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Maria notices it first. Not that it’s a surprise: she’s basically just a glorified babysitter for the Avengers at this point (thank god there’s another adult - read Pepper - around), so she knows their various moods. So when Wanda starts acting more reserved, more sullen, than usual, Maria takes note.
It’s similar to her behavior when she first joined the team. Wanda kept to herself except for training and mandatory team gatherings. Then Nat, Maria’s amazing wife, started helping Wanda open up. She started smiling more, started quietly humming as she walked around the Compound, started getting closer to the team.
Seeing Wanda revert to her old self more than nine months after the Battle of Sokovia is off putting for Maria. It makes her heart ache.
Of course, she brings it up with Nat. They lie in bed facing each other, legs intertwined with Maria’s arm draped lazily over Natasha, and Maria breaks the comfortable silence,
“I’m worried about Wanda.”
Nat raises an eyebrow: this is new. But Maria’s always been up front, never sugarcoating anything.
“She’s withdrawing from the team, spending most of her time alone,” Maria continues, “It’s not like her.”
Nat hums in acknowledgement, her brain searching for reasons why Wanda might be pulling away. Her training has been going well. Steve praised her performance on her last mission. She had started playing pranks with Sam.
Maria lies quietly while Nat thinks. It’s one of Natasha’s favorite things about her wife. Most people would take her non-answer as a sign of dismissal, but not Maria. Maria knows her, maybe even better than Natasha knows herself.
Her mind returns to Wanda. She hadn’t mentioned missing Pietro lately.
Pietro.
What month was it? Oh shi--
“Her birthday’s next week. Her first birthday in America,”
“The first one without Pietro,” Maria finishes for her, blowing air out her nose, “no wonder she seems so sad,”
“It’s not your fault, Masha. You can’t know everything,” Nat already knows where Maria’s head was going. Her tendency to take responsibility for everything was one of the first things Nat noticed about her.
Maria gives her a sheepish smile,
“We should do something,” the gears in her head are already turning, “probably pretty small--don’t want to freak her out. Maybe just the Avengers? She knows a few of the agents, though…”
It was best not to interrupt Maria when she got to planning something. Nat had learned that long ago. But when Maria starts rambling about color schemes and the merits of buttercream versus whipped cream frosting, Natasha knows she has to step in.
“A small party sounds perfect, milaya,” she gently places a kiss on Maria’s forehead.
Maria blushes. They’ve been married for two years, in love for longer, but Nat calling her pet names in Russian makes her weak.
“Remember the birthday party you threw me when I first joined SHIELD?” Nat tries again, pulling Maria out of her thoughts, “you didn’t know when my birthday was, hell, I didn’t know when my birthday was. But the party was perfect,”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm, best birthday ever.”
Maria wasn’t sure why she felt the need to throw a party for Natasha Romanoff, but she did. It just didn’t seem right that Black Widow never got to have a birthday. Sure, the Red Room probably hadn’t been celebration friendly, but she was at SHIELD now and not knowing her birthday wasn’t an excuse to never celebrate it. So, Maria had gathered Romanoff’s only other friends on the Helicarrier (who happened to be her teammate and handler) to plan a proper party for her.
“Do we even know when her birthday is, Maria?” Phil twiddled his thumbs in thought,
“No, but she doesn’t either. I just think it would be a nice gesture,” Maria shrugged, “like, “you’re important, here’s some cake and presents,”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Clint was uncharacteristically enthusiastic.
Maria narrowed her eyes,
“I’m not asking R and D to make you “fart arrows,” Clint,”
“Awwww,” he pouted, hastily adding on, “I still think it’d be fun, though. I don’t think she’s ever celebrated it before,”
“Well, if we’re doing this,” Maria clapped her hands, “we’d better make it the greatest birthday party ever,”
“It will be - we’re the dream team!” Phil smiled at her.
Maria smiled, they really did work well together. Hopefully they would be able to focus long enough to get this done. And if it worked out, Romanoff was going to get the party of a lifetime.
They decide it’s best to keep the party small--just the Avengers and their families. Tony, of course, wants to throw a huge celebration.
“Come on, it’d be epic,” he whines, “we could invite Hollywood’s elite, there’d be fireworks. Open bar, of course.”
There’s murder in Natasha’s eyes and Maria has to physically restrain her from disfiguring Tony.
“As much as we appreciate the offer,” Maria’s sure at least a little sarcasm seeps through her otherwise neutral tone, “Wanda’ll probably prefer something smaller,”
“Suit yourselves.”
