to spend half an hour hunting around on the floor for that one missing one. Chaotic as the workshop might have looked, everything in it was exactly where it was supposed to be.
He eyes the extended hand warily for a second, eyes flickering up to her face and back again. Even now - especially now, in fact - Natasha exudes an air of don't touch. Contrary to popular opinion, he's not totally devoid of common sense, and he likes the number of fingers he has. But in the end he gives a mental shrug and just accepts it. "Tony," he responds, reaching out and taking her hand in one of his own scarred and callused ones. For a 'billionaire playboy' he really does have the hands of a mechanic. "Nice to meet you."
When he releases her hand it's immediately apparent that a significant amount of engine oil and miscellaneous grime has been transferred. "Shit, sorry," he says, casting around for a relatively clean rag.
Natasha never learned to play nice with others as a child. In fact, she was encouraged not to if it wasn't for a mission. It's not something she has dwelled on. But she has noticed that her social skills aren't really up to par. It's never mattered much before, because friends are a liability, never an asset. And what's more, they steal away the loyalty that rightly belongs to the Red Room. No. Making friends was not encouraged. In fact, her strange sort of friendship with Ha-- Clint was always a secret sort of a rebellion. This one thing they didn't give her, and as long as she kept it to herself they couldn't take it away either.
But, apparently, someway down the line she's been roped into working in a team. Though by the tone of Tony's voice she hasn't gotten any better at making friends. Which is... a little disappointing, maybe. But also a relief. There are so many ways in which she has reportedly changed already, it's a comfort to find that parts of her have stayed the same. So she may've gotten married, but, hey, at least she still can't make friends.
Natasha's expression stiffens and closes off a fraction as Tony hesitates to take her offered hand. Do not touch only applies when she hasn't initiated the contact. Just as she's decided to withdraw the offer, he takes her hand in his and she's honest-to-god surprised by the callouses on his hands. They're not what she expected from the man in the business suit grinning on cover after cover of flashy magazines. Of course, this whole workshop is far from what she expected to, so clearly there's more to him than the media coverage. "You too," she mumbles vaguely.
She frowns down at the dark streaks smeared across her palm and it sparks a memory. A flash of Clint, grinning, hands and face streaked with oil. It's there and gone again in the space of a breath, but she knows it's a new one. One of the ones she's lost and triumph flares up through her chest. It's not the first flash she's gotten, but she treasures each new one all the same. They're proof that maybe one day, she'll regain what she's lost.
"No, that's okay," she says with a dismissive wave of her clean hand, and a brief flicker of a genuine smile. She wipes her hand against the side of her jeans. After crawling through the air ducts, they'll need a washing anyway. "So, Tony, what's with the chest?" she asks, gesturing in the general direction of the blue glow. "Fashion statement?"
He goes abruptly still, and this time the hand that goes straight to the reactor is anything but unconscious. "Piercing," he says flippantly, but his eyes are intent on her face and his expression is shuttered. Intellectually, he knew that of course this had been wiped too. But it's still strange and jarring to have her casually questioning something she'd known since before he even met her. This really isn't their Natasha.
It's a sudden impulse and he chooses not to question it. Perhaps it's a gesture, extending a token sign of trust in return even if it can't come close to how much she's being forced to trust them. Perhaps it's a selfish urge to make a better first impression on this Natasha than he had on the one he'd known. Perhaps it's something else entirely. Whichever, it doesn't make a difference. He's never been inclined to examine his own motives too closely. Introspection is for people who don't have better things to be doing.
Whatever the subconscious reasoning behind it, in the end the result is the same; he pulls his shirt up to bare his torso. He's wearing a purposely casual expression, as though it's nothing, but the tension in his muscles reveals his unease. His entire abdomen is a ragged mess, scars all shades of livid purple and dead white; a solid mass on his chest but scattered widely enough that the lower ones disappear below the waistband of his jeans. And nestled in the center of it all is the cool blue glow of the arc reactor.
He gives a wry little half-smirk. "Some fashion statement, huh?"
Natasha can tell that she's taken a wrong turn somewhere. Stepped on a nerve without realising and now he's shutting down on her. Shutting her out. Which is-- unfortunate, seeing as how he's the second person here she's even spoken to at all. She takes some comfort in the fact that it's how she finds out her third fact about Tony Stark though. One, he isn't anything like the papers make him out to be. Two, he has calloused hands (which earns him a hell of a lot of respect in her book). Three, he uses humor as a defence. Possibly as a weapon as well, but that's pure conjecture on her part.
Next, she expects that he'll excuse himself. He has a lot of work to do, she isn't meant to be here, and he can gesture towards the piles of metal littering the workshop and-- He doesn't. Instead, he's pulling up his shirt, and she can see the tension in his shoulders, but he's still doing it. Which is somehow touching.
She sucks in a sharp breath when he reveals the mess that someone's made of his chest and abdomen. She's seen worse scars than his. But she's never seen anything like the piece of tech lodged in his chest. "Impressive," she says, tilting her head to the side to take in the scattered pattern of scars littering his skin. It has to be shrapnel of some sort. No one'd take a knife to another person in that haphazard manner. It's just too random and jagged to be made by a blade.
