A Little at a Time
Natasha wakes the next morning as the sun streams in. Four boys sleep steadily on top of her, golden in the brand new sunlight. She lets herself come to fully awake slowly—until she remembers the events of the previous night. The four bodies on top of her suddenly feel that much heavier.
After that, the boys wake up in quick succession. Clint untangles himself from the knot of bodies and wriggles toward Natasha’s chest. She holds him close and kisses his forehead gently. “Good morning, Mommy,” he says, voice still tight with sleep.
Which wakes Tony. His eyes take a few minutes to open all the way. He kneads them with his fists, jaw nearly unhinging with a large yawn. “I want a morning kiss, too,” he whines. Natasha leans over to peck his cheek.
Steve stirs and reaches out his arms in a rather dramatic stretch, bumping Bruce awake in the process. Bruce whines a bit, until Nat gives him a kiss on the tip of his nose, turning his frown into a giggly smile.
“Mommy!” Steve pouts. “I didn’t get a good morning kiss!” Natasha puts a hand on his cheek and kisses is temple. His smile blossoms.
Kisses are perhaps the most important part of their morning routine. It means they’ll get to spend the whole day as Natasha’s little boys—watching cartoons, racing toy cars, running around in circles until they tire themselves out. It’s a safe feeling. Reassurance.
Natasha promises she’ll make French toast for breakfast, which coaxes them all out of the bed. They tuck their stuffies under their arms and shuffle down the hall in their footie pajamas, following Natasha like a trail of little ducklings bobbing along behind their mother.
Thor is in the kitchen, poking through the cabinets for something to eat. He looks up at them all standing in the mouth of the hallway, and it sends the boys into a moment of panic. Tony, wide-eyed, takes a step back and onto Clint’s toes, which causes Clint to drop his Teddy bear. Steve folds his arms to try to cover the zipper running up the torso of his pajamas, and Bruce ducks behind Natasha as if he can hide himself behind her.
The look Thor gives is the same as the night before—wide-eyed confusion. He doesn’t say anything.
In order to avoid adding any more variables to the equation, Natasha corrals the boys up and shoos them toward the living room. They scatter away, more than a little relieved.
“I arrived last night,” Thor starts. “And—”
Natasha nods. “And you saw us,” she finishes. “What did you think?”
“It is a game?”
“It’s not a game,” she says, voice a little quieter. It is fair that Thor doesn’t understand—she’s honestly not sure if there’s anything even comparable on Asgard, so he has the right to be confused—but she doesn’t want four sets of little ears to overhear.
Thor’s bushy eyebrows creep toward each other. “They are acting as children. If it is not a game, what is it?”
“It’s like… role-play,” she comes up with.
“Like theater?” He asks, and she shrugs her shoulders. “For what audience?”
“Just ourselves, I guess,” she says. “It’s a role-play—like a little family. I’m the mother and they’re…my little boys. I take care of them.”
She punctuates her sentence with her teeth creeping over the edge of her bottom lip. It’s all so much harder to explain in actual words than she thought it would be, especially to Thor.
He simply stands there for a moment, towering over her with his arms folded over his chest and his head cocked to the side. “A family?” He asks, and she nods at him. “They are not your children. They are not children at all.”
“Does that matter?” Natasha sighs. The confusion in Thor’s eyes is deep, she realizes, and she’s not going to get through to him in just this conversation alone. “I’m going to make breakfast,” she offers, finally, after they’ve awkwardly avoided eye contact for a few moments. “Can I make you some, too?”
Thor’s arms tighten across his chest. “I do not wish to be part of this family,” he says, the “so-called” part left out, but definitely implied.
And that one hurts, much deeper than Natasha would like to admit. She holds back a physical cringe and manages a lopsided smile. “You don’t have to be,” she explains calmly. “I’m just making breakfast.”
Thor nods. “Then I will have a portion.”
Nat makes French toast like she’d promised the boys, and with stomachs like Steve’s—and now Thor’s—to feed, she makes almost two loaves of bread worth.