Maria has to drag Nat away as the billionaire shrugs. As soon as they are alone, all hell breaks loose.
“What makes him think a big party would be ‘epic’,” Nat puts air quotes around the last word, “for Wanda? Someone who has repeatedly made clear that she does not like large crowds. Does he think he can just throw money at people to make them like him? It’s like he doesn’t know her at all!”
Natasha continues her rant and Maria listens patiently. When she’s mad, especially at Tony Stark, it is impossible to stop her from yelling. When Nat finally begins cooling down, Maria speaks up,
“I know, babe. He just wants an excuse to throw another party,” she wraps an arm around Nat’s waist, “but luckily, it’s not up to him,”
“Thank god,” Natasha flares her nose, “I know I wouldn’t have wanted a big birthday party, especially so soon after everything,”
“You definitely wouldn’t have,” Maria smiles.
“Is three people even a party?”
Maria glared as Clint paced back and forth in the conference room. There were scattered documents on the table with headings like “cake” and “guests”, and most of them were still blank.
“Well, technically, it’s,” Phil held up his fingers like he needed them to count, “four if you count Natasha,”
“Four people still isn’t much of a party. Why don’t we invite the other STRIKE teams or some of the other agents she knows?” Clint unceremoniously flopped into a chair, which immediately rolled across the room, and ran a hand through his hair.
“Oh yes, great idea Barton,” Maria snapped, more harshly than she had intended to, “let’s just invite all of SHIELD, half of whom hate her and think she’s a cold-blooded killer, and the other half who can’t stop ogling her at the gym,”
“How do you know they’re ogling her, Maria?” Phil waggled his eyebrows at her.
Clint snickered and Maria glowered at them. They were alone, and SHIELD wasn’t the military, but DADT still made her uneasy. Yeah, that was why she felt defensive when they teased her. Definitely, totally. Yep.
“It’s my job to notice what’s happening with my agents, Coulson.”
The boys dropped the subject after that, although not before Clint let out another snort of laughter. Instead, they turned their attention back to the topic at hand. Should this conversation have been over an hour? Probably not. Was it?
Unfortunately.
“Don’t make me pull rank, Barton,”
“That’s not fair, Hill,”
“Look, we’re the people Romanoff’s closest to. At least for the first time, I think it should just be us,” Maria folded her arms. Clint held up his hands in surrender and her mouth twisted into a triumphant smirk.
“Fine. But you have to promise to let me crash on your office couch whenever I want for the next year,” it was Clint’s turn to smirk.
“One month, and only if I’m not in a meeting in there,”
“Fine.”
“You liar.”
It’s the day of Wanda’s party and Maria is going to kill Natasha. Not literally. Probably. The entire time they’ve known each other, Natasha has claimed she can’t cook. And Maria has, naively apparently, believed her for the past decade. But here is her wife dredging and frying chicken for Wanda’s favorite dish, paprikash.
“What?” Natasha tilts her head, feigning innocence as she continues cooking as if it’s something she does every day.
“You said you couldn’t cook! You told me and Clint and Laura and Phil that you never learned. I thought the only thing you could make was instant ramen,”
“I’ve been practicing,” Nat cowers under Maria’s glare. It’s the one normally reserved for Tony when he blows up the lab or Clint when he tries to scare her from the vents.
“Which I’m only hearing about now?”
Uh oh. Even Nat is scared of Maria’s “Commander” voice. Well, she supposes now is as good a time as any to come clean.
“It was supposed to be a surprise for our anniversary. I was gonna cook you dinner for once, since you always cook for us, but you know I can’t cook for shit, so I asked FRIDAY for help, and it turns out it’s really fun,” the words tumble out of her mouth and Maria’s gaze softens.
“You learned to cook for me?”
God, that smile does things to Natasha. Warm, fuzzy, feeling things. She flips the chicken over and bites her lip, slightly embarrassed at Maria’s reaction.
“Yeah.”
“You’re amazing,” Maria gushes, all thoughts of murder gone from her head.
“I know,” Nat grins cheekily and feigns anger when Maria punches her in the arm, “are you going to pick up the cake?”
“Yep, all twenty pounds of it.”
Yes, that’s right. Twenty pounds of cake. Nat had gawked when Maria had first calculated the number because twenty pounds? For a dozen people? But considering one of those people is a god and two more are super soldiers, Nat’s now a little worried a full sheet cake might not be enough.
“Be safe, dorogaya,” Nat pecks Maria on the lips, failing to keep a smile off her face when Maria blushes,
“Always,”
“Don’t drop it,” she calls as Maria walks out.
