Secret Santa: the time of night some people call morning
banner by perpetuations
A Gift From: gsparkle
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: the time of night some people call morning
A Gift For: spyforaday
Rating: Gen
Warnings: the author chooses not to use warnings
Summary/Prompt Used: Christmas at the farmhouse or New Years at the Tower - one of them catches the other one singing or playing piano (exceptionally well) and this leads to a discussion of "things you actually don't know about me" which leads to, you guessed it, confessions of feelings.
Author's Note: This was a lot of fun to write, so I hope that you enjoy it! Hooray for secret santa!
It’s 11:45 on New Year’s Eve, and no, Clint doesn’t know where Natasha is, and yes, he knows they’re often together, but they’re not right now, obviously, and it’s not like he’s her babysitter, is he?
“Alright, man,” Sam says, stepping back with raised hands and a wary expression. “I’ll just text her again.”
Immediately, Clint feels bad; it’s nobody’s fault but his own that he’s in a foul mood. “Sorry,” he says, the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket pulling tightly as he signs the apology over his heart. “I hate when Tony makes us get all dressed up.”
“Ugh,” Sam agrees, gracefully letting Clint switch the topic to this party, which feels interminable. Unlike last year’s informal affair, at which Clint wore jeans and spent the evening perched on the couch, this year is decreed a Formal Affair with capitalized letters, which means a tuxedo and a crowded ballroom, both of which he actively hates. It’s blatantly obvious that this is part of Tony’s campaign to repair their image after the events of Sokovia, though, which Clint gets, okay, he gets it; so he wears the monkey suit and the shiny tight shoes and tries not be an asshole.
Fortunately, a party can’t be Tony Stark-approved unless it has a fully stocked bar, so Clint orders a scotch and leans against a red and gold-festooned bar table with Wanda, who looks equally as uncomfortable as he feels. “I take it you also hate fancy parties?” he asks over the band. “Or is this what you look like when you’re having fun?”
It’s easy to forget how powerful she is when her nose is wrinkled up in classic teenaged disdain. “There are so many people,” she complains, “and they’re all full of feelings.”
“Feelings are the worst,” Clint agrees. Wanda’s telepathic abilities means that she involuntarily picks up on the emotions of those surrounding her. It’s incredibly useful on a mission, but a pain in the ass, he assumes, at pretty much all other times. He can’t imagine how annoying it must be to deal with the emotions of a crowded room during the holidays; he can barely deal with his own, after all.
“You’re one to talk,” Wanda scoffs, indicating him with a wave of her hand and an impressive side-eyed glare. “I try not to listen to other people’s thoughts, but it’s like you’ve got a megaphone for a brain. Even when you were across the room, all I’ve heard since this party started is Natasha this and Natasha that--”
“That is patently false,” Clint says loudly. His neck is hot under his collar because he is lying. Wanda smirks and if she wasn’t, like, 19 or whatever, he’d probably kick her in the shin. As is, he snags a passing waiter and confirms his hors d'oeuvre selections are kosher before practically shoving one into her mouth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he informs her. “I’ve just been thinking about nationalism, you know, how it’s such a problem
in this country, and… stuff. Plus, you know, everyone’s been asking me where Natasha is, so, I mean, if her name slipped in there, like, that’s probably why.”
This clearly sounds no more convincing to Wanda than it does to himself, because she merely smiles and points at the ballroom entrance. “Hm,” she says innocently. “So you don’t care that Natasha just showed up?”
There’s no point in lying, or in pretending that he’s going to do anything other than whip around immediately. It’s 11:54, and across the room, the full black skirt of Natasha’s evening gown is dusted with golden stars. It’s 11:54, and the way the light artfully curls around the pile of her scarlet hair makes his throat close up. It’s 11:54 and this is why he’s been so cranky all night, because he’s known for weeks now that he was going to have to stand in this ballroom clutching a sweaty glass of scotch and pretend that Natasha Romanoff in a ballgown doesn’t make his entire heart need to lie down for an hour. It’s 11:54 and this is exactly why he doesn’t want to be here.
“Oh, Hawk,” Wanda says, as gentle and fond as the hand she lays on his arm. “You should just tell her.”
“That,” Clint says, melodramatically draining his glass, “Is a uniformly terrible idea. I know it is, because I’ve thought of that, and the only ideas I ever have are bad ones.”
