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They get together while Tony's still reeling, the palladium not quite out of his system. It's the best of both worlds: he's not actively dying, but he's sick enough to feel constantly high, and it's weird that Natasha is the one he wants to kiss when he's like this, that Natasha is Natasha at all and not prim and proper Natalie Rushman. That Natasha submitted her report to Fury then turned around and came back, all sweatpants and ponytails and soft worn jeans and t-shirts and bare feet and gentle hands that cradle his head against her thigh when he needs it, that hold him down and dig nails into his shoulders with just enough bite to last when he needs that instead. Natasha with her ability to banter with him and JARVIS in code, then bite his lip or his throat and have him helpless underneath her in seconds.
When he's well, he thanks her with spy gear. Plies her with present after present until she gets almost uncomfortable with it, until he realizes he maybe needs to stop and act normal about things. Until JARVIS reminds him what he usually means when he starts giving courting gifts like that. What he's craving.
What he needs to ask for.
Once he can work up the courage.
*
"You gotta hurt me," Tony says.
It's after New York, he's woken up screaming about aliens several times too often in the past few days, and she's still hurt - her arm, her ribs - but refusing to acknowledge it out loud, just letting him hold an ice pack to her chest on condition he says nothing about it. "What are you talking about?"
"In bed. Say yes. Please."
She looks up at him, seems to consider. "If you give me a backrub after."
"Done," Tony says. "See? It's that easy."
*
It's not that easy. She knows his tells - she's a spy who's studied him, after all. It turns out that means she's much worse at this than random strangers who only know him from the papers. She's attuned to every flinch, every time he almost tears up; checks in with him so often that it starts to wreck the mood.
"Nat, just go for it," Tony says. "Your whip. My shoulders. Come on. Pretend I'm one of your targets, in case that helps."
"That does not help," Natasha says. "None of them have safewords. That's because where they're going, they aren't going to need them."
"Is it bad that that's hot? - Okay, okay."
He manages to convince her not to look at his face for a while. He thinks it might be the hardest thing he's ever done; Natasha's stubborn. She's an expert with the whip, though, and with every blow he sees stars.
After some time, it's easy to get lost in the pain. Easy for the stars he sees to morph into the stars of another galaxy, alien armies poised and at the ready to attack. Easy to grit his teeth and bear it when the pain suddenly crosses some kind of threshold, easy as it's always been to tell himself this one was his fault, that he should have known about it, should find some kind of way to prevent Earth's downfall. Easy to hold back from safewording, to hold back his tears, until it's not.
*
"Tony. Tony. Bozhe moi, you're an idiot."
There is no pain any more, just the slightest twinge in his shoulders. Natasha's wrapped a blanket around him, her favourite ruby red one from the couch in the teleconference room. As he comes back down to himself, she pushes a glass of water into his hands, and he takes it and drinks, almost choking.
"Slow. Slower." He obeys. It works like a charm. He thinks she's magic. Then she comes closer, joins him under the blanket, kisses his cheek, and he knows she is.
"You still owe me a backrub, Stark," she says. "And an extra one for scaring me like that."
"You're great," Tony says. "I'll paint your nails."
"You'll do that, and you'll learn to use your safeword, too. I will drill you, Tony - you'd better believe it."
"Sure," he says. "Sure." But he's thinking of ways to beat the Chitauri once and for all - thinking of ways to save her, and to save the world.