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Something about Cold Spring, New York made it always feel as if it was a living, breathing postcard. From the bustling independent shops in restored historic buildings to the nature surrounding it. But the real magic was found in the holiday season, when every shop would do its part to make the town feel a little more festive.
The sound of holiday music seemed to carry down the street with every step.
Wanda Maximoff was doing her part to spread the cheer, having delivered most of the poinsettias sitting in the window displays of all the shops along the main strip. The Flower Witch had been her baby for the past five years, having taken over when the local florist retired after 45 years of business.
Wanda had been an apprentice under Agatha Harkness, the original owner, and took it on when she decided to retire and move back to the city to see her grandchildren more often.
“You’re late.”
“No, you’re early,” Wanda quipped, pulling open the glass door to her shop. “I was out getting sustenance.”
Dropping the hot pink bakery box on the counter to make her point, she cracked open the lid and bit into a still-warm croissant.
“Well, apparently, I became a mailman this morning, because you have a package,” Natasha said, eyes drifting towards the box of pastries. The almond croissants were her favourite. “The guy at the bookstore said he’d been holding it for you all week.”
“Oh really? But I didn’t order anything.”
“Don’t try to act shocked, Wanda. Lies don’t suit you,” Natasha chided, already digging through the pastries to pull out her treat of choice. “We both know you’ve been magically acquiring a lot of books— pretty regularly by my count, and yet you still haven’t gone on a real date with this guy. So, I guess you haven’t told him yet?”
Wanda sighed, knowing she wasn’t about to get this one past her friend and colleague.
“Not outright, but I’ve been spending most of my breaks over there. Out to lunches and coffees,” Wanda rambled off, trying to ignore the twist in her gut. “Oh! And I’ve been sending him flowers every week.”
“Flowers?”
Reverting to adjusting the buckets of loose flowers by her workbench, Wanda tried to guard her expression. Sending flowers was the least she could do. It was neighbourly, even. In fact, she used the weekly bouquet to wind down each week, tweaking each arrangement just enough to keep things interesting for her.
“Yes, a bouquet. For the shop,” Wanda explained with a shrug.
Natasha’s eyes nearly bugged out of her skull.
“You aren’t charging him for those?”
Buchanan Books was just down the way. Two buckets of red and white poinsettias sat in the window and an especially fresh bouquet of purple roses by the cash register. They specialized in old books; misprints, out of prints, and first editions, mainly, but they always had a table of the latest releases.
They never hesitated to special order or source something for the right client.
James Buchanan Barnes— Bucky, to some —was the owner, having taken control of the operation eight years ago. His father had never been interested in owning a bookstore; he’d been more interested in the bottom of a bottle somewhere far away from home. No, it had been his grandfather’s venture, passed down when he passed when James was just 22.
Fearing taking over an entire business on his own, James enlisted the help of Clint Barton, long-time friend and part-owner.
“Did you bring coffee?” Clint asked, seemingly half-asleep behind the till, heels kicked up on the desk as he leaned back in his chair.
“Didn’t get a chance,” Bucky said, trying to ignore the disappointed look on Clint’s face. “I’ll have to go out and get some. Drop off that order for Sam while I’m there.”
“Oh, speaking of orders, the flower delivery girl dropped off your usual, by the way.”
That week’s delivery was still sitting at the till, admired by several customers as they checked out. James could never understand how Wanda got them to be that particular shade of purple, matching the sign outside the store to a T. He’d boiled it down to magic, frankly.
Clint didn’t look as impressed, hands behind his head as he stared at James across the room, waiting for some sort of commentary that he wasn’t about to offer.
Rolling his eyes at the silence, Clint huffed, “She’s been sending you flowers for weeks, man.”
James faltered for a second, stopping to smell the roses Clint was gesturing towards before putting on his ditziest voice and flipping his hair back, just to piss him off.
“But that’s, like, her job?”
In truth, he didn’t want to talk about it. Not to Barton, not like this.
Maybe not ever.
Clint groaned, “I know you’re trying to play dumb here, man, but you’ve seen them, right? Purple roses? There’s always purple roses in the bouquets she sends over.”
James shrugged, “I thought it was just to match the branding for the store?”
“You idiot,” Clint admonished with a sigh, wrenching his feet off the desk to level with him on solid ground. “Even I know those flowers are expensive, even if I haven’t bought flowers for anyone since the ’90s. You’re clueless, Barnes.”
