Therapy

Natasha looks wide-eyed and lost and that wasn’t a familiar look for her. “Are you okay?” Tony asks, frowning. Pepper had called her, obviously freaked out over the whole Obi thing, but Natasha seemed to be having some trouble dealing with things.

“I… no I’m not okay, I don’t do this okay? I keep the play in the bedroom only and it’s getting everywhere and I don’t know what to do with that,” she says. He’d ask of Natasha has talked to Pepper about this but he knew that she has, Pepper was methodical and there was no way that she hadn’t noticed Natasha’s floundering and addressed it. The problem was that she really wasn’t in the right mind to deal with this right now and neither was Natasha.

“Hey, it’s alright, you’ve dealt with situations way scarier than this I’m sure. I mean your job is so top secret you can’t actually tell people what you do, that’s got to be more stressful than this,” Tony points out. Unhelpful, but it was something he supposed.

“I can assure you that it is not. I can handle people trying to kill me; I don’t know what to do with a sub that’s freaking out over something that isn’t directly related to a scene. What do I do? Rip out Obadiah’s windpipe? Because that’s tempting,” she says. Yeah, it was tempting to Tony too considering Agent called ten minutes ago saying he had more than enough information to implicate Obadiah in a number of different crimes, some that involved SI and some that didn’t.

“As much as we would all enjoy that no. You don’t really have to do much, all she needs is for you to be there for her,” Tony says. Natasha gives him a look that suggests that’s a lot harder than it sounded and he didn’t get it. Too be fair she was just as confused as he was so at least they were on the same page there.

“And how do I do that? Pet her head and tell her everything is going to be okay?” she asks.

“Basically. She just needs some comfort so like… hug her and hold onto her for a while until she calms down some.” Natasha frowns and her eyebrows draw together and Tony swears he’s had an easier time explaining rocket science to ten year olds.

“That doesn’t really fix anything, how’s that supposed to help?” she asks, waving a hand around.

“Next time I think I am emotionally incompetent I’m going to remember this conversation,” he says.

“Fuck you Stark.” Natasha flips him off, ever eloquent, and Tony sighs.

“Comfort doesn’t need to solve the problem, it’s supposed to make the person feel better. Has no one comforted you ever?” he asks, floored on how Natasha could be so lost.

“No, actually, I haven’t been comforted ever. Thanks for reminding me. Now I’m going to go off to try and comfort Pepper because that’s less painful than having a conversation with your dense ass,” she says, rolling her eyes at him.

“Happy to help!” he tells her as she walks off, flipping him off again over her shoulder.

*

“I’m fine, Natasha, you don’t need to try and… to be honest I’m not even certain what you’re trying to do,” Pepper says. Well, patting her head was out though in hindsight she probably should have known that. Pepper wasn’t a dog, why would that be at all comforting?

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “You aren’t fine though, you’re shaken and I understand why you would be. You were in a high stress situation with someone that was an immediate threat to your safety, it’s normal to be upset after that,” she says. She sounds like she’s reading from a textbook and to be fair she sort of was. Comfort… well, emotion in general, wasn’t her thing and it never has been. Her up bringing did not allow for her to be good with these sorts of things and if it weren’t for aftercare being necessary she would probably have been lost on that too. The only way she was any good at these things was if she was pretending to be someone else and Pepper didn’t deserve that. She wasn’t a mission and Natasha was not going to treat her like one, it was cruel.

“I know you’re trying to help but I’m fine, Natasha,” Pepper tells her but Natasha isn’t an idiot. She might not know much about comfort but she knew stress and fear when she saw it, she’s spent her entire life dealing with the aftermath of traumatic situations, she at least knew how to recognize when someone has been stretched too thin.

“Your hands are shaking, your breathing is labored, and you keep fidgeting around. None of those behaviors are normal for you and I know at least two of those things are a sign of stress because you get like this before big meetings too. You are not fine; you need… a stress blanket or something. Do those actually work?” she asks more to herself than Pepper.

“Oh Natasha, this is painful, just leave me be,” Pepper says, pleads really. Natasha has made up her mind though, Pepper needed care and she was going to figure out some way to provide her with it. She looks around the room for a moment before locating a blanket and pulling it from its place and draping it over her shoulders. She examines Pepper for a moment before pulling the clip from her hair and letting it fall loose, gently brushing it out of her face and Pepper lets out a soft noise. Ha, she knew she could figure this out.

