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Bruce
Bruce didn’t like people touching him. A fact that Natasha was very aware of. His curls felt like silk between her fingers. His cheek was warm against her thigh. The tears soaking through her cat suit were forgivable. She wouldn’t even mention them. He probably didn’t know he was crying. He hummed softly in his half asleep state, a tiny smile turning up the corners of his mouth, some pleasant memory dancing across his mind. The orange shock blanket thrown over him had slipped exposing a strip of chest hair and two pink, peaked nipples. The blanket wasn’t big enough to cover all of him and Natasha watched in fascination as the muscles in his calves twisted and spasmed slightly as he shuddered from cold. All around them were the sounds of the post battle. Iron Man and Captain America bickering, Thor trying to calm them down, people from medical exasperatedly asking Hawkeye just how many times he had jumped off of rooftops, the clank and buzz of the destruction being cleared away. Bruce was oblivious to it all in his post battle state. The Hulk had run his course, leaving an exhausted Banner behind. Barely giving Natasha enough time to wrap her arms around his middle and guide him to a place to rest. While the Hulk liked Tony the best, Bruce liked Natasha to put back together his pieces for him. She was the one that talked to him in that calm, collected voice of hers, packed a bag with Bruce’s cloths and always remembered to grab it, said nothing about his nude state while waiting for it to be possible to guide him into his clothing. And most importantly she was the one he comfortable with touching him. He was fine with the rest of the team but under Natasha’s hands he melted. He trusted her more than anyone else in these post Hulk states.
Natasha was happy to do it for him. She would have done it for any member of her team. Those were her boys. Her family. She would do anything and everything for them. Bruce was the first one she took care of before moving through all of, giving them what they needed. She doubted any of them, besides Clint, knew that it wasn’t just them she gave special attention to. And that was part of it. They all needed to feel special and recognized. Bruce was the softest of all of them and demanded the least from her. He was also the scariest because he was the one she always felt was falling for her. A man like Bruce, good, was so very breakable. And Natasha did not want to break him. Which meant not falling for him. Which at times felt like a possibility. He daily impressed her with his compassion and intellect, the way he handled Tony. But two broken people never made a whole, which she knew far too well and so while she would piece him back together after the Hulk, that was all there was ever going to be.
Steve
Steve was a soldier. A leader. Someone Natasha would follow to the end of world, to the end of time itself. She respected him. Anything he would ask of her, she would comply with. Steve was shy and awkward. Lacking modern social graces. His insecurities were deep set, far ingrained in the way he carried and presented himself. He missed his old world. The tells, the codes that had carried him through his life. The respect he had for people astounded Natasha. Her life of cold remarks and stony gestures, seemed cruel in the light of his unfathomable goodness. Their humor was much the same but their world views could not have been more different. While he believed in a perfect system of justice and respect, hers was one of unadulterated power and revenge by any means necessary. The optimist and the realist. Steve treated her like she was something special. Not a tool or an asset, which always seemed to mean the same thing, but a person, with feelings that ran red and real in her veins. His old fashioned chivalry was a sharp contrast to the way that Clint, Tony, and even Bruce treated her (Thor was on a whole different level). Steve treated her like she was breakable. Her bones could be crushed and her skin torn. He knew he could do that to her. To anyone. His power thinly veiled. His rage as clear as the Hulks at times. Always working to keep his strength in check. Natasha loved him for that. She loved him. Not like Bruce and certainly not like Clint. But she did. She loved the leader.
It was always changing with him. Sometimes he needed to lead and sometimes he just needed to submit. On those days, Natasha would, in great detail, go over exactly how he had fucked up the mission. Her langue would be coarse and overly judgmental. And he would take it. With rigid posture and a breaking heart. But it was far more frequent for his rage to ignite and fuel him with an overbearing need to control and dominate. If it was breakable he would break it. She was breakable and at those times he didn’t care. Slapping with enough force for her cheek to split and her nose to bleed. Hand closing around her throat that seemed too small under the size of his fist, and squeezing, forcing the air out of her lungs and until the world, his scared blue eyes, began to turn gray. He broke her wrist once, under his grasp. The bones separating with a nauseating popping sound. It was not sexual. There never even seemed a chance that it could be. Maybe it hurt too much after Peggy. Maybe he just didn’t see her that way. But whatever it was and for whatever reason, the aftercare was the gentlest Natasha had ever experienced. He would carefully wipe up the blood, thanking God all the while for her healing factor, even if it wasn’t anywhere near his own. She wasn’t scared of Steve. Even after everything he had done to her. She trusted him. And more importantly, at least she thought, he trusted her.
