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Day 5: Silent Night
“Silent night” is playing on the radio - again.
Clint sighs. It’s not like he actively dislikes that song, not really. But truth be told, he might just start to hate it. It’s been all over the radio non-stop. The only times it stops is to make space for the just as endless loops of “Last Christmas” and this is the only radio station they can get here, in the SHIELD safehouse in the middle of nowhere. So, scratch that statement about him not actively hating this music. He totally does.
Turning off the radio or the fact that Clint is almost completely deaf without his aids doesn’t help. At all. The catchy tunes are stuck in his head, no matter what, and he is about to murder someone.
Unfortunately for this urge, there is no one around but Phil, and he really doesn’t want to murder Phil. So Clint makes do with glaring at the radio and tuning it off with a snarl.
“Goddammit!”
“Everything okay?” comes the question from the next room over, followed by Phil entering the kitchen. His reports are abandoned on the coffee table and he looks concerned. Clint is slumping back onto his chair by the kitchen table, parting knife and half chopped vegetables forgotten.
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t sound like it at all. Phil can tell that something isn’t right, but he doesn’t ask. If Clint wants to talk, he’ll do so in his own time, Phil knows by now. The two of them have been working together for years, forming a surprisingly quick friendship. Sleeping together is still new. So is getting to know more about each other, but they’re working on that. They’ve been pretty successful so far.
Phil pulls out another chair from the table, sits down and starts chopping carrots in silence. With a long exhale, Clint picks up the knife and continues to slice potatoes in perfect little cubes. There is no need to be this precise, since they’ll be blended into soup anyway, but he takes his time, finding comfort in the repetitive task at hand.
After a while, Clint breaks the silence.
“It’s just. There’s christmas crap everywhere. Every city, every village is full of it. It’s on TV, on the radio. You can’t escape it. Not even here, unless you shut everything off.”
After a small pause, in which he dumps the potatoes into a big pot, Clint continues,
“I know it’s supposed to be nice and festive and you’re supposed to like it, yadda yadda. But… Well. I’m not sure if I can do that.” He shrugs helplessly. “There is a reason I always volunteer for work over the holidays.”
Phil is listening in silence but with his full attention. He responds slowly, careful to avoid potential triggers. They’re on thin ice, but Clint has opened up that far, and he takes that as a good sign.
“Holidays… Can be hard. Especially when there are unpleasant memories attached to them.”
This is a nice way to put it - he knows the file about Clint, even knows a few more personal details that his partner told him so far.
“I understand. And it’s okay if you want nothing to do with it.”
For a little while, Clint remains silent, sitting on his chair without moving or blinking. He’s staring at a spot on the wall, and Phil worries that he might have said something wrong. But then, Clint nods, finishes the potatoes, gathers Phil’s carrots and picks up the full pot from the table. He puts it on the stove and adds water.
On his way back, he drapes himself over Phils shoulder and hugs him. Phil leans close, reaching up with one hand to interlace their fingers. Clint tightens his embrace in response, and the two of them stay like this for a while. They don’t need a lot of words.
Only when they move to the couch, the two of them let go of each other. They curl up around one another and rest for a bit while the soup is cooking in the kitchen.
It’s dark outside, and there is another blast of wind howling around the house. New snow is falling with it and the small ice crystals are sticking to the windows.
The safe house is surrounded by a few trees, but it’s not enough to keep the chill away that is creeping in through every single crack. Thankfully, they have a working fireplace in the corner. It fills the room with warmth, and the scent of burning wood is always comforting.
Clint is sharing a large blanket with Phil and they are wrapped around each other, dozing a bit while they wait for the kitchen timer to go off. The blanket is hand knitted and lumpy. None of the colours of yarn go together and it’s ugly as all hell - probably the result of some Agent’s boredom, but it’s warm and comfortable and serves its purpose beautifully.
“Hey.” Clint says after a while, causing Phil to raise his head from the shoulder he’d been dozing on.
“Hmm?”
“You know what the worst part is? About the holidays.” he clarifies, and Phil is a lot more awake by then.
“Which part?” he asks, rubbing small circles with his thumb over the calloused hand holding his.
Clint’s hands are some of Phil’s favourite parts of him. They’re broad and rough from the years of archery, physical work and combat. Those hands are skilled in many ways, not just job related, but Clint can be so incredibly gentle, whenever he needs to be. Archery is, again, one of those factors - it requires not only strength but also precision, especially since Clint designs his own trick arrows whenever he’s got the time. But even more so, he is always careful, always gentle when he interacts with other people. Injured colleagues, civilians, children, animals. Most of all, he is gentle with Phil, in so many different ways, and it’s a wonderful, loving thing - a rare sign of unconditional trust.
Phil loves that about him, those contrasts. And he trusts him with his life, just as much as Clint trusts him with his.
They know with absolute certainty that they will always have each other back, never leaving the other behind, in the field just as much as outside of it. Both of them know loneliness, as well as paranoia. And yet, they trust each other enough to be able to give and receive a neck massage.
For people like them, who have had to kill with bare hands sometimes, snapping necks like small twigs, touching a partners neck is much more intimate than sex.
Safety and happiness - they’ve found just that, and they’re everything for one another. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they’re this lucky.
“You know what the worst part is? About the holidays.” Clint asks, and Phil is listening.
“It’s that a part of me wants to like them. And I don’t know if I ever can.” His voice is hushed and sad as he confesses this, and it just about breaks Phil’s heart. He leans closer to Clint, until their foreheads are touching.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“Still. Is there anything I can do to help? Apart from keeping the music and decorations away from you for now.”