She sits beside Pepper on the bed, gently drawing her into a hug and Pepper goes easily enough, wrapping her arms around Natasha’s waist. Natasha was mildly uncomfortable with this but she ignores it in favor of trying to take care of Pepper. It would be easy, she thinks, to be Natalia. She knew how to deal with these things, how to handle emotion, how to use emotion like a weapon against whomever was necessary. And that was why she avoided slipping into her long-standing role, it was a tool of manipulation, hurt, and pain and that wasn’t exactly what she was going for with Pepper.

“Are you alright?” Pepper asks after a moment.

Natasha sighs and slumps a little, “am I so bad at this that you’ve decided that I need comfort?” she asks, upset with her inability to be a normal person.

“Not exactly, but you are a bit stiff,” Pepper says, “but that doesn’t answer my question.” There were many upsides to dating Pepper but there was one downside; she always knew when something was off, even when Natasha worked to hide it. She’d fooled the best of the best, out spied the best of spies, tricked some of the most powerful people in the world into giving her information and yet she couldn’t fool Pepper Potts. Maybe it was a blessing that Natasha couldn’t avoid being herself with Pepper, she’s had more than one relationship fail because it was ‘like she was two different people’ and everyone liked Natalie better. She didn’t blame them, Natalie wasn’t painfully awkward with everything, she didn’t have an inability to connect to her peers, and she was a far smoother talker. The only downside was that she was planning how to kill you or fuck you over so badly you’d never recover. Boy was it a kick in the junk to know people preferred that to her.

Finally she sighs, pulling away from Pepper and standing up. “You’ve asked about my past before,” she says slowly, testing the words out.

“And you’ve told me that your past is your own and that I have no business asking. You weren’t wrong, Natasha,” Pepper says firmly. Giving her an out of course, because Pepper was always good at feeling out people’s limits. So was Natasha, except she wanted to exploit them, not respect them.

“So it is, but my past is the reason I am the way I am and to a point you deserve to know about it.” Just the things that were relevant, the things that affected their relationship. There were things she would never tell anyone, things so terrible they should never see the light of day again.

“Natasha…” Pepper says softly, giving her a pitying look.

“Don’t look at me like that, I don’t need your pity or anyone else’s. And I realize this is terrible timing but you’re expecting a relationship out of me and I’m not even sure I can provide that,” she says honestly. She was not built to love and care, that was stripped away a long time ago. Pepper opens her mouth to respond but Natasha waves her off.

“Just let me speak before you tell me that isn’t true. When I was a child I was kidnapped from my home and put into a secret government program in Russia, we called it the Red Room. I’m not sure what they called it,” she lies. It was called the Black Widow Program and it was labeled a failure because of her. “But the intent was to train a team of elite spies, the best in the world. We went through a number of tests; I’ll spare you the details. The point is that by the end of the program, by the time I broke free, I learned that emotion was a weakness and it got you killed. Touch was something you used to tantalize and tease to extract information. Emotion was to be turned into a weapon against the sorry soul who dared to feel and I’m good at those things, at least if I’m not myself. I call her Natalie, they called her successful. I could be everything you ever wanted, but that wouldn’t be honest and that’s why I’m bad at this, because I have no idea how to feel. That’s reserved for a person who uses those things for her own benefit.”

She leaves it at that, which leaves out most of the details of her detainment. She was kidnapped when she was seven, she killed her parents in cold blood when she was twelve so she had no remaining loyalties, she murdered he best friend when she was fifteen because that was not allowed, and she went on a murder spree when she turned on her handlers. They wanted her to have no attachments, no emotions. They wanted a cold-blooded killer and she swore they were so surprised when she realized they were a loyalty too, and loyalties were not allowed. It took her years to break down the walls between herself and Natalie. For a long time she didn’t even know there was a difference but Fury was adamant that there was. She owed her future to him. All in all if she were to relive all of that again she’d change everything except for the very end. She’d look Ivan dead in the eyes and pull the trigger all day every day if she was afforded to. Piece of shit, he was too good for what he got.

“Jesus Christ, Natasha. So all this time you’ve been trying to be more… I don’t know, emotional and you’ve essentially been forcing yourself to relive your trauma over and over again? I know that you didn’t want to share your past with me but shit, Tash, you needed to safe word out of this a long, long time ago. Oh god, I’ve basically been torturing you for months,” Pepper says, running her hands through her hair nervously. This was the exact opposite of what Natasha had been going for and this is why she didn’t do these things, she always found a way to ruin them. “You haven’t ruined anything,” Pepper tells her and she realizes belatedly that she said that out loud, “you just… need some help finding your limits. Apparently they’re more harshly defined than either one of us knew.”

“I don’t need to reevaluate my limits, I know exactly where they are, thank you,” she says primly. If she didn’t she would have died a long time ago, it was one thing she could thank her handlers for.