Unthinkingly, she moves closer, as if drawn in by the soothing blue glow. It's not her being careless. She's already assessed Tony's threat level, and it's low. All the footage she's seen of him, says the same thing. He fights in a suit of armor with missiles and blasters. He has none of those things now. He's probably strong, but fighting in a suit, he won't be as agile as she is. She could take him. Plus, he doesn't move like a killer, not like Clint does. And if she's wrong about that, well-- she always has her knife.
Slowly, because she's still aware of the tension singing through him, she reaches out to touch light fingers against his lower abdomen. Her eyes flick up to his the moment before her fingertips brush along the first scar just below his navel, not asking approval as much as making sure he's okay with the touch. She can feel his muscles tensing underneath her fingers, so she moves slow, gently tracing the lower down scars.
This close, she has to tilt her head back a little to meet his eyes after a few moments of quietly watching and touching his scars. "So, what is that thing?" she asks softly
If he'd given it any thought, he would have found the idea of her assessing him as a threat on any level utterly ridiculous. Not that he's completely defenseless or anything. He has pretty good reflexes, and an absurdly high pain threshold; and maybe he's never going to be built like Thor or Steve, or even Clint, but the armor weighs more than he does and steering it in flight is a whole-body process. But he's not a fighter by nature. He'd rather talk his way out of a problem; violence was always going to be a distant second choice.
And in any case, he's seen Natasha fight. She moves like a goddamn snake. He's pretty sure she could take each and every one of them out.
He's trying not to tense, to keep his body language relaxed, but it's not easy. It's all he can do not to shy away when she reaches out toward him. A faint shiver runs through him at her touch, muscles jumping and twitching involuntarily under her fingertips. There's hasn't been a whole lot of human contact in his life ever since Afghanistan, for a whole number of reasons. This is...weirdly intimate, and the strange sort of moment they seem to be having here has the automatic smart-ass remark about feeling him up dying on his lips.
"Arc reactor," he explains succinctly, "Levitating dipole magnetic containment fusion reactor, if you wanna get technical, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it." He glances down at it, running a finger along the warm, smooth metal of the casing; it hums reassuringly under his touch. Tension is still evident in every movement he makes. He hates that he feels so vulnerable like this.
It's odd, but seeing Tony this tense is actually making Natasha relax. There's a level of tension in her that never truly goes away, a baseline thrumming through her body at all times. But the extra tension that's been making her shoulders and jaw ache ever since she crept into the workshop? That is slowly seeping out of her, making her features soften slightly. It doesn't take a genius to tell that he isn't comfortable with the situation, but despite that fact, he's staying put and trusting her. And it's oddly comforting not being the only one fighting to trust people here.
Her face goes blank at the words leaving Tony's mouth. Like most of them, she understands individually (except for dipole, what the hell is that?) but string them all together and she doesn't have the first clue what they mean. "Right," she says slowly, dragging the word out. "But what's it doing in your chest?"
Her eyes track Tony's finger as it traces a path along the rim of the... arc reactor. Her own fingers are itching to touch it as well, but she won't do it without his permission, or without knowing that it's safe, for that matter. She's never seen anything like it before. Who knows what it's capable of? Or how much it might hurt? In this case, caution is her friend. So, instead she presses her hand flush against Tony's belly, just by his belly button, thumb rubbing absently along a short, white scar. A solid touch is easier to get used to than the featherlight ones she's been giving him so far, and maybe that'll ease some of the tension out of him.
He catches the blank expression. Oh yeah. He forgets about that sometimes. He takes a few moments to mentally translate what he'd said from Engineer back to English. "Basically it's a power generator," he clarifies. A fleeting grin passes over his face. "Yeah, I know it's on the small side. Size isn't everything. This baby could power a city." Of course after that, her next question is an obvious one. He did more or less see it coming even if he had been holding out some foolishly optimistic hope that she might not ask.
Now normally this isn't the sort of thing he'd just tell someone. Especially not someone who is effectively a complete stranger. But for some reason it's easier to get the words out this time; maybe it's because it's something he feels like she's supposed to know. And maybe the truth is a little thing when he's already letting her this close, leaving himself this exposed. There's something strangely reassuring about the firm, warm touch against his stomach.
In the end he just shrugs and gives the bare bones of the explanation. "It's powering a magnet," he says, tapping his chest. "I've got shrapnel headed into my heart. Inoperable. This keeps it where it can't do any more damage."
Why anyone would need something generating enough power to run a city lodged in their chest is pretty beyond Natasha. Her mind's already spinning to sort out the why (coming up with outlandish ideas like Tony being a cyborg of some kind or him… No, actually. Just that. 'Cause what else could it be?) when Tony tells her.
Natasha blinks. She's pretty sure that Tony just told her how she can kill him, in the most painfully slow way imaginable. The arc reactor looks pretty sturdy, but give her the right tools and she's pretty sure she could break it. Hell, there's probably something in this very workshop that could do irreparable harm to the thing keeping his heart from being torn apart by shrapnel.