The sweet smell of cinnamon and maple syrup calls the boys back into the kitchen before Natasha does. Steve pokes his nose around the corner. “Time for breakfast?” He asks softly.
“Just about.” Natasha nods toward a stack of plates on the counter. “Would you mind setting the table for me?”
And Steve’s such a sweet boy, Natasha thinks as she watches him reluctantly enter the kitchen. As tentative of eye contact he maintains with Thor as he does it, he still manages to put a plate and silverware at every spot at the table. Nat gives him a kiss on the cheek in thanks when he’s finished. “Go grab your brothers for me, okay?”
A moment later, the boys all enter the kitchen, one sheepishly after the other. They sit at their usual spots at the table—all except Tony, who stands looking at, but still a good distance away from Thor.
“That's my seat,” he says, pouting.
Thor, a little startled, silently gets up and moves the seat over.
Tony a little displeased noise. “That’s Mommy’s seat.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “I always sit next to Mommy at breakfast.”
So, Thor gets up and moves to the seat on the end of the table, a safe distance of a few chairs away from everyone else. He observes them as they eat; he takes mental notes of the way Natasha cuts up everyone’s food into small bites, and how they all, except for her, pick it up and eat it with their fingers. Bruce drowns his plate in a pool of maple syrup, and Clint has the sticky stuff dribbling down his chin. Tony sits on his knees in his chair to appear taller. Steve is pretending to feed the stuffed bear he has sitting on his lap—it is all so bizarre to Thor, who’s used to seeing, well, five other adults around here. Not this.
Natasha recognizes the look on Thor’s face as one of Asgardian curiosity, but to a human, his unending glares seem a bit cold. Needless to say, breakfast is pretty silent.
After they’ve cleaned their plates and Natasha’s wiped all the maple syrup she can out from between their sticky fingers, they scatter off toward the living room again. This leaves Nat and Thor to do the dishes.
“I will do the washing,” he says, the first word from anyone in about twenty minutes.
It seems like a perfect opportunity to talk with him, so she grabs the towel and offers to dry.
Thor is a mess when he washes the dishes. His heavy hands splash water all over himself, the walls, and the floor. Natasha, standing out of the splash zone, wipes down the plates as he hands them to her. “Why did you come back?” She asks.
Before Thor can answer, a call comes in over comms. “Director Fury would like to speak with you,” JARVIS says, and even his voice sounds urgent.
Natasha looks to Thor, and he nods. This is why he’s come back.
“I have been trying to reach you all morning!” Comes Fury’s voice through the speakers. Natasha smirks a little—she has JARVIS silence all comms until after breakfast. “Are you there?”
“Yes, sir,” she says. “What do you need?”
“What do I need!? Romanov!—never mind. What I need is you all to suit up and prepare for a mission. We’ve got intel about some Hydra operation in the Andes—I’ll send a brief. Most important thing is that your asses are on the quinjet by sundown.”
Natasha’s ears perk up at that. “Sundown?”
“Yes, sundown. What part of that didn’t you understand?”
Her heart rate ticks up. “Director. We need more time.”
“Well, there isn’t more time. I need your asses on the ground in Peru by nightfall.”
Natasha hesitates.
“We’ll be there,” Thor says, eyes on the ceiling as if Fury was there. The comm cuts off at that.
Thor hands Natasha the last wet plate, then gives her a look. He disappears up to his quarters.
It’s kind of an absolute disaster, Natasha thinks as she dries this last plate. How is she going to tell the boys? How is she going to get them into battle-ready headspace in a few hours? She leans against the counter, placing a cool hand against her aching forehead.
Clint barrels into the kitchen in his sock feet, and comes to a sliding stop as Natasha catches him. He giggles, his smile endless. “Mommy! Come see! We made a big fort in the living room!”