“Yes, Natasha you do. How much of our relationship has been making you uncomfortable and for how long? That isn’t normal, Natasha, and it doesn’t require you to change, it requires our dynamic to change. You’ve… been through things, I’m sure that you know plenty of ways to hurt a person without actually laying a finger on them. Now think of how many of those things I’ve been doing to you without me knowing,” she says. Natasha, because Pepper was being very serious, humors her, flicking through a long list and applying them to their relationship. “See? That’s a problem,” Pepper says when Natasha’s eyes widen, “this needs to change like months ago, probably. When we get done with Obadiah we’re having a very long discussion,” Pepper says in an overly serious tone that Natasha would have teased her for if not for the situation.

“I’ll be fine, I just need to get over it,” she says somewhat petulantly. All she needed to do was feel like a normal goddamn person, she could manage that much she just needed time to get it right.

“No, Natasha, you’re fine just the way you are. There’s a reason that you’re the only person I’ve ever had a stable long-term relationship with and that’s probably because you know how to feel better than anyone else I know. I know that you don’t believe that but I’ve had people tell me my whole life that I’d never be good enough for someone. I’m too career driven, too headstrong, too selfish or self involved, too disinterested in children and family. It isn’t like I lack the motivation to put effort into a long distance relationship; I have, but no one I’ve dated before you could handle it. I was always too far away, too close to Tony; I cared about everything but them. Honestly it was exhausting having to constantly reaffirm that my work obligations didn’t mean that I didn’t care. But you never had that problem, you worked a lot too and instead of complaining about all the time I spent away you enjoyed the time we had together. That made all the difference, Natasha,” she says in a strong, clear voice. She believed her words but she was not the first person Natasha has met that believed their own story. It was weirdly common.

“That’s because I know how to compartmentalize my feelings, that doesn’t mean I care more than other people, it probably means I care less,” she reasons. Were normal people supposed to be put off by long distance relationships? She never saw the problem, if she cared about Pepper why did it matter how far away from each other they were? The only issue that she had was that itchy feeling she got under her skin when he hadn’t Dommed someone in awhile and she had long ago learned to manage that. Pepper, she learned, was fine because she had other avenues of letting out her instinct to submit.

Admittedly it was a little odd that her relationship with her boss crossed boundaries in that way but after spending a few months gathering information on Tony it appeared he was aware of the dynamic and he knew his place. He and Pepper must have worked something out a long time ago because the dynamic was stable and subtle; it took effort for her to find it. Honestly it seemed they acted out their roles as Dom and sub in a way that was strictly meant to avoid any adverse mental health effects that would come with not indulging the instinct. It was clever, actually. Besides, Pepper was by no means Tony’s sub; half of her time was spent wrangling Tony into doing things, not on her knees. Then Natasha would have had a problem.

“That isn’t true and somewhere in there you know it. It takes a lot of care and communication to maintain a long distance relationship and I’ve never had to work at it with you. You understand when I’m too busy with work to talk and I understand that with you too. We’ve found other ways to show affection than what some people would consider normal and that’s alright, we should foster that, not try and stick ourselves into a box that doesn’t support our relationship dynamic however ‘normal’ that box may be. I am going to have to ask you to take up that threat to rip Obadiah Stane’s eyes out, though. That man needs to go,” she says harshly.

Natasha smiles slowly, “if you’d like I could draw it out,” she says.

“Do whatever you need to do to make him suffer.”

*

“My favorite thing about your life being public record is that I can Google ridiculous shit about you and actually get results,” Bucky says, grinning down at the StarkPad he was holding. Tony’s absurd answers to stupid interview questions were the perfect distraction to dying Wade and terrorist Obadiah. Besides, the couch was comfortable and the blanket he had was soft.

Tony comes up behind him, placing his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and massaging gently, “what exactly are you Googling, because anything in the nineties should just be erased from the planet, I had a bit of a cocaine problem then and nothing I said made any sense,” he says, frowning. Bucky leans into his touch, grateful to have the comfort, especially when poor Tony had his own steaming pile of shit to deal with.

“Well that explains why your answers from the nineties are the best,” he says, “though I’m glad that you got over that problem, obviously. But so far your worst fears are long bathroom lines, small dogs because they look like large rats but you aren’t afraid of large rats, Ouija boards but that’s legit, and the leg hair of clowns. I have to admit that last one is honestly the greatest thing I have ever heard. I’ve heard of people being afraid of clowns, and the lack of hair in any shaving commercial ever indicates a weird fear of hair, but I’ve never heard of anyone being afraid of a clown’s leg hair. You’re the best,” he says meaningfully, grinning up at Tony.