"Wow. That's-- That really sucks." She can't help but staring at him, wide-eyed and questioning, her hand stilling completely against his skin. How is he trusting her this much? He said it himself, he barely knows the woman she's supposedly grown into, and yet here he is, giving up all of his secrets. There's a sudden, intense pressure over Natasha's chest and for a moment she forgets how to breathe. This level of trust -- especially when given from someone who is clearly struggling with it -- is immense. The only other person who has trusted her like this is Clint when he dug her dart into his skin to prove himself to her. One act of trusts deserves another, and Natasha owes Tony now.
Before she can stop to think about it (and inevitably talk herself out of it) she grabs the hem of her tanktop and pulls it up to reveal her smooth stomach, mirroring him except she stops just short of flashing him her bra. Tony's not the only one with scars. Sure, hers aren't anywhere near as impressive as his, but she still has quite the collection. Of course, most of them are scattered across her body. Like the smooth, round one just above her clavicle and close to her throat, left by one of Clint's arrows. Or the puckered one at the back of her knee from a throwing star. Or the burn mark on her right wrist that's old to this body, but new to her. But, there are a couple on her abdomen. A few faded, thin, white lines from the knife of someone she'd thought she could trust, and the jagged pink one across her abdomen that she doesn't know where she got.
Swallowing just a touch too tightly, and most of the tension from earlier snapping back into place, she snags one of his hands with her free one, and achingly slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away, she presses it against her bare stomach so that his fingers brush against the most prominent of her scars. A dozen secrets crowd at the back of her tongue. But to her frustration she can't bring herself to voice a single one, because she doesn't trust him. She wants to, but she can't. Some of her frustration flickers across her face before she shuts it down and hides it with a near apologetic smile. It's going to have to be enough for now that she's letting him touch her at all. "Can I touch it, or would that zap me to death?" Her fingers twitch lightly against his skin, but her hand stays where it is.
"Shit happens, huh?" he says with a half shrug and a wry little smirk. It's the closest thing to a sensible response he can come up with. He feels like he should probably explain why the hell he's telling her this, but to be frank he's not entirely sure himself. He can't come up with any response that doesn't sound totally nonsensical.
His eyebrows go up at- well that was more skin than he was expecting to be seeing today. Or possibly ever. What the hell? But then his eyes catch the scars and all of a sudden everything makes sense again. Tit for tat. Fair enough. Some of them he's seen before, or at least knows of; the round one just below her throat, shown over a bottle of vodka on a night of strangely honest conversation, or the relatively new one on her stomach that has to be from that thing with the glass shards that Clint was bitching about. Others are entirely mysterious. He can't help but wonder about the stories behind them.
He tenses again as she catches his hand in hers, but he doesn't pull away. He's pretty sure he knows where she's going with this. Her skin is warm and smooth under his touch, textured by scars here and there. His fingertips leave faint trails of slick black oil behind. The damn stuff gets everywhere. He's still curious about the stories behind the scars; but contrary to popular opinion he's not a complete idiot, and asking when it's a coin toss whether or not she knows the story seems like a massive dick move.
His eyes flick up to hers at the question. "Uh...no, but no," he replies, which...made more sense in his head than it did aloud. After a moment he translates; "That is...no, no zapping, but still not a great idea." There are very, very few people he trusts enough for them to be able to touch the reactor without inducing a freakout of epic proportions. Pepper's one; Rhodey's another. Bruce or Clint could probably get away with it in theory, though it hasn't been tested in practice yet. But Natasha was never one. Not even the Natasha he knew and fought beside, before this whole mess.
On some level he does feel kind of bad about that. It's not that he mistrusts her entirely: he trusts her to have his back in the field, to get the job done. But with this? No. On an intellectual he was pretty sure she didn't intend to kill him, but apparently his subconscious would not be moved on this one. Risking it regardless seems to involve an unacceptably high chance of ending in a humiliating panic attack.
"It sure does." Natasha couldn't agree more. Hell, she apparently had a nice life carved out for herself when her brain short-circuited and tossed her ten years back in time, mentally. It's not the same as the shrapnel trying to inch its way to his heart, but it still fucking sucks. Just in a different way.
Considering the tension in Tony's wrist as she guides his hand to her skin, she's actually kind of surprised that he doesn't pull away. But with the way his eyes lock on her skin, she guesses that he might be as fascinated by her scars as she is by his.
The slight slickness of Tony's fingertips against her skin sparks another memory. This one longer but more disjointed than the last. The hum of an engine. The dark battle suit she's been assured is hers open as far down as it goes, her skin flashing pale and streaked with grease through the opening. Calloused fingers running down her skin-- This is apparently not the first time a man with calloused hands has left dark smudges on her skin. It sure as hell wasn't Tony though. His touch against her skin is warm and solid, and the light brush of his fingers tickles enough to send a slight shiver up her spine, but it doesn't send sparks flying across her skin. Based on the last precious flash of a memory, she's just going to go ahead and assume that it's Clint. (The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Like the fact that they're married and that his brief touches always leave her craving more.)