Maria doesn’t even bother to look over her shoulder as she gives Nat the finger.
“ You better not drop that thing,”
“It weighs, like, two pounds, I’m not gonna--AAAHH,” Clint tripped over a loose wire, and Maria grabbed the cake from him with the agility of a professional athlete.
“I told you. I swear, if you damaged it--”
“Oh no. Are you okay, Clint? Did you get hurt, Clint? I’m perfectly fine, thanks for asking” Clint playfully glared at her from where he had fallen on the floor.
“I do not sound like that,” Maria carefully placed the cake on the table, relieved to see it was still intact, and rolled her eyes.
“I dunno, it was a pretty spot-on impression if you ask me,” Phil staggered slightly as he entered, arms full of presents.
Maria flipped them both off and looked at the cake. She hoped Natas--Romanoff liked chocolate because if not, her (not exactly authorized) trip had been for nothing. Everyone liked chocolate cake, right? Dammit, she should have ordered a vanilla one just in case.
Natasha worries they’ve made a mistake when Wanda starts sobbing. The whole team is gathered in the kitchen after dinner, wearing dorky party hats, and the cake Maria ordered sits in the middle of the counter. There is still some glitter floating through the air when Nat approaches Wanda,
“I’m sorry, is it too much?” she asks quietly as Wanda buries her head in Nat’s shoulder, soaking her shirt with tears. Wanda shakes her head almost imperceptibly,
“It’s perfect,” she mumbles. Pulling away from Nat, she addresses the whole team, “this is the nicest thing anyone has done for me in a long time. Thank you.”
The team smiles at her and Clint counts to three. They erupt into a raucous, off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” and Wanda smiles so wide Nat thinks her face might split open. Everyone sings at their own pitch, and although they have a lot of enthusiasm, it’s a good thing there isn’t an Avengers choir. Nat’s pretty sure someone would die if there was.
Natasha cuts the cake, handing Wanda the first piece. It’s good cake: chocolate (because who doesn’t like chocolate cake?) with buttercream frosting. They have just enough cake, thank goodness. Thor, Steve, and Bucky each eat enough to feed a small town because, hey, they may as well make the most of their cheat day.
Conversation flows easily around the room as everyone disperses. Nat nestles into Maria’s side and listens as she chats with Sam, Steve, and Bucky about their military days. Plans are made to get a game of poker going, strip poker if Bucky gets any say in the matter, and Nat can’t contain her laughter when Steve’s whole face goes beet red. Sam can’t control his reaction either, and soon their whole group is laughing uncontrollably.
Across the room, Wanda and Clint watch Tony, Bruce, and Vision debate Thor on something far too sciencey and complicated for the two “normal” people to understand. They’re really only watching for the entertaining faces the four make when they argue. Every time Tony makes his signature “I’m right and you’re wrong” face, Clint and Wanda take a shot. It’s only been thirty minutes and Wanda is well on her way to being wasted.
“Maybe we should switch to soda, Wan,” Clint gently removes Wanda’s hand from the shot glass. He’s only slightly tipsy, with a high alcohol tolerance courtesy of too many nights downing vodka with Natasha. Wanda, however, borders on being a lightweight,
“You’re no fuuunnn, old man,”
“You won’t be having fun if you’re throwing your guts up tomorrow,” he admonishes, grabbing her a cup of water.
Nat watches her best friend interacting with Wanda. He’s become a mentor to her in the past few months, fueled by guilt over her brother’s death, and it’s good to see him taking care of her.
“When did Clint become responsible?” Maria murmurs into Nat’s hair, watching as Clint forces Wanda to drink water,
“It’s oddly endearing, isn’t it?” Nat chuckles,
“Hey, Nat, where’d you get the food from?” Bucky interrupts, seeming genuinely curious, “it was really good,”
“I made it,” Nat shrugs casually, as if she hadn’t almost burned down the kitchen a few months ago making toast.
“You can fucking cook?” Clint makes his way over, somehow having heard her from across the room. “Since when?”
“That’s what I said,” Maria smirks as the team starts gathering around Nat, bombarding her with questions. She’s shy to admit she learned for Maria, and she glares murderously when someone coughs “whipped” from behind her. After the questions, it’s mostly Clint ranting about how he cooked for her for the entirety of their friendship and Tony whining about her skipping cooking duty. Wanda is quiet the whole time, still drunk, but when the conversation dies down, she approaches Nat,
“You’re my new favorite, Natty,” Wanda swings an arm around Natasha, a little less inebriated than before, “thank you for all this,”
“Thank Maria, myshka. This was her idea,”
“Maria can be my favorite too,”
“What about me?”