Thor
It never seemed to matter how long the fought for because Thor was always still wound up afterword. Aching for a fight. Throughout her life, men had underestimated Natasha’s skill, not believing she had the power that she did. Thor never thought that way. From the first day they met, he respected her as a warrior, not as an equal perhaps, but someone with at least a shot. They would spar, Natasha pulling every trick she knew to try and pin him. He would laugh before detaching her from his back or legs or neck, settle her down on the ground once more and compliment her. And she never felt insulted. Thor never meant any disrespect and spoke only kindness. And Natasha believed him.
When they were done he would tell stories, long, drawn out, that always seemed to need a fire to accompany them. He’d talk about Loki without the fear of being judged for still loving his adopted brother. He would mourn his mother, shed tears that could catch and glisten in his beard. War stories were also told, of the monsters he had fought and defeated. Also the ones where he had conquered them and taught them to rule themselves in the Asgardian way. He would vocally miss his friends, one night even accidentally calling Natasha Sif. She had waved if off good naturally and asked who she was, not trusting the myths and legends she had heard. He spun a story of a pretty, young, golden haired girl with a love for the future king as big as all the nine realms, it was also the story of a raven haired boy who reeked off jealousy and who cut off the beautiful golden hair in hopes it would make his brother see only him again. The plan failed because the future king had never thought her prettier when her hair grew back a dark, rich brown. As they grew older, the boy and the girl, the childhood romance turned to one of kinship but the All Father never forgot and pushed for them to marry. Thor looked sad throughout the story, sighing a little at the end. A story always led to another one, this one about the fair Jane and her science… Natasha loved his stories, loved the fights. Loved how simple Thor’s needs were to deliver to the best of her ability.
Tony
While Thor was easy to deliver for, Tony was the opposite. His mood changed as if someone flicked a switch in his brain. One moment he would be a brooding mess, the next joking around, drinking and coming on to her, then drinking and pushing her away. Tony seemed to hate himself after a battle. He always believed that he could have fought better, harder, longer, more determinedly. He shouldn’t have argued so much with Steve, he should’ve caught Clint when he fell. When Natasha would come to him, he would fill up a glass with vodka and wait for her to drain it before he would start talking. Jokes at first, dark, almost morbid, quips about himself or the team. Some nights, jokes were all there was, but usually he would sulk afterwards, mutter half sentences about all the things that should have happened. Like Thor he would tell stories but he lacked the eloquence, his were full of filth and curses. The women he had slept with. His drunken brawls. The kids he had bullied when he was the younger. The adults he had bullied when he was old enough to know better. He would try to drink himself into feeling better, the way he had when he thought he was dying so long ago in Malibu. If the battle had been particularly brutal, Tony would insult her. Call her a slut, a bitch, a tease, a whore, a cunt, worthless, stupid, he would tell her S.H.E.I.L.D. only valued her because she was pretty, because men swooned at her feet, but she wasn’t even good at that, her breasts were too small, the proportions of her face awkward, she had a fat ass, and it was because of all those things no one loved her, why Clint didn’t love her. Natasha knew he was just projecting. He didn’t think he was worthy enough for anything, for love, for Pepper’s love, S.H.E.I.L.D. only wanted him for his money, he was the slut, the bitch, the tease, the whore, the cunt, stupid, and worthless.
Tony was the only one that tried to sleep with her. Hands pushing and words demanding. And if she had thought it would help, Natasha would have let him. But another quick, drunken, to be half remembered in the morning, filled with regret later, fuck was the last thing Tony needed. Natasha just listened. Ignored the curses and the insults. Pushed away his greedy hands. Sat back, drank her vodka, because Tony couldn’t help but rub in the Russian stereotype, and listened. To every word that came out of his mouth. The first person to ever do that, she assumed, because every time when he had drunk himself almost to a coma, he would rest his head on her shoulder, beard prickly, and thank her. No matter how slurred it was or how insulting he had been, it was never halfhearted and Natasha knew that. She knew how nice it was to have someone really listen to you.