After Tony has stumbled through the words that basically boil down to no, don't, Natasha just nods. "Okay." Whether it's because touching it would hurt her or because he simply wants her hands nowhere near the device keeping him alive, doesn't really matter. The end result is the same; she's not going to touch it. She has enough trust issues of her own to respect a clearly set boundary.
Standing there, hands pressed against each others' scars (her fingers still circled around his wrist, thumb resting at the jut of bone at the back of his wrist), is oddly intimate. Which is-- scary, really. Natasha can count on the finges of one hand (and still have fingers left over) the number of times that she's been truly intimate with someone. And this? It's making the list. Her jaw tightens imperceptibly, and something dark flits through her eyes.
"How did it happen?" In casting a glance down at his abdomen for emphasis, Natasha gets caught by the road map of scars yet again and achingly slowly she shifts her hand, fingers tracing the few scattered scars lower down on his skin, careful to not touch him anywhere near the sternum.
He gets that. Maybe not the specifics, but in general. It's a fundamental law of the universe or something: every time life levels off for any member of the Avengers, it needs to find even crazier new ways to fuck with them. Whenever he thinks nothing that happens can possibly surprise him any more, events just have to go and prove him wrong.
Her simple acceptance of his refusal send a wave of relief washing through him. Maybe they're having a moment of sorts here, but he's glad to have avoided having to explain just why he can't deal with anyone touching the reactor.
Gaze still tracing the lines of old scars on her skin, he misses the tightening in her expression. There's something strange and hypnotic about this quiet little moment; one of her hands warm just below his ribs, the other wrapped around his wrist, his own fingers spread out on her stomach as he follows the line of one particularly prominent scar with the pad of this thumb.
He doesn't look up at the question. Somehow it's easier to find an answer when he doesn't have to meet her eyes. "I caught one of my own bombs in the face," he replies. "Woke up in a cave with a car battery hooked up to my chest." He's still not sure how much she knows. But she said he wasn't what she expected, and if Clint hadn't said anything then any expectations must have come from the media. And Afghanistan had been plastered all over every news outlet for the duration: the attack on the convoy, the three months where he was 'missing, presumed dead', his miraculous escape and return to the land of the living.
Of course all but the bare bones were half speculation and half shameless gossip. For all that Natasha had shown up in his life apparently well acquainted with his history, there are some things he is absolutely certain she never knew, because no-one knows them. He's never told anyone the whole truth about Afghanistan. Rhodey knows more than anyone else - if only because he was the first friendly face around when Tony was delirious with heat and thirst and pain, half-crazed by the sudden return to reality and desperate for someone he could lean on - but even he doesn't know the full story. Tony's never told anyone the full story, and those who saw it first-hand are long dead.
The steady brush of Tony's thumb along one of her scars drives some of the tension out of Natasha's shoulders. Though she couldn't tell you why if questioned. It just settles her, the mutual tracing of scars. She can tell without even looking which scar he's following because of the curious way sensation fades in and out. This one cut deep, and it severed some of the nerve-endings, leaving segments of the scar tissue numb and dead. It's not an entirely pleasant feeling, but it's not unpleasant.
As he tells her about the shrapnel, Natasha's eyes flick up to his face and her gaze stays on his ducked head and lowered eyes as he talks. Something in the way he won't look at her, tells her that this isn't an easy subject. And yet he tells her. Again, with this strange trust in her. It's disconcerting and touching and she doesn't know how to begin to process it. Not that she hasn't been able to make men trust her with things they oughtn't have before. Of course she has. She'd be a pretty crap spy if she hadn't. But, generally, she'd been making an effort then, being charming or flirtatious or simply sympathetic. She's pretty sure she's been none of those things since entering the workshop. She's too off-balance, too raw and lost now to even think about making a play at being a person deserving of trust. But here he is, just giving it to her unbidden.
If her hands hadn't been occupied -- one with mirroring his hand against his stomach, the other with making sure that his hand doesn't stray somewhere she doesn't want it -- she might've brushed her fingers across his cheek rather pointedly. His face isn't the piece of him that's littered with scars after all. So, she doubts that the bomb blew up literally in his face.
Natasha's done research on everyone of the Avengers (including herself, though details on her and Clint are pretty scarce), and Tony's life has been the easiest by far to find information on. But, it's not like she's sat down and made an exhaustive timeline of his entire life (yet). More like, she's read countless of articles on him (often out of order) to try to puzzle together a sense of who he is. She knows about Afghanistan. It's pretty hard to miss considering the intense news coverage of the incident. But, she only knows the bare bones of the story. The unit he was travelling with for a PR-stunt was ambushed and he was captured. After a lengthy captivity he was rescued through the tireless efforts of the U.S. military and brought home. Upon his return, he dismantled the weapons manufacturing branch of Stark Industries (aka most of the company) and after that the stories delve into speculation.
Getting caught in the blast of one of his own bombs sounds like a pretty good reason to stop making bombs, but Natasha doesn't like to assume things. For all she knows the bomb may've been on a separate occasion entirely.