The last bit actually makes Clint smile a little bit, despite everything. He smiles despite old and painful memories of loud arguments, burning christmas stockings and throbbing bruises. Ringing ears and then, silence. At least he didn’t have to hear the arguments then. Later, all of this turned into nothing but aching loneliness. He’s not sure which is worse, but at least he isn’t alone anymore.
“Stay with me?” Clint asks, and Phil nods.
“Of course.”
They breathe in each other's company, legs knotted into each other and hands gently trailing over hair, cheeks and upper bodies. If it wasn’t for the timer in the kitchen going off, they’d have stayed like this for much longer, but as it is, they have a soup to finish and eat.
True to his word, Phil spends the holidays with Clint in his apartment. There is no festive decor, no Christmas music and they only watch movies on video tape - no commercials, no holiday movies. It’s all perfectly neutral, and they spend the time off like any other time.
Christmas comes and goes, and there is no incident - Clint counts it as a win.
They spend New Year’s eve on the rooftop of Clint’s apartment building, wrapped up in jackets and blankets on the floor. The two of them are sharing a bottle of sparkling wine and talk the night away.
When the fireworks start, they watch them from high up, fingers intertwined and chasing away the cold with warm kisses.
Surprising both of them, Clint actually has a New Years resolution.
“I think I’d like to try this whole holiday thing next year. Not much, and maybe not the whole time. Just getting used to it maybe?”
And he does, for almost every single year to follow.
The first year, it’s okay-ish. They’re working at the time, no way to get the holidays off, and Clint is doing fine while he’s distracted. He’s even okay with taking a walk through the decorated neighborhood, but when they get home from it, he is exhausted from shoving away old feelings, and that’s it for the year.
The second year, they do get a few days off, and they spend them together. There isn’t much they do, apart from baking a batch of only slightly burned cookies and walking through the beautifully illuminated park every night and then drinking spiced cocoa when they’re back home.
They exchange a small gift, each. Nothing too much, so it doesn’t get overwhelming, but carefully picked out and personal. Overall, it’s not bad.
The third year ends in a disaster. If everything went according to plan, it would have been pretty much like the year before, but as it is, the mission they’re on right before their time off goes horribly wrong, leaving too many people either dead or injured and traumatized.
Phil spends Christmas Morning unconscious in an emergency surgery and Clint is in a hospital bed, fighting off the withdrawal effects from an unknown drug that he was dosed with.
In the end, the fact that both of them make it out of this alive is the best thing they could say about those holidays.
In the fourth year, they’re home and mostly unharmed, but the memories from the last year still stick. They try to make it better, spending it much like two years before, but with nerves still on the edge, both of them struggle.
Clint has bad mental health episodes, sometimes more often than other times, and he is somewhat used to it. But around the holidays, it flares up more and more, causing him to give up on anything festive for the year - he’s not in the mood to try. Phil understands, and is perfectly content not to bother that year. He’s struggling with his own bad days, which are more around this time, much like Clint’s.
Neither of them wants to celebrate anything, and it’s all they can do to hold onto one another to keep themselves from falling apart.
New Years is just another day, too, and then life goes on - they tackle it together, like always.
In the fifth year, both Phil and Clint are in good spirits. They get a tree this time around and they decorate it with fairy lights and red baubles - no tinsel.
“Oh god, please, no. We’ll find that stuff well into the next holiday season” Phil pleads, because he has vivid memories of that from his own childhood, especially thanks to his mother cursing over it at Easter when one of the kids found another stray piece behind a flower pot. He says as much.
Clint can’t stop laughing for a good while after that story, and Phil can’t help but join in because his partner's good spirit is highly contagious, especially when he collapses against him with wheezing laughter.
There is no Christmas music while they decorate - instead, they blast 80s hits and drink mulled wine and both of them are perfectly happy that way.
All in all, it’s a good year. They miss the New Years countdown because they’re busy distracting each other in the bedroom with far more entertaining things, and watch the fireworks from the window after.
Many years down the road, “Silent Night” plays on the radio while Phil and Clint are creating a tornado in the kitchen.
They’re baking cookies for the holidays, and there is flour everywhere, including handprints all over the back of Clint's shirt and two in a perfect grabbing pattern on the ass of Phil’s pants. They’re laughing and giggling like teenagers in love, despite being together for so long - their twelve-year anniversary just passed two months before, and they spent the week in a spa hotel upstate.
When the festive song starts, Clint isn’t bothered at all. He simply smiles, pulling Phil into a kiss. What he doesn’t expect is for him to turn the embrace into a slow dance all over the room.
“You’re such a sap” he accuses, with nothing but affection in his voice.
“Me? Never.” The twinkle in his eyes betrays Phil, and it only makes Clint laugh more. He doesn’t mind though - he doesn’t mind at all.
Once upon a time, a scenario like this would have been unthinkable for Clint.
He never thought he could enjoy the holiday time, let alone with a loving and supportive partner like Phil. He’s got so much to thank him for, but he’s not about to start that now. In fact, he’s already got a list.
A list which may or may not have been part of his vows in a very private ceremony just a few years ago - same date as their relationship anniversary - they can only fit so many events into their schedule. It’s practical.
Said vows may or may not have caused everyone involved to burst into tears, but that is strictly need-to-know basis.
Snow is falling outside their windows, making New York a lot more beautiful than it usually is. It’s warm inside, the heavenly scent of cookies is in the air, but most of all, they have each other. They’re as happy and comfortable as they can be, and the small, matching gold bands on their fingers catch the light while they dance around the kitchen.