So, she lets herself be dragged by the arm into the living room where, naturally, a blanket fort has formed; all the cushions from the couch form the walls, and blankets are carefully draped over the top to create room enough for four big boys to squish inside. She peeks in, greeted by grins. Tony holds a flashlight in his lap, Bruce makes a few adjustments to the internal structure as Steve tries to hide a plateful of smuggled cookies.
Clint squeezes in after them. “Isn’t it so cool, Mommy? We done it all by ourselves! And there’s even room for you to come in if you want to!”
“Only if she knows the password,” Tony says firmly.
Steve shakes his head. “That’s not fair! She’s Mommy. The password is only so bad guys don’t get in.”
“Yeah,” Bruce says, and then a little quieter, “like Thor.”
Natasha takes a big breath, trying to smile a little. “Can you boys all come out for a minute? We need to talk about something.”
The boys do as they’re told. Mommy’s voice isn’t mean or like an order, but it’s not happy and fun like it usually is. Something is wrong. They quietly climb up onto the cushion-less couches and sit on their knees with their feet tucked underneath their bottoms. Natasha sits on the ottoman between them all.
Steve screws up his mouth. “Is it about Thor?” He asks. “Because he was scary this morning.” The other three nod in agreement of that.
Natasha shakes her head. “No, honey. No, this is about—I just got a call from Fury, and he needs us all in South America by tonight for a mission.” There’s a beat of silence. “I need you all to be big boys for me, okay? I know this really throws a wrench in the fun day we were going to have, but sometimes we have to do our job.”
She looks up. Bruce is sniffling softly, forehead wrinkling as he tries to keep himself from really crying. Natasha sits next to him and pulls him close as he bursts into full on tears. He sobs into her chest, and she rocks him gently. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“I don’t want to be Big Guy,” he says.
“I know, sweetheart. And you might not have to be—we don’t know how things are going to go. We won’t go Code Green unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“I wanna be your little guy.”
Natasha’s heart pangs. She closes her eyes. “I want that, too, baby. I’m sorry.”
She hears Tony get up off the couch. “I’ll come check on you in a few hours,” she says as he makes his way toward the elevator and down to his lab. Steve follows him, heading up to his room. And Bruce, once he’s cried himself out, lets Natasha wipe the tears from his cheeks with her sleeve, and he heads for his room, too.
Clint sticks around for a while. Natasha gets up. “Just work on getting yourself into a good headspace, okay?” She puts a hand on his shoulder.
He stiffly shrugs it off, and his arms fold over his chest. “I don’t want to,” he bites back.
“Clint—”
“I don’t wanna go on a stupid mission in stupid South America just because stupid Fury said so. I don’t wanna go, and I’m not gonna go, and you can’t make me!”
Natasha sighs. “It’s okay to be cranky, Clint,” she says cautiously. “None of us want to go, believe me. But we have to. It’s what we signed up for. And I promise, as soon as we get back, we’ll have all the cuddles you want.”
Clint huffs and walks out.
The rest of the morning goes pretty much just like that; Natasha runs around trying to get ready for the mission, Thor keeps a wide radius, and the boys crankily try to age themselves up.
Natasha makes quick turkey sandwiches for lunch, because there’s no time for anything else. She has to tell herself not to cut them all up into bitesized chunks, but she deems it appropriate to take a plate down to Tony. Food is hard for him—little or big.
Sparks are flying as she makes her way into Tony’s lab. They stop for a second, and Tony yells out, “Fuck!” Something clatters to the floor.
Natasha comes up on him as he’s holding one hand in the other, pressing down on some kind of wound. “Are you okay?” She asks, setting down the sandwich on one of the tables. He doesn’t respond, and she takes his hand away to reveal a bleeding cut. He winces.
Without saying anything, Natasha reaches for the first aid kit. She wipes the blood from Tony’s hand, disinfects it, and places a band-aid over it. “You don’t have to be iron just yet,” she says softly, kissing where she had bandaged up the wound.
Tony looks up at her, a few little tears in his eyes.
“Eat your lunch,” she says, and she heads for the door.