"That must've been fun," she says drily. It sounds like the beginning of a nightmare. She kindly doesn't point out the irony in the fact that it's a piece of one of his own bombs trying to crawl its way into his heart. He's a smart guy, she's sure he's figured that one out all on his own. "Why a car battery?" Her fingers have absently been trailing the faint scars low on his belly, and now they bump against the worn denim of his jeans, and she stops, vaguely aware that she should probably move her hand, but too caught up in the story to act on the distant impulse.
Except...well, she's not her is she? He can't pin it down to anything specific, but there's undeniably something different; something in the way she carries herself, a tension that wasn't there before. It's a subtle thing, but it's enough to make it inescapably clear that she's not the same person. He scratches absently at his cheek, leaving a smear of slick black engine oil behind, and as her gaze flickers to his chest his hand unconsciously follows it. The warm, smooth casing of the arc reactor hums reassuringly under his fingertips. Would she know about the reactor? It's not exactly common knowledge, and he's not sure how much she's been told.
Her next comment dovetails in neatly enough with his own thoughts. "Whatever Clint told you, it's all lies," he responds automatically. His lips quirk in a smirk and he amends; "Unless he told you that you stabbed me. Because yeah, that happened."
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"He hasn't--" Natasha shakes her head. Clint hasn't told her much about any of the other Avengers. Hell, they're still on her. A decade and change is a lot of time to cover.
The little bit of information about their relationship sends her tension levels sky-rocketing though. She doesn't know how much more she can take of other people telling her who she is. She appreciates what Hawkeye -- fuck Clint -- is doing for her, but it's hard finding out about herself second-hand. Especially when she keeps doubting what she's told. It might still be a ploy, or him messing with her mind. And even if it isn't, she is still getting his side of things. Maybe she saw it differently. So, she isn't especially keen to add another voice that isn't hers to the re-telling of her history.
The worst bit is how curious it makes her. The little tidbit leaves her craving more. She wants to know the circumstances, the hows and whys and what-fors and everything. But the only way to find out is to ask, and her pride won't allow it.
"Yeah?" she asks with a crooked smile that holds no warmth. She folds her arms over her chest and leans a hip against the workbench, giving him a slow once-over. " Bet you deserved it."
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"Yep," he agrees without hesitation. He'd be the first to concede that he was being an asshole of truly epic proportions at that particular point in his life. He has absolutely no intention of apologizing for it, but he doesn't have any problem admitting it. Of course all that means nothing to her now; it's gone like everything else. In a strange way it's refreshing to have a blank slate. To be around her without that appallingly bad first impression coloring things.
For him, anyway. For her it's probably just one more thing to have to deal with; one more stranger who knows things about her that she doesn't. That has to suck. "Relax, I'm not holding out on you," he says candidly. "I don't know you all that well and I'm pretty sure you never liked me anyway." Not that he'd make any pretense at being able to read her in any way - people in general were very much not his thing, and she'd raised inscrutability to an art form - but he'd always received a distinct impression of being barely tolerated.
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Tony's easy admission of having deserved the stabbing surprises a snorted laugh from her. It's momentary at best but it drives some of the shadows from her eyes.
It's a relief that he doesn't know her that well. No matter how well-intentioned Clint is, and no matter how much she likes him, being around him is exhausting sometimes. He knows the person she ought to be better than she does, and sometimes she catches him searching her for any sign that that person might still be in there, somewhere. He's her lifeline and when he isn't there she misses, but damn he makes her feel guilty sometimes. For not being right.
Of course, him telling her to relax has the exact opposite effect, winding the tension in her shoulders up a notch higher. She pretends that it doesn't though, walking leisurely around the workbench and trailing her fingers over the scattered bits of what she thinks might be an engine. Her eyes never leave him though.
"Don't feel bad. I usually don't. Like people, I mean," she offers with a smile that's slightly more solid than the last one, even though it's by no means real. Hawkeye's the one shining exception to that fact. "We could start over."
Once she's ended up within arm's reach of him (every damn inch of her screaming at her to back the hell up before he tries something), she offers him her hand. "Natalia. But, you can call me Natasha."
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He eyes the extended hand warily for a second, eyes flickering up to her face and back again. Even now - especially now, in fact - Natasha exudes an air of don't touch. Contrary to popular opinion, he's not totally devoid of common sense, and he likes the number of fingers he has. But in the end he gives a mental shrug and just accepts it. "Tony," he responds, reaching out and taking her hand in one of his own scarred and callused ones. For a 'billionaire playboy' he really does have the hands of a mechanic. "Nice to meet you."
When he releases her hand it's immediately apparent that a significant amount of engine oil and miscellaneous grime has been transferred. "Shit, sorry," he says, casting around for a relatively clean rag.
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But, apparently, someway down the line she's been roped into working in a team. Though by the tone of Tony's voice she hasn't gotten any better at making friends. Which is... a little disappointing, maybe. But also a relief. There are so many ways in which she has reportedly changed already, it's a comfort to find that parts of her have stayed the same. So she may've gotten married, but, hey, at least she still can't make friends.