Meanwhile, down the street, Natasha Romanoff wasn’t quite done with her interrogation.
Wanda was hoping to avoid the conversation, quickly slotted herself back in front of her workbench to work with the last of the stems still sitting in plastic buckets. Shears in one hand, a vase in the other. Propped up on top of the desk she was supposed to be sitting behind, she watched Wanda put together a holiday bouquet in candy cane reds and whites.
“So I was right? He sent you these?” Natasha asked, and Wanda peeked over her shoulder to find her thumbing through the stack of books on the check-out desk.
Wanda nodded and returned to her work, “One a week, just after his flowers get delivered.”
The pile was a half-dozen books tall, bookmarks already sticking out of a few near the bottom. Wanda had spent a few nights reading through them herself, usually, on those sleepless nights she’d wandered down from her apartment above the store, restless.
There had been a lot more of those nights recently.
Her grandmother used to tell her that bottling things up, leaving things unsaid, ticked down like little time bombs inside her. And, between the churning in her stomach and the way she instinctively stiffened passing the bookstore down the street, she was starting to think it was true.
“Wanda, you’re hopeless,” Natasha sighed, tracing a fingernail down the stacked spines. “William Morris’s Flowers, Vintage Roses,The Art of Edible Flowers… Boy looks like he’s coming up awkward in the feelings department too. Just grow a pair and ask him out already.”
Wanda bit her lip. This was silly. Not her dancing around their feelings, but that he would even feel the same way, to begin with. It was presumptuous and a little reckless. Neither words she’d ever use to describe herself; she’d typically fall somewhere between shy and bookish.
Ironic, considering the situation.
“You really think I’m not being clear enough?” Wanda asked in a small voice, setting down her shears and turning to look at Natasha. “You think… Do you think he’s even interested?”
Natasha softened a little at her friend’s deflation, hopping down from the counter and taking her rightful spot behind the till.
“Well, him sending you books isn’t exactly nothing,” Natasha mused like she was making a pros and cons list in her head. “But boys are dumb. If you’re not using language a six-year-old would understand, you might as well be communicating through interpretive dance.”
Uncaffeinated Clint Barton was not a sight James would wish on his worst enemy. Clint seemed to get progressively snappier as the minutes bled on, and there was only so much paperwork that could suck James in enough to tune out his grumblings.
James quickly grabbed the one marked ‘Sam Wilson’ in black sharpie after rifling through the craft paper-wrapped deliveries on the back table.
“I’ll get you your goddamn coffee, you lout,” James grumbled over his shoulder as he headed towards the local cafe.
At this point, he was looking for any excuse to get out of his partner’s hair.
He had to dodge the silver tinsel hung over the entryway on his way out— begrudgingly placed there after a couple of comments on his former Grinch-dom.
Say what he would about the holiday, but Cold Spring was definitely a Christmas town through and through. Each and every window display spoke to the season somehow, with enough public peer pressure aired out in (sometimes tense) town hall meetings in the fall. It was one of those small-town charms James had been told so much about, as a transplant from the big city.
The bell overhead jingled as he stepped into the bustling cafe. He hadn’t even gotten to the cash when the barista called out to him, “Two Americanos for James, right?”
The knowing everyone’s name thing, though? That was one part of small-town life he expected.
James smiled and nodded at the young brunet behind the counter, Peter Parker. May, his aunt and guardian, was further into the kitchen, popping her head up from the dough she was kneading at the sound of Peter’s voice.
“Hi James!”
“Hi, May,” James called back with a chuckle. “Save me any croissants?”
“Ah, I think you’re out of luck. I think the flower girls got the last of them,” Peter confirmed, thumbing back the door to the display case to check for stragglers. He was halfway through the coffees, the first cup already waiting for James on the bar.
“You could always go over there and barter for some,” May added, waggling her eyebrows. “I’m sure Wanda would be open to that.”
Well, now it wasn’t just any flower girl; it was Wanda, huh?
Big cities had nothing on small town’s gossip grapevine, it seemed. James shook his head with a laugh, unsurprised but amused all the same. If he had a dollar for every comment slipped to him under breath, he’d be able to buy the unit next door to expand the shop.
