Work Text:
"Natasha? Hey there..." Sam stood in the doorway looking down at her with a confused expression. He didn't look displeased to see her, but the furrow of his brow told her that he was expecting this to be an Avengers visit, her showing up at his door to drag him off into another firefight. Suddenly her reason for coming seemed incredibly unimportant. She wished she'd taken more than two seconds to think about that before she drove over to his apartment. It was a Saturday, so he'd probably been enjoying a nice relaxing afternoon before she showed up. Now he was standing in his doorway with stiff shoulders thinking the free world was under attack. Again.
"Tasha, is everything okay?" Sam asked, when she didn't respond to his greeting.
"I don't have a favorite song," she blurted, the words escaping without her permission. Natasha frowned. Her mouth had never betrayed her like that before. Sam's eyebrows rose in surprise at her words. "It’s just, Tony and Bruce and the others were talking about their favorites and they wanted to know what mine was, but I don’t…I'm sorry. This is stupid. I should...I should go," she decided aloud, taking a step back to leave.
Sam reached out to her, stopping just short of grasping her biceps. When she paused, he cautiously covered the last of the space, his big hands coming to rest on her arms. He said, "It's okay. You could go, if you want, but I'd like it if you stayed." She met his eyes and found them entirely genuine. Natasha nodded and stepped toward him.
Sam dropped his hands and made space for her to pass in the doorway, before shutting the door behind her. "Were you busy?" she asked. She turned to look at him as he shrugged.
"Not really. I was just doing some reading..." Natasha quickly scanned the room and spotted Sam's discarded hardcover lying open on his coffee table. "Don't feel like you're interrupting, though, I've been putting that book off for weeks." Sam laughed, rubbing the back of his neck as if he was embarrassed that he couldn't find the time to sit down and read in between his busy schedule of social work and saving the world. Natasha rolled her eyes.
Sam had this way about himself that Natasha couldn't understand. Sam was so kind, so trusting, so good, and yet he could be brutal when the time came. He was strong, and intelligent, and an unprecedented airman, but he was somehow so humble, so lowkey, that most people overlooked him for the more flashy heroes in the field. And that was exactly the way he liked it. He helped people without inviting the fame and glory, Natasha suspected, just so that he could maintain a low enough profile to continue to give his all to the soldiers down at the VA. And for some reason he didn't understand how amazing that made him.
Sam went into the kitchen, leaving her standing in his living room. He raised his voice to suggest that she take a seat on the couch, so she did, silently. Natasha took a moment to wrap herself in the feeling of being in a home, absorbing the natural light pouring in through the west facing windows. Sam joined her a minute later, two tall glasses of milk balanced in one hand and a package of Oreos in the other. When she looked at him questioningly he explained, "If we're going to find you a favorite song we'll need snacks." He set the contents of his hands down on the coffee table and walked over to turn on the iHome he had set up on the entertainment center. "What genres of music do you like?"
She didn't really have preferences, that was the problem. She'd never had to develop her own music taste all these years; her aliases usually came prepackaged with a set of likes and dislikes that she went by. Sam must've been able to tell she was blanking from her expression. "Let's try this," he said encouragingly. "What kinds of music don't you like?" he asked, making his way back to the couch with his iPod.
"Country," she said immediately, her nose wrinkling.
Sam laughed at that. "All country, no exceptions?" he asked. She shrugged. "I don't know, I could do without a lot of the modern stuff, but a little Johnny Cash never hurt nobody." Natasha was familiar with the name Johnny Cash, but she'd never really listened to his music. She told Sam as much. He sat beside her and commenced to scrolling through what appeared to be thousands of songs. "Here, listen to this." He tapped the screen and a moment later a man's voice came through the speakers dispersed throughout Sam's living room, saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," met with applause. Natasha listened to the song with a tilted head, enjoying the deep tone of his voice and the simple backing instruments.
When the song faded out he turned to her and asked, "So?" He was sitting close enough that she had to look up to meet his eyes.