Natasha's expression stiffens and closes off a fraction as Tony hesitates to take her offered hand. Do not touch only applies when she hasn't initiated the contact. Just as she's decided to withdraw the offer, he takes her hand in his and she's honest-to-god surprised by the callouses on his hands. They're not what she expected from the man in the business suit grinning on cover after cover of flashy magazines. Of course, this whole workshop is far from what she expected to, so clearly there's more to him than the media coverage. "You too," she mumbles vaguely.
She frowns down at the dark streaks smeared across her palm and it sparks a memory. A flash of Clint, grinning, hands and face streaked with oil. It's there and gone again in the space of a breath, but she knows it's a new one. One of the ones she's lost and triumph flares up through her chest. It's not the first flash she's gotten, but she treasures each new one all the same. They're proof that maybe one day, she'll regain what she's lost.
"No, that's okay," she says with a dismissive wave of her clean hand, and a brief flicker of a genuine smile. She wipes her hand against the side of her jeans. After crawling through the air ducts, they'll need a washing anyway. "So, Tony, what's with the chest?" she asks, gesturing in the general direction of the blue glow. "Fashion statement?"
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It's a sudden impulse and he chooses not to question it. Perhaps it's a gesture, extending a token sign of trust in return even if it can't come close to how much she's being forced to trust them. Perhaps it's a selfish urge to make a better first impression on this Natasha than he had on the one he'd known. Perhaps it's something else entirely. Whichever, it doesn't make a difference. He's never been inclined to examine his own motives too closely. Introspection is for people who don't have better things to be doing.
Whatever the subconscious reasoning behind it, in the end the result is the same; he pulls his shirt up to bare his torso. He's wearing a purposely casual expression, as though it's nothing, but the tension in his muscles reveals his unease. His entire abdomen is a ragged mess, scars all shades of livid purple and dead white; a solid mass on his chest but scattered widely enough that the lower ones disappear below the waistband of his jeans. And nestled in the center of it all is the cool blue glow of the arc reactor.
He gives a wry little half-smirk. "Some fashion statement, huh?"
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Next, she expects that he'll excuse himself. He has a lot of work to do, she isn't meant to be here, and he can gesture towards the piles of metal littering the workshop and-- He doesn't. Instead, he's pulling up his shirt, and she can see the tension in his shoulders, but he's still doing it. Which is somehow touching.
She sucks in a sharp breath when he reveals the mess that someone's made of his chest and abdomen. She's seen worse scars than his. But she's never seen anything like the piece of tech lodged in his chest. "Impressive," she says, tilting her head to the side to take in the scattered pattern of scars littering his skin. It has to be shrapnel of some sort. No one'd take a knife to another person in that haphazard manner. It's just too random and jagged to be made by a blade.
Unthinkingly, she moves closer, as if drawn in by the soothing blue glow. It's not her being careless. She's already assessed Tony's threat level, and it's low. All the footage she's seen of him, says the same thing. He fights in a suit of armor with missiles and blasters. He has none of those things now. He's probably strong, but fighting in a suit, he won't be as agile as she is. She could take him. Plus, he doesn't move like a killer, not like Clint does. And if she's wrong about that, well-- she always has her knife.
Slowly, because she's still aware of the tension singing through him, she reaches out to touch light fingers against his lower abdomen. Her eyes flick up to his the moment before her fingertips brush along the first scar just below his navel, not asking approval as much as making sure he's okay with the touch. She can feel his muscles tensing underneath her fingers, so she moves slow, gently tracing the lower down scars.
This close, she has to tilt her head back a little to meet his eyes after a few moments of quietly watching and touching his scars. "So, what is that thing?" she asks softly
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And in any case, he's seen Natasha fight. She moves like a goddamn snake. He's pretty sure she could take each and every one of them out.
He's trying not to tense, to keep his body language relaxed, but it's not easy. It's all he can do not to shy away when she reaches out toward him. A faint shiver runs through him at her touch, muscles jumping and twitching involuntarily under her fingertips. There's hasn't been a whole lot of human contact in his life ever since Afghanistan, for a whole number of reasons. This is...weirdly intimate, and the strange sort of moment they seem to be having here has the automatic smart-ass remark about feeling him up dying on his lips.
"Arc reactor," he explains succinctly, "Levitating dipole magnetic containment fusion reactor, if you wanna get technical, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it." He glances down at it, running a finger along the warm, smooth metal of the casing; it hums reassuringly under his touch. Tension is still evident in every movement he makes. He hates that he feels so vulnerable like this.
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Her face goes blank at the words leaving Tony's mouth. Like most of them, she understands individually (except for dipole, what the hell is that?) but string them all together and she doesn't have the first clue what they mean. "Right," she says slowly, dragging the word out. "But what's it doing in your chest?"
Her eyes track Tony's finger as it traces a path along the rim of the... arc reactor. Her own fingers are itching to touch it as well, but she won't do it without his permission, or without knowing that it's safe, for that matter. She's never seen anything like it before. Who knows what it's capable of? Or how much it might hurt? In this case, caution is her friend. So, instead she presses her hand flush against Tony's belly, just by his belly button, thumb rubbing absently along a short, white scar. A solid touch is easier to get used to than the featherlight ones she's been giving him so far, and maybe that'll ease some of the tension out of him.