“Eh,” Wanda shrugs at Clint, “You’re okay too, I guess.”
“As much as I appreciate the gesture,” Romanoff placed her hands on her hips, and Maria would be lying if she said that pose didn’t have any effect on her, “today’s probably not my birthday,”
“Yeah, but why can’t it be, Natasha?” Clint looked goofy with his party hat only half on his head. He gestured between Phil Coulson, Maria, and himself, “we don’t know when your birthday is,” he pointed to her, “and you don’t know when it is, so why can’t we just say it’s today?”
“I--” Romanoff clearly couldn’t think of a good comeback.
“We got you gifts and everything,” Phil pointed to the small pile of boxes behind him.
“And cake,” Clint cut in.
Gifts, cake. The idea was foreign to her. People celebrating her , not her accomplishments, or the number of people she’d killed. Natasha felt a tear start to fall down her cheek and quickly wiped it away.
“Okay,” she smiled tentatively at her associates family, “as long as I get to cut the cake.”
Hill placed the small cake in front of her. One of them had clearly gotten it during their shoreleave because they didn’t make cakes like this (or cake in general) on the Helicarrier. It wasn’t anything special: just a plain, white, round cake, with blue icing around the perimeter. Natasha’s vision began to cloud again when she read the words written on it. They were straightforward, stupid words. Love and feelings were supposed to be for children, but the simply written ‘Happy Birthday Natasha!’ made her heart swell. The Red Room had never celebrated her birthday, big surprise, had never even told her when her birthday was. But these people she’d known for a few months were throwing her a party to celebrate a day that she would probably never really know.
Natasha barely heard Clint start singing as she stared at the cake. Her cake.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him after.
He shrugged,
“Thank Hill, she planned all this.”
Hill had done this for her? Sure, they got along (Hill was the only decent sparring partner at SHIELD), but Natasha hadn’t thought they were particularly close. She’d assumed Clint or Phil had invited Hill to have one more person at her party.
Natasha looked at Maria Hill, really looked at her, for the first time that day. When their eyes met, an understanding passed between them without any words being spoken. Hill gave her a brief nod and a smile.
Clint, who had been waiting, ratherly patiently by his standards, Natasha noted, couldn’t take the waiting anymore.
“Let’s eat!”
“Ľúbim ťa staršia sestra,” Wanda mutters sleepily as Natasha guides her to bed.
Nat’s heart skips a beat. Wanda has never said anything like that before--that she loves Nat, thinks of her as an older sister. Family, siblings especially, mean something to Wanda. Growing up with only Pietro made Wanda especially fond of familial bonds. It’s something Natasha can’t really empathize with. But, if Wanda really means what she said, if she really considers Natasha her older sister, well...Nat vows to the powers that be that she’ll protect Wanda with her life.
“Aj ťa Ľúbim mala sestra,” Nat whispers, kissing Wanda’s forehead as she tucks her into bed.
She’s so distracted that she almost startles when Maria, leaning against the doorframe, clears her throat.
“Little sister?” Maria intertwines her fingers with her wife’s She rests her chin on Nat’s head and they watch Wanda drift to sleep,
“Yeah,” Nat raises her head to gently kiss Maria’s lips.
“I love you,” Maria gushes when they break apart, closing the door to Wanda’s room.
Nat gives her a confused glance,
“The way you connect with people. How genuinely kind and gentle you can be. Even with your training, you managed to keep your heart. I must be the luckiest woman in the universe,” Maria rambles as they walk towards their room, “because you are so amazing, Natasha Romanoff-Hill.”
Natasha frowns, a miniscule gesture that most probably miss, but Maria is quick to catch it.
“My ledger, it’s--”
“The good you’ve done, for the world, for the team, for Wanda, for me,” the earnesty in Maria’s eyes makes Natasha’s heart melt, “it balances out, Tasha.”
She loves it when Maria calls her Tasha. It feels personal and intimate, and it feels like home coming from Masha’s lips. As soon as they reach their room, Natasha gently pushes Maria against the wall,
“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu,” she gets out before pulling Maria into a searing kiss.
Maria’s lips are swollen and she’s slightly out of breath when Natasha pulls away. They rest their foreheads together, and Maria gazes into Nat’s eyes.
“Best party ever,” Nat giggles, and Maria can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the timing. Of course Natasha would interrupt a moment like this. She pushes off of the wall and leads Natasha to their bed, pushing her wife down onto it. A smirk crosses Maria’s face when Nat lets out a small moan,
“Definitely.”