"I...I liked it," she told him. Sam smiled, happy to have found something in the right direction on the first try. She couldn't help but smile back. She continued, "I don't think it's my favorite, though." Instead of fading, his smile widened some, as if he invited the challenge.
"Let's try something else, then," he said.
They listened to a few more Cash songs and a couple by Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson before deciding to switch genres, letting the iPod shuffle through the various songs in each genre. Natasha found out that she liked old school Hip Hop, but modern Rap didn't quite do it for her, and by the end of her second A Tribe Called Quest song they'd broken out the cookies.
They tried Pop, but Natasha didn't like the sounds of Katy Perry or Taylor Swift. She was partial to Ariana Grande, though, and she'd found herself humming along to a few Beyonce songs while she leaned into Sam's shoulder. She liked R'n'B, especially because Sam softly sung along to most of those songs. She'd never appreciated how music could be so rich or tell a story so well.
By the time they'd transitioned into Rock, they'd both eaten their fill of cookies and milk, and she was sitting snugly under one of Sam's arms. The sun had begun to set, throwing long shadows toward their spot on the couch. Natasha found she was into the classics, much to Sam's delight. Unfortunately, she still hadn't heard a song that screamed 'favorite'. They were just listening to Sam's entire library on shuffle at this point.
"Hey, Sam?" she asked. He hummed a question mark. "How do you know when a song is your favorite? Is it something you just know once you hear it?"
Sam cleared his throat, clearly taking a moment to think about his answer. "It's more complicated than that, I'd say. To me, a favorite song is something that you feel, rather than something you choose. You hear it, and it inspires you, or it takes you home, or it reminds you of who you are. Sometimes you just know that a song is special as soon as you hear it, but for others you may not know until it starts to carry some weight for you."
Natasha turned her head so that her cheek pressed against his chest, eyes turning up to look at his face. She could only see the sharp lines of his bottom jaw from where she was, but she kept looking because, really, it was a fantastic jaw. "How did you find your favorite?" she asked.
Sam looked up at the ceiling, resting his head on the back of the couch. He took a deep, slow breath before answering. "I sort of inherited mine," he admitted. "See, it's my mom's favorite too. Every Sunday of my childhood, my mom, my siblings, and I would go to church and hear my daddy's sermon first thing in the morning. And then we'd head home and change out of our good clothes and into something more grungy to help mom with the chores. I was always in charge of the sweeping, from the time I could hold a broom." Natasha could barely see his smile, looking up the long expanse of his neck to his face, but she could definitely hear it in his voice. "My mom liked to play music to make it fun while we worked, and she always started off with Feeling Good by Nina Simone. It stuck with me." He smiled down at her, eyes soft with happy memories. "Wanna hear it?"
Natasha nodded, because she was suddenly desperate to hear the song that could put that look on Sam's beautiful face. Sam quickly found it in his library and tapped play, the thumb of his other hand rubbing lightly up and down Natasha's bicep.
The song began with no musical backing, just the singer's voice. "Birds flying high, you know how I feel," the woman sang against the silence. "Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me. Yeah it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me...Ooh, and I'm feeling good." And then the music began, slow and robust and full of emotion, and Natasha understood. Eyes closed, she listened. She could hear Sam in the song, his open nature, his depth, the ease with which he embraced the best things in life. She thought that she wanted to hear herself in it too.
She blinked her eyes open again when the short song had faded to its end. "Play it again?" she requested. Sam tapped the repeat button and sank a little further into the couch, taking some more of her weight on his chest. They watched to sky settle into a dark purple as the sun disappeared below the horizon. Natasha asked, "Do you think Mrs. Wilson would mind sharing with one more person?"
Sam lowered his head, his chin resting atop her curls. "Mom will be delighted, Tasha," he answered. He pressed a kiss against her hair and immediately froze, as if he'd done it without thinking and was suddenly afraid he'd ruined the moment. Slowly, she tilted her face up to place a small kiss on his lips, a gesture of forgiveness, permission, thanks. He untensed, understanding. Then they pulled away from each other and released two long sighs of contentment.
Natasha smiled. She had found her favorite song.