“I guess I’ll have to settle for a muffin. Oh, and could you give this to Sam when he stops by?” James slid the package across the counter towards the wide-eyed Peter, still counting his change.
James took the coins before immediately dropping them into the tip cup and grabbing his order.
He could have sworn he heard a ‘well, I tried’ as he readied his tray and headed back out into the cold, but it was probably best he didn’t.
Wanda was about to chew her fingernails down to little nubs.
Natasha’s words just kept flowing through her head as she went into anxiety-induced deep cleaning mode.
Was this silly?
Was she really missing out on some long lost connection? Was James even interested? Wanda could have driven herself crazy with all the what-ifs swirling around her, suffocating her. No, she decided, tossing the rag she’d been mopping up her station with into a nearby bucket.
She was going to put her foot down and just do it. Just come out with it. How hard was it, after all, to just tell someone their feelings?
Considering how much her stomach hurt at the thought, she’d bet very.
With all the signals she’d thrown, Wanda didn’t know if all men were this oblivious or if the boys at the shop had thought of her as a kid for so long they’d forgotten she had feelings. But, either way, it was getting to be ridiculous.
She’d tried the eyes, a swipe at her lips with her fingertips, a brush against his arm. And there was the jokes she’d laughed at, the meals she’d made and shared with him, and the missions she’d volunteered to go out with him on. And sure, wiser women might think he wasn’t interested, and she was barking up the wrong tree. But wiser women didn’t feel the spark between them, that flicker, that pull.
She could see through to it, even with his straight face and cool expression.
But this wasn’t something she could just waltz over to the bookstore and do. That would be too unprofessional. Too many prying eyes and waiting ears. But it also couldn’t be done over text. No, this was something that just had to be done face-to-face.
The question was, where?
A jingle at the door made her whip her head around. Natasha wasn’t due back from her break for at least another twenty minutes, so whoever it was probably needed some service.
“Hi there, can I help…?”
The words seemed to die on her lips as she stared at him. Those blue eyes, the little bits of blond hair peeking out from under his beanie. That was Bucky Barnes’s best friend and the second-last person she wanted to see at this very moment.
“Hi, Wanda! Just picking up my order for today,” Steve Rogers said with a broad smile.
Wanda had to stop herself from spluttering, “Oh, your order. Of course. Let me go get that.”
She almost felt bad for the painfully awkward greeting but decided to shove that aside for her next sleepless night — alone, in her apartment— so she could put a little distance between them and maybe rid herself of the nervous blush starting to form. She stepped into the back cooler to find the arrangement he’d been looking for.
Red roses, a whole dozen of them, sitting packed and pretty.
“Do you need a card for these?” Wanda asked, finding Steve staring at the stack of books on the counter. He seemed to recoil at the sound of her voice, hands snapping into his coat pockets as he turned to answer her.
Was Steve Rogers nervous?
“No, no. Just the bouquet would be great.”
She smiled politely, ringing through the order as he thumbed through his wallet. Red roses meant romance and passion—something for someone very special. Wanda’s thoughts wandered towards the potential significant other at the end of that gift.
“Are you going to the tree lighting tonight at the festival?” Steve asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Wanda replied as cheerily as she could.
Lord knows she’d never hear the end of it from Natasha or town council if she didn’t attend. Apparently, the locals had a long memory of calling people out for not spreading the ‘holiday cheer.’
“Great. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
Tearing the receipt from the credit card machine and carefully handing over the bouquet, Wanda wished Steve a great afternoon and headed back to her spot at the back of the shop. The next ring, several minutes later, was Natasha.
“You figure out your boy trouble yet? Or future trouble, as it were.” Natasha asked, looking at her skeptically from her perch behind the cash.
“I’ll tell him at the festival,” Wanda decided, a little spur of the moment, out loud.
Sure, it was a little rash, and maybe it was a little out of character, but maybe Steve was onto something with his question, even if he didn’t know it himself. The snow, the lights, the giant tree in the center of town square… It seemed like the perfect place to find him in the crowd, maybe spend some time with him and ask him out on a proper date.
Officially.
But Natasha seemed pleased, eyes sparkling a little as the phone rang behind her.
“Good.”
James had only been back for five minutes when the phone rang for a custom order—one Stephen Strange and a compendium of the ‘utmost importance’ to be sourced. He was used to weird requests and challenging orders. So, James sat hunched over his desk in the backroom for longer than he would have liked, taking very detailed notes in scrawling graphite.