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Now normally this isn't the sort of thing he'd just tell someone. Especially not someone who is effectively a complete stranger. But for some reason it's easier to get the words out this time; maybe it's because it's something he feels like she's supposed to know. And maybe the truth is a little thing when he's already letting her this close, leaving himself this exposed. There's something strangely reassuring about the firm, warm touch against his stomach.
In the end he just shrugs and gives the bare bones of the explanation. "It's powering a magnet," he says, tapping his chest. "I've got shrapnel headed into my heart. Inoperable. This keeps it where it can't do any more damage."
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Natasha blinks. She's pretty sure that Tony just told her how she can kill him, in the most painfully slow way imaginable. The arc reactor looks pretty sturdy, but give her the right tools and she's pretty sure she could break it. Hell, there's probably something in this very workshop that could do irreparable harm to the thing keeping his heart from being torn apart by shrapnel.
"Wow. That's-- That really sucks." She can't help but staring at him, wide-eyed and questioning, her hand stilling completely against his skin. How is he trusting her this much? He said it himself, he barely knows the woman she's supposedly grown into, and yet here he is, giving up all of his secrets. There's a sudden, intense pressure over Natasha's chest and for a moment she forgets how to breathe. This level of trust -- especially when given from someone who is clearly struggling with it -- is immense. The only other person who has trusted her like this is Clint when he dug her dart into his skin to prove himself to her. One act of trusts deserves another, and Natasha owes Tony now.
Before she can stop to think about it (and inevitably talk herself out of it) she grabs the hem of her tanktop and pulls it up to reveal her smooth stomach, mirroring him except she stops just short of flashing him her bra. Tony's not the only one with scars. Sure, hers aren't anywhere near as impressive as his, but she still has quite the collection. Of course, most of them are scattered across her body. Like the smooth, round one just above her clavicle and close to her throat, left by one of Clint's arrows. Or the puckered one at the back of her knee from a throwing star. Or the burn mark on her right wrist that's old to this body, but new to her. But, there are a couple on her abdomen. A few faded, thin, white lines from the knife of someone she'd thought she could trust, and the jagged pink one across her abdomen that she doesn't know where she got.
Swallowing just a touch too tightly, and most of the tension from earlier snapping back into place, she snags one of his hands with her free one, and achingly slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away, she presses it against her bare stomach so that his fingers brush against the most prominent of her scars. A dozen secrets crowd at the back of her tongue. But to her frustration she can't bring herself to voice a single one, because she doesn't trust him. She wants to, but she can't. Some of her frustration flickers across her face before she shuts it down and hides it with a near apologetic smile. It's going to have to be enough for now that she's letting him touch her at all. "Can I touch it, or would that zap me to death?" Her fingers twitch lightly against his skin, but her hand stays where it is.
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His eyebrows go up at- well that was more skin than he was expecting to be seeing today. Or possibly ever. What the hell? But then his eyes catch the scars and all of a sudden everything makes sense again. Tit for tat. Fair enough. Some of them he's seen before, or at least knows of; the round one just below her throat, shown over a bottle of vodka on a night of strangely honest conversation, or the relatively new one on her stomach that has to be from that thing with the glass shards that Clint was bitching about. Others are entirely mysterious. He can't help but wonder about the stories behind them.
He tenses again as she catches his hand in hers, but he doesn't pull away. He's pretty sure he knows where she's going with this. Her skin is warm and smooth under his touch, textured by scars here and there. His fingertips leave faint trails of slick black oil behind. The damn stuff gets everywhere. He's still curious about the stories behind the scars; but contrary to popular opinion he's not a complete idiot, and asking when it's a coin toss whether or not she knows the story seems like a massive dick move.
His eyes flick up to hers at the question. "Uh...no, but no," he replies, which...made more sense in his head than it did aloud. After a moment he translates; "That is...no, no zapping, but still not a great idea." There are very, very few people he trusts enough for them to be able to touch the reactor without inducing a freakout of epic proportions. Pepper's one; Rhodey's another. Bruce or Clint could probably get away with it in theory, though it hasn't been tested in practice yet. But Natasha was never one. Not even the Natasha he knew and fought beside, before this whole mess.
On some level he does feel kind of bad about that. It's not that he mistrusts her entirely: he trusts her to have his back in the field, to get the job done. But with this? No. On an intellectual he was pretty sure she didn't intend to kill him, but apparently his subconscious would not be moved on this one. Risking it regardless seems to involve an unacceptably high chance of ending in a humiliating panic attack.
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Considering the tension in Tony's wrist as she guides his hand to her skin, she's actually kind of surprised that he doesn't pull away. But with the way his eyes lock on her skin, she guesses that he might be as fascinated by her scars as she is by his.
The slight slickness of Tony's fingertips against her skin sparks another memory. This one longer but more disjointed than the last. The hum of an engine. The dark battle suit she's been assured is hers open as far down as it goes, her skin flashing pale and streaked with grease through the opening. Calloused fingers running down her skin-- This is apparently not the first time a man with calloused hands has left dark smudges on her skin. It sure as hell wasn't Tony though. His touch against her skin is warm and solid, and the light brush of his fingers tickles enough to send a slight shiver up her spine, but it doesn't send sparks flying across her skin. Based on the last precious flash of a memory, she's just going to go ahead and assume that it's Clint. (The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Like the fact that they're married and that his brief touches always leave her craving more.)