“Okay you know what, clowns as a whole are unsettling and they need to go. I watched It and that was that. Never again, no thank you Tim Curry, he might have been hot in Rocky Horror but he was the stuff of nightmares in that movie. Honestly fuck that, Rhodey agrees,” he says. Bucky knew how that felt, he and Steve decided to watch it sometime in their early twenties, having not been swayed to see it when it first came out, and were fucking terrified of bathroom sinks for years. Admittedly when people thought they were dating because they used to go to the bathroom together that had been fair, that was a little weird. But they also weren’t about to die so they were the real winners.

“Honestly it was The Shining that got me if we’re talking Steven King movies. More so when my girlfriend at the time said that elevator opening and blood pouring out was exactly like sneezing on your period. But that’s mostly because I felt bad for any sorry soul who owned a uterus at that point. Could you imagine?” he says, shuddering. It was at that point that he had been ecstatic to have gotten luck of the draw and a penis.

“Thankfully no, but Pep’s given me a few horror stories. She says I’d never be able to handle it because I’m a baby when it comes to pain and she’s probably right. I whine for hours when I get paper cuts,” Tony says. Bucky so wanted to see video footage of Tony whining about paper cuts but he’d figure that out later.

“Oh look, that’s another fear of yours, paper cuts, and bad scotch. Brushing Rhodey’s hair? What? Why would you be afraid of brushing Rhodey’s hair?” he asks. That seemed a bit odd but then some of the other options were more than a little odd too.

“Do you have any idea what kind of work goes into natural hair? I’d be terrified to mess it up and make poor Rhodey look like a fool. Thankfully he’s bald so I don’t have to worry about it. I dread the day he leaves the military and goes through a mid-life crisis and tries to relive his teen years by regrowing his fro. It didn’t even look good on him but he loved it so don’t ever tell him I said that. Plus I had that neon phase so I really should talk about bad style choices,” he says, looking off into the distance, remembering his embarrassing teen years.

“Okay but I think we should be questioning your style choices in the early two thousands. Did NASA launch a space program that you got admitted to and didn’t tell anyone about?” he asks, pulling up a picture of Tony in a bad space age looking silver suit complete with a bright turquoise shirt with a wide open collar. Honestly Bucky would have been embarrassed to be seen in his house with this thing let alone in public.

“The early thousands were a dark time for everyone,” Tony says cryptically. Someone knocks on the door and Bucky jumps unintentionally, earning a few soothing noises from Tony, who informs him it was Agent. Well, at least Bucky finally got to meet the guy that vexed Tony so much, he guessed anyways. He kind of preferred if that was never a thing but here he was. Tony goes to the door and Bucky spies the redhead that wasn’t Pepper poking her head out from the hallway, glaring at the door.

“Agent,” Tony says with too much enthusiasm, “give me all your information and get out.”

“Please Stark, as if I’d ever spend time here willingly,” a familiar snarky voice says.

“Coulson?” the redhead says, beating Bucky to speaking.

Phil, as in his Phil, nods in the redhead’s direction, “Natasha,” he says casually.

“Phil?” Bucky asks, shocked that he was Tony’s Agent.

He gets a nod too, “Bucky,” he says in a cool crisp tone. Probably his professional voice.

“Agent?” Tony asks, frowning.

“Mr. Stark,” Phil says, giving him that passive aggressive smile he only gave people he disliked.

“Okay, what the fuck?” Bucky says, voicing what everyone is thinking.

“We all know each other, I babysat Stark years ago when he hacked into some very important systems, I used to be Natasha’s handler, and I’ve been friends with Bucky for years, there, now we’re all caught up. Oh, and Stark, no need to give Bucky suspicious looks, he’s never been a spy and frankly he’d be bad at it. He didn’t even realize his very in love best friend was in love with him, he isn’t to be trusted with top secret government information,” Phil says.

“Hey,” Bucky mumbles, “it isn’t my fault I didn’t realize Steve was in love with me. I thought he was just being a good friend.”

“And that’s why you’d make a bad spy. We need to be able to read all information, including what we get from bodies. Speaking of- Stane has a very high body count and he’s done a good job of trying to pin it on you but I’m awesome and I have information,” Phil informs them, chest puffed out in pride.

“Does Clint know you’re here?” Bucky asks.

“Oh please, get your Dom to throw a collar and a leash on you. And muzzle,” Tony adds, giving Phil’s mouth a distasteful look.

“Bucky, please stick a gag in your Dom’s mouth. And I got Clint into some show on Netflix that has ten seasons; he doesn’t even know I’m gone. I’m going to send the person who invented Netflix a gift basket.”

“Just give me the information on Stane and do something about the fact that he pulls a lot of weight in my company,” Tony says, rolling his eyes at Phil.