By the time he came up for air, he had realized a visitor was rapping his fingers against the wood desk and whistling low, “Purple roses, huh? One of you have an admirer?”
A very annoying visitor, if James had to be specific.
The man at the cash could have passed for James’s brother, especially when paired with how much time the two spent together. But while Steve Rogers wasn’t related to James by blood, they’d known each other the longest out of anyone in the small town.
And, like most of the rest of James’s family, he was incredibly nosey to boot.
“Admirer?” James snorted, sidling up to Clint’s side. He tried not to let his eyes wander over to the vase. “I don’t think people are coming here for anything but books, pal.”
“Hey!” Clint chided, reaching back to punch him playfully on the shoulder. “The company’s all right, I think.”
James snorted, “Says the chronic bachelor who’d probably punch someone if they tried to talk to them before coffee. Real neighbourly.”
Steve chuckled at the exchange, watching as Clint shoved his books in a bag as he rang up the rest of his order.
“Anyway, why’d you think someone has the hots for us, Steve?” Clint asked, hip-checking James, who was definitely infringing on his personal space.
James shot Clint a pointed look in return, trying hard not to roll his eyes.
“What? Apparently, I can use all the help I can get.”
James could feel Steve’s blue eyes locked on him. Oh no, he knew that look. That was the look of a meddler, a look of someone with an idiotic idea just waiting to bubble to the surface.
He suddenly regretted letting Barton steer the conversation right into his hands.
“Victorians used to believe certain flowers and colours had meanings. It used to be kind of an art form back in the day,” Steve said, brow furrowed and the ghost of a smirk on his lips. “Lavender roses mean ‘love at first sight.’”
“Oh really?” Clint sounded a little too pleased at the translation, head swivelling around to give James a toothy grin. “Leave it to our resident history buff to solve the mystery.”
“What mystery, Barton? They’re flowers. They don’t mean anything more than a nice, thoughtful gift,” James huffed. “Especially from a florist.”
“Buck,” Steve admonished with a shake of his head. “Even I think you should listen to Clint on this one. I think your flower witch is trying to send you a message.”
Clint looked proud at that one, “Yeah, you numbskull. You’re both speaking in code.”
Steve cleared his throat and added, “You know, I have it on good authority that she’ll be at the festival tonight.”
“How do you—?”
Steve grabbed the paper bag full of books, stashing a bouquet that had been under his arm on top of the books. Of course. He’d just visited her. The meddling and the mischief and the just happening to stop by unannounced. It all made sense now.
“She might have mentioned it, in passing, you know. Just in case,” Steve added with a wink.
“God, I’m friends with a bunch of assholes,” James groaned. “Bunch of nosey, bullying, peer-pressuring assholes.”
Clint waited for the twinkle of the chime before turning his shit-eating grin back to James.
“You gonna finally get your girl, Barnes?”
“Buzz off, Barton.”
Winterfest seemed to get bigger every year.
It used to just be a one-block stretch of street shut down for a few evenings the week before Christmas, but it always kicked off with the tree lighting festival. It was hard to imagine that the original tree, over fifty years ago now, was just six feet tall and had about twenty townsfolk in attendance.
But over the years, it grew and grew, with people from the surrounding cities coming in for the spectacle.
Today, the twenty-foot-tall tree was elegantly dressed in the middle of a wholly blocked off Main St., topped with ornaments crafted and donated by the local businesses and grade-schoolers. And while there was a chill in the air, there were enough people (a few hundred, at least) to take the edge off the wind and snow.
The hardest part, these days, was trying to find someone in said crowd.
Wanda probably should have known better than to leave it up to fate. She was a lifer, having spent all 24 years so far in the small town, through slushy ceremonies and green Christmasses. No matter the weather, it was always packed.
She probably should have sent a text and asked to meet up, but instead, she flitted from booth to booth, eyes sweeping the crowd for any sign of a familiar face.
“Wanda, hey!”
That wasn’t the voice she was expecting, looking over to see Sam Wilson holding a bag of freshly roasted chestnuts in one hand, his phone in the other.
“Sam! Nice to see you. How’re things?”