After Tony has stumbled through the words that basically boil down to no, don't, Natasha just nods. "Okay." Whether it's because touching it would hurt her or because he simply wants her hands nowhere near the device keeping him alive, doesn't really matter. The end result is the same; she's not going to touch it. She has enough trust issues of her own to respect a clearly set boundary.
Standing there, hands pressed against each others' scars (her fingers still circled around his wrist, thumb resting at the jut of bone at the back of his wrist), is oddly intimate. Which is-- scary, really. Natasha can count on the finges of one hand (and still have fingers left over) the number of times that she's been truly intimate with someone. And this? It's making the list. Her jaw tightens imperceptibly, and something dark flits through her eyes.
"How did it happen?" In casting a glance down at his abdomen for emphasis, Natasha gets caught by the road map of scars yet again and achingly slowly she shifts her hand, fingers tracing the few scattered scars lower down on his skin, careful to not touch him anywhere near the sternum.
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Her simple acceptance of his refusal send a wave of relief washing through him. Maybe they're having a moment of sorts here, but he's glad to have avoided having to explain just why he can't deal with anyone touching the reactor.
Gaze still tracing the lines of old scars on her skin, he misses the tightening in her expression. There's something strange and hypnotic about this quiet little moment; one of her hands warm just below his ribs, the other wrapped around his wrist, his own fingers spread out on her stomach as he follows the line of one particularly prominent scar with the pad of this thumb.
He doesn't look up at the question. Somehow it's easier to find an answer when he doesn't have to meet her eyes. "I caught one of my own bombs in the face," he replies. "Woke up in a cave with a car battery hooked up to my chest." He's still not sure how much she knows. But she said he wasn't what she expected, and if Clint hadn't said anything then any expectations must have come from the media. And Afghanistan had been plastered all over every news outlet for the duration: the attack on the convoy, the three months where he was 'missing, presumed dead', his miraculous escape and return to the land of the living.
Of course all but the bare bones were half speculation and half shameless gossip. For all that Natasha had shown up in his life apparently well acquainted with his history, there are some things he is absolutely certain she never knew, because no-one knows them. He's never told anyone the whole truth about Afghanistan. Rhodey knows more than anyone else - if only because he was the first friendly face around when Tony was delirious with heat and thirst and pain, half-crazed by the sudden return to reality and desperate for someone he could lean on - but even he doesn't know the full story. Tony's never told anyone the full story, and those who saw it first-hand are long dead.
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As he tells her about the shrapnel, Natasha's eyes flick up to his face and her gaze stays on his ducked head and lowered eyes as he talks. Something in the way he won't look at her, tells her that this isn't an easy subject. And yet he tells her. Again, with this strange trust in her. It's disconcerting and touching and she doesn't know how to begin to process it. Not that she hasn't been able to make men trust her with things they oughtn't have before. Of course she has. She'd be a pretty crap spy if she hadn't. But, generally, she'd been making an effort then, being charming or flirtatious or simply sympathetic. She's pretty sure she's been none of those things since entering the workshop. She's too off-balance, too raw and lost now to even think about making a play at being a person deserving of trust. But here he is, just giving it to her unbidden.
If her hands hadn't been occupied -- one with mirroring his hand against his stomach, the other with making sure that his hand doesn't stray somewhere she doesn't want it -- she might've brushed her fingers across his cheek rather pointedly. His face isn't the piece of him that's littered with scars after all. So, she doubts that the bomb blew up literally in his face.
Natasha's done research on everyone of the Avengers (including herself, though details on her and Clint are pretty scarce), and Tony's life has been the easiest by far to find information on. But, it's not like she's sat down and made an exhaustive timeline of his entire life (yet). More like, she's read countless of articles on him (often out of order) to try to puzzle together a sense of who he is. She knows about Afghanistan. It's pretty hard to miss considering the intense news coverage of the incident. But, she only knows the bare bones of the story. The unit he was travelling with for a PR-stunt was ambushed and he was captured. After a lengthy captivity he was rescued through the tireless efforts of the U.S. military and brought home. Upon his return, he dismantled the weapons manufacturing branch of Stark Industries (aka most of the company) and after that the stories delve into speculation.
Getting caught in the blast of one of his own bombs sounds like a pretty good reason to stop making bombs, but Natasha doesn't like to assume things. For all she knows the bomb may've been on a separate occasion entirely.
"That must've been fun," she says drily. It sounds like the beginning of a nightmare. She kindly doesn't point out the irony in the fact that it's a piece of one of his own bombs trying to crawl its way into his heart. He's a smart guy, she's sure he's figured that one out all on his own. "Why a car battery?" Her fingers have absently been trailing the faint scars low on his belly, and now they bump against the worn denim of his jeans, and she stops, vaguely aware that she should probably move her hand, but too caught up in the story to act on the distant impulse.
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