p • r • e • s • s • u • r • e

I Get it

He smiles.

"What?" She asks.

Goddamn woman, I'm just smiling. Why's she so suspicious.

"Nothin'. Just remembering shit."

She smiles too, and he knows what she's thinking.

The dabbing turns to full-on wiping and he winces.

"I wish I could say you were less of a mess then. You've just gotten better at hiding it."

He grumbles at that.

"I'm not... that bad," he offers, weakly.

She stops and grabs a bandaid.

"Tony, you just threw your own body down the stairs. Intentionally. Those are not the actions of someone who 'isn't that bad.'"

He rolls his eyes.

"Or maybe, your perception of what is 'not that bad' is skewed."

"Doubtful," is all she says.

The wrappers are tossed in a nearby trash can and Natasha returns the box of supplies to its spot underneath the sink. Tony's about to leave his chair and escape downstairs but she pushes him back down.

"Take off your shirt."

He frowns.

"Wow Nat, I didn't know you felt that way-"

"I need to make sure you didn't break anything."

Tony rolls his eyes.

"Natasha. I don't need you to mother me! I'm fine. Nothing hurts."

She raises an eyebrow and punches him in the ribs. It's not hard, but it's not soft either and he groans low in his throat, feeling an unnerving clicking in his ribcage and a blinding pain.

"That's what I thought. Take off the shirt."

"I can't, Nat. I-I'll leave it on. I'll be fine."

"What don't you want me to see?"

He flails.

"I don't-maybe I don't want to disrobe in front of my colleague?"

She laughs out loud.

"Bullshit. What are you hiding?"

"Nothing. I'm not hiding anything, I just resent being hounded."

She straddles his lap and holds a hand by his neck.

"I'm not leaving until you remove. Your shirt."

"Tasha-" he mutters, reaching to shove her off.

"Try it, I'll choke you."

He sighs in exasperation.

"Okay, fine."

He struggles to peel the top from his skin under Natasha's weight.

"Can you-can you fucking move, please? I'll behave."

She nods and stands in front of him, looking down, her whole body screaming ' don't fuck with me'.

Tony drapes the shirt over the armrest and can't seem to meet her eyes.

Scars, dozens of them, line his chest and torso. Weird scars. Spots and wide, shallow scars that look like they might be stretch marks, but far too violent for that to be the case. She reaches out and runs a hand along the raised and dippled marks, his warm, patterned skin. She feels along his ribcage and Tony winces.

"Yeah, you cracked a couple ribs. You'll be fine, just be careful. Maybe use the elevators."

Her gaze flits down to his gauged out wrist, the word 'monster' spelled out in scar tissue. She gulps.

"Don't think you got that from the fall, right?"

Natasha nods toward his forearm.

He sighs.

"No, no I didn't."

She puts her hands on his shoulders and spins him around, despite his protests.

"Nat, I really don't think-"

"Holy shit," she breathes.

"That's what I was trying warn you about, but-"

"Holy shit-what the fuck..."

He can hear her breathing hard, and he realises that she let her guard down.

She's being herself, now. This isn't a front.

"Tony, please tell me you didn't do this to yourself. Please, please tell me this isn't what I think it is."

He turns around to look at her and he could have sworn there were tears in her eyes.

I guess she's human after all.

"Depends on what-" he starts, but thinks better of it.

Now's not the time to be a snarky asshole.

"It's just an old battle injury."

"Don't bullshit me. You know that's not true. You did this, didn't you? To yourself?"

He just nods.

"God, Tony...why the fuck would you do that?"

He sighs and quickly throws his shirt on, over the scars that crisscross his back.

"Because it's what I deserve."

She looks at him with-

Wait, that isn't pity.

...understanding?

The fuck?

She sighs and plunks down on the ottoman.

"I get it," she says.

Something clicks.

Natasha shoots back up onto her feet to grab a bottle of vodka and a glass from the shelf and pours a shot, hands the glass to Tony and takes a swig from the bottle herself. It hangs heavy from her thin wrist.

"I get it. You know I've got red in my ledger. And yeah, I don't mind some of it being there. Some of it should be there," she murmurs with a curl of her lip, followed by another sip of alcohol.

Nat bites her lip and covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes meet his.

"But I know mine will only make it redder."

With that, she pours another shot in Tony's glass and heads upstairs with the rest of the bottle. 

A/N

Hey! I wanted to thank you guys so much for 2k reads, holy shit! I've never ever gotten that many on any of my work anywhere, and it's ironic because I feel like this is one of my shittier stories. I encourage you to check out some of my other stuff-in addition to Marvel I write for Harry Potter, Good Omens, and Doctor Who.