Given how big his own family had been, he should be used to knocking elbows and even accidentally kicking someone sitting across from him beneath the table. But it'd been a long, long time since he had sat around a table—slightly smaller than this one—and had been almost been sitting on top of another person. Despite preferring the quiet life, he did like it. There was a reason why he liked being at the Wilson home—it was noisy, but not overly so. Even when Sarah gently reprimanded him for encouraging AJ's little habit of being particular and letting other people do things for him, he knew it wasn't unwelcome.

All he did was hum, something low and hopefully noncommittal. The Russian was slightly unsettling; he was still trying to tame that natural instinct to flinch whenever someone spoke to him in that language, but he knew the moment she spoke the first word it wasn't going to be an utterance of his trigger words. Natasha was still someone he was trying to figure out. Steve trusted her, but Steve would also trust a bee after it stung him.

He remained hunched over and tilted his head toward her. Quietly, he joked, "I'm going to end up with a bruised arm."

As if anything could bruise him these days.