Clint
If there was anyone in the whole universe Natasha cared about it was Clint. He was hers. To cherish, take care of, love. When they first met they would fuck and flirt. Maybe it had been because she was pretty. Or new. Or just because it pissed off Coulson. Whatever Clint’s reasoning, it stopped happening after a few months. He hadn’t tossed her aside, just slid her into a new slot. She had liked Clint the moment she really met him, not just the man who didn’t kill her. She was sure that he could fix her. Like he had fixed her life. Clint wasn’t anyone’s savior. Loki had been right, he was no more virtuous than herself. But oh how he tried. With a commitment that Natasha never felt. But she could see. Maybe, she always thought, if Coulson, if Phil, hadn’t been around back then, or dead now, they would be together. Her original boys. But with how Phil loved his archer, with how Clint knew that, with how scared they both were of committing, of admitting, it left no room for her failed attempts at romantic love. Now with Coulson being gone, leaving a hole Clint could not imagine how to fill, she was certainly not wanted. She couldn’t replace the great man, Clint’s savior. Who truly was good. He was the one thing she couldn’t supply.
After a month and a half of being required to stay at a S.H.E.I.L.D base, sometimes retained when he fought so hard to escape, where Natasha couldn’t get to him, and they probed and poked trying to figure out how Loki got into his head. How Natasha got him out. What the side effects of having a god in your head were. There was a long talk with Fury so that Natasha could take him home. At first home had been one of the apartments around New York that her, Clint, and Phil had kept as their common, Strike Team Delta, safe house. But with Clint’s nightmares and heartache, being so close to what was a part of Phil, and home really being wherever Natasha was, they accepted Stark’s offer to come and stay in Stark, now Avengers, tower. The team assumed they were together until Tony made a few too many jokes and Thor unwittingly made comments on who bottomed in their love making that made Steve’s ears turn a bright shade of pink, that Natasha had calmly explained that, no they weren’t together. When talk of relationships came up and Clint fled the room. It was every night, not just after a battle that Natasha would take care of her most important boy. Rub the tension out of the hand that gripped the bow too tight. Cuddle him to her and whisper pet names into his hairline, sing the smoothest lullabies she could conjure from the broken memories of her childhood, keeping them in their native Russian, thinking they were all the prettier for it and knowing Clint would still understand. Some nights he would cry. Some nights she would cry. And every night she would come back and do it all over again and he fell asleep, being ever aware of the slightest noise from the baby monitor she had hidden in his room, even though she knew he knew it was there, so she could be there in moments of realizing he was having a nightmare. And sometimes, when she knew he was really asleep she would tell him she loved him and all the plans she had for their future.
Phil
He was always the last one on her list. His door would stay open until she came. She would close it softly and settle down in the middle of his bed. He would tuck himself into the crook of her neck and she would promise him that Clint really was okay, even if he wasn’t. Natasha hated to lie, but to Phil, about the man they both refused to admit they loved, she would lie a thousand times over. With skilled fingers she would loosen his tie, unbutton his top button, kiss him where the creases were too deep on his forehead, then try to leave. He wouldn’t let her until he was convinced she was fine, which never happened. He never really touched her. Most people did. Thinking their touches were casual. But Phil never made that mistake. To Natasha all of her touches were deliberate, falling in just the right place, eliciting just the right emotion. He understood that with her his touches needed to be the same way. They had sex a few times. The pull of him inside of her enough to melt the tension of everything else. The feeling of the woman who trusted no one trusting him enough to bring back some of the self-assurance he kept wound so tightly around himself. They never talked about it but it was nice to have someone who lacked the same man that they both were so sure could fix their lives. Phil needed to protect and that made him the hardest one. Natasha didn’t need, didn’t want, anyone protecting her. But she would pretend for Phil. For her boys, nothing was too much.
Of course she missed him. His gentleness. His relentlessness. How he smelled. They had worked together for years. She figured mourning him was normal. She had trusted Phil. She had trusted the Winter Solider a long time ago, before she was old enough to realize that to him, she would always be just the pretty face with a few good secrets. Since then Phil was only the second person she had ever trusted. Clint being the first. There was a room in the tower kept in his honor. Someone had found his pillow and put on the bed but it had disappeared a few months back. Natasha knew it was now on Clint’s. But it wasn’t the pillow she always went to the room for. It was his ties. The whole collection were on the tie rack hanging in the closet. The feel of them underneath her fingers, straitening and smoothing out the lines, made her think that somehow she was still taking care of her last boy even with him gone.