She strode up with a smile, checking to see if Steve was nearby. The firefighters were often causing trouble together —Wanda could count on one hand how many times she’d seen them apart— but it looked like Sam was flying solo tonight.
“Good, good. Thankfully haven’t had too many calls at the station this season, so that’s good,” he quipped. “How’s the store? Business good?”
“Business is great,” Wanda said with a smile. “The season for giving keeps me busy, you know.”
Wanda couldn’t help but keep watch over the crowd, trying not to let her shivering get the best of her as the wind picked up.
“You looking for someone?”
Sam’s voice cut into her field of vision, and when she looked back, he had a knowing grin on his face.
“Uh, no—” Wanda sputtered, breaking off into a breathy laugh. Caught. “Yeah, kind of.”
He patted her on the shoulder, brushing off some of the snow that had accumulated.
“Well, I know that look all too well.” With the glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes, he all but shooed her off, “Don’t let me stop you.”
Wanda was speechless at the interaction, managing a grateful not before she wove her way back through the crowd again. Spotting the cafe nearby, she thought she’d get some hot cocoa to keep her hands warm as she waited for the main event.
Of course, she would have, had she not almost had a tray full of the stuff end up on the front of her jacket as she fumbled her way into the entryway of the shop.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!!” Wanda cried out, trying desperately to steady the tray in the other person’s hands. They had been rushing out, and she had been rushing in, but thankfully their collision hadn’t ended with a dry cleaning bill.
It wasn’t until the drinks were secure and level that Wanda could even bring herself to look up at the vast expanse of blue eyes staring back at her.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Wanda called back, a little breathless. “I was—”
“—looking for me? What a coincidence,” James said with a smile. “I was looking for you.”
He couldn’t believe it. James swore he’d already lapped the event twice in the last twenty minutes, jittery under all the pent-up feelings and words that just kept circling his brain over and over…
“I, uh, wanted to,” James craned his head closer to try to hear her, so Wanda stepped towards him. Her breath made little clouds in the air between them. “Sorry, I wanted to thank you for the books.”
James shook his head, waving her off, “It was nothing. Thank you for the flowers. We get at least a few customers a day telling us how beautiful they look.”
Wanda could have blushed if she wasn’t already from the cold, but she tried to soldier on to what she really needed to say.
“James, I just… I wanted to ask you—”
“Wait, before you say anything, I wanted to tell you something,” James said, his mouth running away with him before he could catch up. “I just, I um. I really appreciate our lunches and the flowers, the occasional coffees, but…”
“But?”
“But I was wondering if maybe we could make it something more? Maybe let me take you out to dinner proper?”
“James, I…”
They seemed to be leaning towards each other now, her eyes darting from his down to his lips. His fingers held onto her coat to anchor him back down to earth because James was pretty sure whatever was going on, he was dreaming.
The jingle of an overhead bell snapped him right back into reality.
“Oh, sorry! Excuse us.”
It was that exact moment James and Wanda realized they were standing in front of a door, completely blocking the path of the strip’s cafe. A couple— wait, was that Steve?— stood with broad smiles.
“Sorry for this oaf,” the red redhead sniped, shooting Steve a dirty look.
He could only manage a sheepish grin in return, whispering an apology under his breath as he passed. Bucky watched as she punched him in the shoulder as they walked away, muttering something about ruining the moment as Wanda’s eyes came back up towards his.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the rosy cheeks, stretching to the tip of her nose, with either the cold or embarrassment at being walked in on. The smile started to fade from her lips, and he realized he had to act fast.
“So, uh, where were we?” James tried not to look like he’d just lost his nerve, shaky smile still on his face.
But thankfully Wanda was willing to take the lead.
“Mm, I think it went something like this,” Wanda said, gently tugging him closer and tilting her head up to meet his lips.
Her arms circled around his neck, and James couldn’t help but smile into the kiss. His hand curled itself into her hair, thumb gently brushing against her cheek. He’d dreamed of this moment — not that he’d ever say it out loud — but this exact sort of warmth and calm he’d never felt before.
It was electric. Magic. Perfect.
And if the tree lighting had happened during any part of that exchange (it did), they didn’t notice. Too wrapped up in each other in a little alcove, uncaring about Peter and May shooting each other proud looks inside the cafe, or Sam across the street watching on with that bit of glimmer full intact.
All they had at that moment was each other.