Chapter Text
Thanksgiving, 1999
They didn’t know her birthday, but when Natasha Romanov, previously known as Natalia Romanov or the Black Widow of Red Room fame, heard about the American holiday of Thanksgiving, she decided that she wanted that to be her birthday. This year, it’d be her eighteenth. Who was Clint Barton to disagree? It was a surprisingly sentimental move from the seventeen-going-on-thirty-year-old assassin turned spy who seemed disinclined to feeling, much less admitting, normal emotions.
(Whenever she met with the SHIELD psychologist, she described her emotional state as “Fine”. When the poor psychologist tried to suggest that “fine” was not, in fact, a feeling, she had calmly overturned his table and walked out of the room. He had chased after her, shouting that what she was feeling was anger and frustration.
She had shouted back over her shoulder, “No, I still feel fine.”
Coulson had elbowed Clint rather hard in the ribs when Clint couldn’t help laughing at the entire scene. Needless to say, no one asked Natasha about her emotions after that. Clint thought the psychologist was just an idiot. She didn’t need the words to explain what she was feeling. Clint could read it plain as day on her face. Maybe he spent more time with her than most people, but he knew when she was happy, or confused, or excited, or disappointed.)
Clint had come to SHIELD five years before she had, and he was not a fan of holidays. They only reminded him of lonely times, and what he didn’t have that most people had: a loving family. When she picked it as her birthday (“It’s a holiday about gratitude, Barton. I’m allowed to pick it as my birthday. It’s symbolic.”), he had groaned inwardly. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to celebrate her birthday. It was that Clint could barely handle getting through a single holiday where he wasn’t expected to talk or socialize or act like he liked anyone. He only had to cope. And cope for a few hours he could do. Combining celebrations? Nope. He wanted no part of it.
Natasha had been with SHIELD for nine months, and had just been cleared to go into the field as his partner. It hadn’t taken nearly that long for him to realize that it was hard to say no to her. And there was no way in hell he was explaining why he was recalcitrant. If there was anyone who probably had it worse than Clint when it came to loneliness and family, it was Natasha.
For the last five years, Coulson had dragged Barton out of his apartment and to Coulson’s house in Williamsburg where the SHIELD misfits gathered for the holiday. They all brought a dish, those of the organization who had no other family. It had surprised Clint the first time. Turned out everyone he liked was just as homeless and orphaned in the world as he was.
There was Maria Hill, the sharp-eyed, keen and dry agent who seemed like she was on the accelerated path to leadership. There was Hanna Cross, the girl from Intel who wore the craziest earrings in the world, spoke a dozen languages or more, and baked the best cupcakes Clint had ever tasted. There was Joshua Darwin, another field agent like Clint, with a background not unlike Clint’s at all. Joshua had grown up in the Midwest with a traditional family. They kicked him out when they found out he was gay. He joined the Army in an attempt to recloset himself and found that he was an excellent sharpshooter. He left when Coulson made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: do his job, get paid more, and be as out as he wanted to be.
Clint rather liked their misfit Thanksgivings, though he’d never admit it to Coulson. The more that group got together, the more the memories of past Thanksgivings which were less loving and less full of gratitude and good food faded in his mind. He just couldn’t take a lot on that day. If the others noticed he was unusually quiet and that he mostly stood at the oven, essentially watching his casserole cook, they didn’t say anything. The best thing about other misfits was that they understood the need to find one’s own space even in a crowded place.
And there was Natasha, just adding to the festivities.
“A birthday,” he growled under his breath, stalking up and down the rows of the bookstore, looking for a present. “I’ll have to talk.”
“It’s Natasha,” Coulson repeated patiently, picking up a book and scanning the back cover. “She’s possibly the only person you don’t actually mind talking to.”
“Other than you,” corrected Clint, picking up a book on Stalin and reading the back cover.
“No. You are not getting her a book about Stalin. Put that back down.” Coulson plucked it from Clint’s hands and put it back on the shelf. “Books are for escapism, Barton. Think about what she might want to read that has nothing to do with her past or her career.”
Clint frowned. “I don’t know.”
Coulson picked up a book and shoved it into Clint’s hands. “This. This is what she wants, Clint. Go buy that.”
Clint did. He had long ago discovered that Coulson’s advice was usually worth following. Not that Clint didn’t have relationships in which Coulson did not mettle, but very few of them were longstanding deep friendships like the one he was beginning to form with the violent little creature he fondly called Natashka. He was standing in line, reading the back of the cover of the book Coulson picked out, when she called him.