Wanda rolls her eyes and takes her hand back. “I think you’d be surprised,” she teases, “but fine, don’t say anything. Just take your mental yelling elsewhere; it’s giving me a headache.”
“Excellent suggestion,” says Clint. If he slips out just now, he can tell everyone that he was in the bathroom when the ball dropped. Silly Clint, their eyes will say--their eyes always say--but he’ll take that if it means he doesn’t have to press his cheek against Natasha’s, not tonight at least. He takes his leave of Wanda with an obnoxious New Year’s peck on her cheek and slips out a side door behind the bar without a word to anyone else.
He gets a few strange looks as he fights against the current of the crowd: it’s nearly midnight, and everyone is packing into the ballroom to watch the livestream from Times Square. Eventually he makes his way past the last giggling Stark Industries interns and is met with cool air and blessed solitude. The most expedient plan is to head to the gym for a few rounds of target practice, snap away the tension one bullseye at a time; but as he rounds the corner to the private elevator, a darkened but elegant lounge tucked into a niche catches his eye, and he changes course.
Everyone on the team knows that Clint plays the guitar--he’s brought it along on enough of Tony’s mandated team retreats and serenaded the whole team with more ABBA songs than they probably ever wanted to hear--but nobody would expect him to slide onto the lounge’s padded Steinway bench and set his fingers on the piano keyboard with practiced ease.
In truth, Clint’s small hands were first placed on piano keys by his mother far before he was conscripted into organ duty with Carson’s Circus. When his father was out of the house, she’d sit him on her lap, spread his stubby little fingers over hers, recite the notes in his ear with a gentle voice and soft smile. Barney never cared to learn, but Clint absorbed it all like a sponge, quickly progressing through the faded primer that they hastily snapped shut when his father’s heavy tread came at the door.
The only song he perfected before a bottle of Jim Beam drove Harold and Edith Barton into a tree was Rachmaninov’s prelude in G minor: his mother’s favorite song. While his time in the circus filled his musical dictionary with playful, galloping tunes, the first notes his fingers reach for are those that transport him back to the shabby farmhouse that he hasn’t seen in years. He becomes more confident with each note, the tune and rhythm speeding back to the forefront of his mind, and soon he can’t hear anything but the click of his fingers on the keys and the beautiful swell of the melody rising from the soundboard.
Here, in the refuge of music, the heartsick pressure in his chest lessens note by note. Here, clearheaded at last, he can make a New Year’s resolution to get over his embarrassing crush on his partner. Here, Natasha is pushed to the furthest corners of his mind, which is why he jumps a foot in the air when she suddenly materializes on the bench next to him.
“Jesus!” he yelps, fingers skittering off their marks. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Natasha tilts her head, the curiosity in her gaze slicing through him like a laser. “It’s just me,” she says with a measure of exasperation. “I couldn’t find you when the ball dropped. And usually you hear me coming.” He hears the tamped frustration in her voice: Clint is the only person she has never successfully snuck up on, and it’s clear that she’s disappointed to have done it now without really trying to.
“Well, I’m busy,” Clint says, nodding shortly to the piano. He’s aware that he’s being rude, but the alternative is that Natasha continues to sit there in the dark with him, the shadows doing nothing to diminish the intensity of her gaze. Even worse, she might locate a light switch, and then he’ll have to look at her, and his brand new resolution will fall to pieces.
“Ye-es,” she says, drawing out the word. “I see that. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Clint slants her a suspicious look from the corners of his eyes, but she gives him a don’t mind me sort of gesture until he replaces his fingers on the keys and resumes playing. At first it’s awkward, elbowing her over to reach the accidental he wants, but as always, the music pulls him in until it’s his whole mind. He ends it with a flourish, but instead of acknowledging the end of the piece, he looks up and finds her staring at his hands with something akin to shock. “I never expected something like that from you.”
Clint bristles both at her underestimation and at the fact that Natasha seems to think she has him all figured out. He’s never professed to be a man of mystery, and knows he can’t come
close to the secrets she has folded into her skin, but it stings more than a little to think she’s solved him so easily, no more difficult to her than a child’s four-piece puzzle.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” he says to his hands still on the piano. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Natasha says. Her hand reaches towards his in apology, but Clint pulls away before his traitorous hand can expose him, can turn up to hers and twine their fingers together. She interprets this as rejection; her fingers and her voice both stiffen and curl away. “Fine. Tell me what I don’t know, then.”
