Work Text:
1
The day Lila discovered purple might have been slightly related to playing peekaboo with Mommy and a faded purple blanket they liked to wrap her up in when she was cold. Slightly.
What was known was that during the fingerpainting session with Daddy, she plunked two very purple handprints on his t-shirt and cried, “Daddy’s purple!”
The paint did not wash out. Daddy continued to wear it. Lila decided that purple was Daddy’s color.
2
Which is why it was not, in fact, a surprise when Laura came in the living room and nearly spewed her coffee at the sight of her small daughter merrily coloring away between the lines on Clint’s tactical gear request.
“Lila, honey, that’s Daddy’s,” she chided gently as she tried to disentangle little fingers from the paper.
“Daddy’s purple,” Lila answered with a grin.
Laura got the papers back in Clint’s file and hauled off with the little girl. In the hubbub of child-wrangling throughout the rest of the evening, she forgot to go back and tell Clint.
Clint was staring at his gear with a perfectly straight face. Too straight. It might even be called dazed. Natasha smothered a smile as Coulson gave them both a puzzled frown.
“I believe this meets your specs,” Coulson began. “They were surprised at the color request and they got it a little too red, but—”
“It’s fine,” Clint cut him off, very typical guy dismissal.
Seeing as Lila officially didn’t exist, he couldn’t very well tell Coulson that this was all his daughter’s fault.
Natasha just let Clint know with her look how amusing she found the entire thing. He should have looked at the request before he turned it in.
“Not a word,” he muttered as soon as Coulson was out of hearing.
3
“Which color?” Natasha held up three bottles of the nontoxic nail polish Laura had offered for makeup play.
Lila looked at both and demanded, “Purple!”
Had it been anyone older or bigger than her, Natasha would have rolled her eyes. She should have known. But since it was Lila, Natasha put on a smile and showed Lila how to carefully paint each other’s nails.