“What time do I have to be there tomorrow?” She skipped the pretense of hello, how are you, good, and you? Great. Cool, what’s up? Because it was Natasha and she didn’t do small talk. It was one of the reasons Clint liked her so much.
“Um. Four?” Clint looked at Coulson for confirmation. Coulson shrugged. Clint would be there earlier watching his casserole cook. That was not a metaphor. “Four, yeah.”
“Where are you?” Curiosity filled her tone. “I hear people.”
He looked around the bookstore. “Lots of them. An absurd amount of them considering it’s two days until Black Friday. I’m at a bookstore.”
“Why?”
He looked at the book in his hands. “Getting you a birthday present.”
Coulson muttered, “So much for a surprise.”
Natasha made a delighted noise. Clint smiled a bit, relieved. “A present? Why?”
“That’s what we do. We give presents.”
“For Thanksgiving?”
“No, for birthdays.” He looked up without seeing anything in front of him. “You didn’t do that in Russia?”
There was a long pause and then her words came, heavily weighed. “Maybe they do that in Russia. I don’t know. We didn’t do it where I was.”
Clint decided that the misery of going out into a crowded store, having to pick out a present, and being forced to be social tomorrow on what was now a double holiday would be worth it to give her her very first birthday present. “Well. New tradition. You get a birthday present.”
“It’d be enough,” she said quietly, “just to have a new holiday about gratitude.”
“I know,” he said, handing the clerk the book and his credit card. “It’d be enough. Enough falls short though, doesn’t it?”
He heard the soft exhale of her breath through the phone. He had heard it before when they went on practice missions through the comm. units. She didn’t say much while Clint signed the receipt and took the bag, heading toward the door to wait for Coulson who had a large stack of books. Clint didn’t hang up and didn’t press Natasha for an answer.
“See you tomorrow?” she asked finally.
He nodded, and then cleared his throat. “Yes. Tomorrow.”
Coulson insisted that he let the gift wrappers at the table by the door wrap the book. “I’ve seen the way you wrap presents, Barton. Just this once, will you let someone else make it look nice?”
“I’m not trying to impress her,” argued Barton. “It’s Romanov. She’s never had a present before, or a birthday. I mean, honestly, it won’t take much. I could hand it to her in this bag.”
“Just because you can,” Coulson said, smiling at the confused older woman wrapping the book, “doesn’t mean you should.”
The next day, Clint watched Natasha come through the door, small and wary, wearing a navy blue dress that made her red hair and blue eyes stand out. He could see the outline of a knife in her belt and knew she was armed as much as she ever was. She scanned the room, her eyes running up and down the windows, over the doors, counting the exits. Her eyes met his and her mouth twitched a bit, a repressed smile.
She crossed through the kitchen, unaware of the eyes following her, of the eyebrows raising when she stands in front of Clint. He wanted to glare at the others, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. “I heard you make a sweet potato casserole.”
He pointed to the oven. “Don’t touch. It’s hot.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.” She tilted her head slightly. “I am thankful that you are really bad at shooting with your left arm, in the dark, over six hundred meters, with a concussion.”
He couldn’t stop the grin. “We share our gratitudes before dinner, kitten.”
“Say kitten again and you’ll be grateful you still have your balls,” she answered without blinking an eye.
Maria snorted behind her and said, “Watch out, Romanoff. I’m about to stuff a bird.”
It wasn’t such a bad Thanksgiving, for all of Clint’s trepidation about how much would be required of him in a single day. Besides, he got to force Natasha to watch her first football game.
“You’re an American now!” he said gleefully.
She stared at the screen. “Now I know why the rest of the world thinks Americans are cultural vaccuums.”
Maria pointed a finger at her. “Insult the Saints again and we’re going to have words. I don’t care how many people you’ve killed with your thighs.”
“Oh,” said Clint, like that reminded him. He got up and found the bag with the wrapped book by the door. He shoved it in Natasha’s general direction. “Present.”
She hesitated, then took it with careful hands. She raised her eyebrow at him, asking permission, and he shrugged, shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot. She carefully pulled out the book from the bag, turning it over and examining the skiing snowmen wrapping paper. She set down the bag and unwrapped the book with nimble, slow moving fingers. Clint was caught in a trance by her.
“Mistborn,” she said carefully, reading the title. “By Brandon Sanderson. Is it good?”
“I don’t know,” Clint admitted shyly. “Not much of a reader. Coulson helped me pick it out.”
Natasha’s eyes never lifted from the book. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “Happy birthday, Natasha.”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Clint.”
He was grateful, without knowing exactly why.