He’s well aware that he’s messed up, let his bad mood and the perpetual chip on his shoulder taint the conversation. “Can we just leave it?” he tries, but she’s got that face on, the one that says you started this fight but I’ll goddamn finish it, the one he loves when pointed at anyone other than him.
“Tell me,” she repeats, and in the dark all he can see is challenge flaming in her eyes. “And if you’re right, if I don’t know everything about you, then I’ll tell you something.”
Clint draws a breath, holds it while his fingertips idly tap out a familiar chord. “My favorite ABBA song is ‘Voulez-Vous,’ and I got that album when I was fifteen.” He looks over to see if she’s surprised, but her shadowed profile reminds him: Kinshasa, 2008, where they laid in wait on top of a building for seven hours and where Clint hummed the chorus under his breath for three until Natasha demanded an explanation. He picks another chord and tries again. “I still have my costume from the circus,” he says, before remembering how many times he’s sent her digging through his closet when they’re frantically packing for a last-minute mission. “Fine, you got me, I do sleep with that teddy bear on my desk,” he admits, but her lips curve into the smallest, most secret smile and his cheeks are grateful for the dark that hides their blush.
He tries a different secret with each chord on the piano: “... And I go to a Minnesota Twins game every August. I’m the one who leaves a beer at Phil’s grave on payday every month. Sometimes I go to an archery range up in Central Park and get my ass handed to me by a twenty year old heiress in Ugg boots. Really?” he can’t help but add when Natasha only lifts one apologetically graceful shoulder. “You know about Kate?”
“She seems like a lovely girl,” Natasha says placidly. “I think you should introduce her to Wanda, she could use some friends--”
She knows about everything, it seems, and it’s bizarre that she knows some of the ugliest things about him and still sticks around, especially when he, unlike she, had a choice in every bad decision he ever made. He sits there considering how improbable it is that anyone else knows him nearly as well as Natasha apparently does, and all he can think is--all that the air in his lungs can form is--“How can you know me so well and not realize that I’ve been in love with you for years?”
It takes Clint a full, silence-drenched minute to recognize that yes, he really did say that. You’re a fucking idiot, he tells himself, and no amount of frantic, adrenaline-rushed thinking results in some substantive action to take. With no other plan, he stares fixedly at his hands on the keyboard and fervently wishes for some opportunistic villain to rain catastrophe upon the city; a killer giant robot, maybe, or something monstrous and capable of eating him. And they sit like this together for another three minutes, with only the New Year’s after party, now in full swing, bumping a distant, persistent beat along the baseboards of the lounge.
“You got me,” Natasha says at last. Her voice is thick and uneven; Clint chances a look in her direction. The moon has shifted in the window and he can see that the serene smile has dropped off her face. The bluish light leaves her luminous, ethereal, and his heart flips over in its cage despite itself. She is going to devastate him, he knows, because that is what Natasha does; but god is she going to look beautiful while she does so.
“I owe you something in return,” she says deliberately, and Clint’s stomach wilts at the forthcoming placation, something secret about her that is soft and quiet to lessen the blow. He tries to keep his expression neutral, but she fishes some meaning out of it, anyhow. “No, really,” she continues, turning entirely to him, “A deal’s a deal. And Clint, what you don’t know about me is--is that I realized when the ball dropped that you were the only person missing, and the only person I wanted to be standing next to me.”
“I’m--sorry?” Clint says, not entirely sure what he’s hearing and not entirely sure that he wants her to clarify. All he knows is that she hasn’t stalked off yet. “What does that mean?”
“It means--” Natasha’s nose wrinkles minutely; she hates, he knows, to be misunderstood. “It means this,” and then everything is illuminated: it means her electric green gaze meeting his in the moonlight, it means her cold soft hands raking chills into the nape of his neck, it means her unique scent of gunpowder and cherries fogs his senses as she leans into him, it means her nose bumping his and his eyelashes brushing hers, and it means that the piano plink-plonks in disapproval when he gathers her and her skirt full of stars into his lap so that he can coax her mouth open under his and kiss her like he’s dreamed of.
And: it means that they skip the rest of the party and walk to the elevator with a fresh New Year’s resolution held fragile between their tangled hands.