She goes up to Clint’s room to check on him, but he’s not there. The only place else he could possibly be is the range, which is a good sign. She finds him there, about fifty arrows deep in perfecting his perfect shot. The repetition calms him.
“Looking good,” she says, leaning up against one of the lockers.
It doesn’t scare him; he heard her coming. He releases another arrow and it splits down the middle of the one already on the bullseye. “Yeah,” he responds.
Natasha takes a breath. “You know I wouldn’t keep stuff like this from you guys, right? I told you all just after I’d heard from Fury.” Her voice is level. Not motherly. Calm, round, gentle.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, a little softer. “We gotta do our job.”
Natasha smiles a little, the corner of her mouth just tilting up. “That’s right.”
Clint strings another arrow. “Did you check on Bruce? He was pretty upset.”
“That’s the next stop,” she says, turning to go. She resists the urge to kiss Clint on the forehead as she leaves.
And that in itself is hard for her—the process of getting herself out of her own headspace. The boys, they have to age up to function properly during battle, but she has to get out of mommy-space simply so she can do the same. It doesn’t work if she’s baby-talking over comms or crippled with worry about everyone’s safety and not focusing fully on the mission at hand. Mommy-space is a difficult place for her to work her way out of—probably just as difficult as it is for her boys.
Not her boys. They’re just the team, now.
Bruce is in his room. She knocks on the door, though she normally wouldn’t. He lets her in.
He’s one leg into a pair of the super-stretch pants that Tony has engineered for him, and he looks up at Natasha like she’s a savior when she comes into the room.
“Mommy?” He asks, eyes full of light. “Do we not have to go anymore?”
Natasha bows her head and shakes it. “I’m sorry. We still have to go.”
Bruce’s subtle smile falls. He puts his other leg in his pants and starts to shimmy them up.
“You’re going to wear a diaper?” Natasha asks neutrally, simply making an observation.
Bruce’s cheeks pink a little, but he nods. “I’m really nervous.” Which causes accidents for him, Natasha knows, but she’s not going to say that right now. She just nods.
“We have wheels up in about three hours, just so you know,” she says.
Bruce sighs shakily. He’s not as little as earlier, but just as scared. “I don’t wanna go, Mommy.”
Natasha can’t look him in the eye. He’s probably crying again, and she can’t cuddle him like she wants to, she can’t tell him it’s going to be okay, she can’t just protect him from this. It breaks her heart. “I don’t want to, either,” she says. “But there’s no choice. To fight the battles no one else can…sometimes we just have to be the kind of people no one else wants to be.”
Bruce nods. “I guess so.”
“I’ll leave you alone so you can get yourself together, okay?”
Bruce lets her leave, but before she shuts the door behind her he asks, “Can you—can you just put Pinkie on the jet, please? So I can cuddle with her on the way home?” A stuffed pig pokes through the crack in the door, and Natasha takes it.
Natasha takes Pinkie up to where their gear is being loaded onto the jet, and on her way back down, she stops in the living room. She hears a little noise coming from inside the blanket fort.
“Steve?” She asks, bending down to find that Steve has wedged himself into the back of the fort. “Hey, you need to come out and be a big boy for me, okay? I know you’d rather hang out in there, but—”
And just like that, the fort comes toppling down right on top of Steve. There’s a moment of silence before he tosses back the collapsed blankets and cushions to uncover himself. He pops up holding his shield and a sad little smile on his face. “It was holding up the fort,” he says simply, hooking it on his arm. He’s suited up and ready to go. “How long have we got?”
“An hour,” Nat tells him, a little shocked by what just happened. “Do any last-minute preparations and get your stuff up to the helipad.”
Steve nods like she’s given him an order.
By the time the quinjet is airborne, they’re Hawkeye, Captain America, Ironman, Dr. Banner, Black Widow, and Thor—the Avengers. They slip back into their team dynamic easily enough.
Pinkie watches from the mesh gear hold strapped above them. Bruce doesn’t take his eye off her the whole flight.