“You have any plans for tonight, Clint? It’s Christmas Eve, in case you forgot.”

Kate reaches down from the couch to scratch Lucky’s ears, in the hope that the extra action will distract from the fact that she is asking with a purpose. Lucky doesn’t care about motive; he emits little mewling sounds of bliss and puts his chin on her knee, hoping for more.  

Clint has finished sniffing the coffee pot. Ignoring the smell of cold Eau de Burnt Tar, he takes a swig before Kate can stop him. Jet lag must be more powerful than common sense.

“Whoa, man, that must be at least two weeks old!” she yelps. She may be a willing dog sitter, but she’s not a maid. Whatever he left on the counter when he went to Albania is still there.

At least his taste buds still work. He pulls a face, spits something into the sink and pours the contents of the pot down the drain. It comes out in chunks. Gross.

“Did you know coffee could grow mold?” he asks curiously, inspecting whatever has just landed in the sink with forensic interest. “That looks remarkably like one of Van Doom’s sludge people. You think we need to throw out the pot? Or should we donate it to Banner, for science?”

Kate rolls her eyes.

 “Just wash it out. With hot water. And soap.”

It’s a good thing Clint never keeps anything in the fridge, or he’d be growing weapons of mass destruction in there. Which reminds her, he hasn’t answered her question; she suspects that whole episode just now may have been a huge distracting flare.

“I hear Stark is throwing one of his mega parties at the tower. Aren’t you going?” Pre-emptively, she adds, “ You cannot possibly be wanting to spend Christmas Eve on your own. It’s not healthy.”

“A party? At Stark’s? Ugh, no.” Clint shudders. “Besides, I didn’t get an invite,” he adds. “Guess I’ll just hang with Lucky. Joe’s Pizza delivers over the holidays - we’ll order an extra-large with double pepperoni and watch It’s a Wonderful Life.” 

Kate points at the stack of unopened mail on the kitchen island with her chin.

“And that red envelope with the cinnamon scent and the golden label that says ‘Pepper & Tony’ on it is what, you think? A bill for the last time you and Deadpool hit one of Ironman’s repulsors with a rock to see if he’d spin?”

Clint eyes the envelope, then her, with a suspicious squint.

“Did you go through my mail again while I wasn’t here?”

Kate lifts herself off the couch, heads over to the island and brandishes the envelope under his nose.

“Look - still sealed.”

“Then how’d you know what’s in it?”

‘I got one myself, genius.” She sighs. “Seriously, Clint, you should go. You’ve been moping for weeks now and it’s not healthy.  I have a hot date with America, so I’ll see you there..”

“You two go and have fun,” he says, far too quickly. “Don’t worry about me. Maybe I’ll call Barney and let him yell at me for an hour. Christmas is all about family, right?”

Kate huffs in exasperation. He’s been developing a serious flair for self-flagellation of late. Here’s a man who’s ready to sleep with anything - provided they leave in the morning and aren’t called Kate – but he’s been six kinds of discombobulated ever since Natasha Romanoff re-entered his personal life with an impulsive kiss and a declaration of undying…. Friendship. An intervention is called for.

She gives it one more shot.

“Listen, you can still do the pizza-and-Jimmy-Stewart thing on Sunday, if you must. But seriously, Clint, you need to get out more. This nobody-loves-me-everybody-hates-me-going-to-the-garden-to-eat-worms-yum-yum shtick is getting old.”

For the moment she sees a look she can’t quite place in his eyes, but then he gives his normal Clintish shrug. 

“Anyway, I don’t have a date,” he says. “And Stark won’t let me forget that for, like, ever. You know how he is. So, no way I’m going.”

He shovels a pile of fresh coffee into a filter and pours a bit of boiling water over the grounds. Time to call in air strikes.

“Natasha may be there, you know,” she says, watching his hand still for a second. 

“I’m not going,” he says over his shoulder.

He reaches for a pair of clean mugs and Kate knows that this conversation is over.  But she’s planted the seed; time to see if it’ll grow.

*****

The party looks like one of those Natasha used to attend to become someone’s arm piece for the evening, only to slip away after the successful application of a garrote or other lethal device. Of course, this gathering is full of people she knows, includes no one she is planning to kill (at least not tonight), and the invitation had come from a woman she considers a friend. 

The other difference is the Christmas tree in the corner. Natasha likes Christmas trees. Someone could probably write a paper about that for Psychology Today: The Evergreen - A Contrast to the Red Room?  She considers this fondness a weakness, subject to exploitation, so it’s not something she has ever been willing to admit to anyone. But it’s there, it’s real, and for a moment Natasha loses herself in the twinkling white lights, reflected a thousand times in the tastefully arranged golden and silver decorations. 

A cheerful voice punctures her reverie.

“Natalie! I’m so glad you came!” 

Pepper Potts glides through the crowd with maximum efficiency, dispensing smiles and little touches of acknowledgment as she heads for her primary target. Even after all these years Pepper still calls her Natalie, and it never ceases to amaze Natasha how little she minds. In fact, she almost likes how it makes her feel, a reminder of that special bond they had made the night Ironman almost died. 

Christmas really is a time for sentimentalism. Natasha gives herself a mental shake.

“I didn’t actually think you’d show up,” Pepper adds confidentially when she is within normal-speaking-voice distance. “You didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the party. Which is perfectly fine, of course.”

“I wasn’t.” Natasha might as well be honest. “But you promised good company, so here I am.”

She lets her eyes skim unobtrusively over the crowd. He’s not here. Yet?

“And I’m very glad you’re here,” Pepper says, much more softly now. The woman misses nothing; she would have done well in the Red Room, stilettos and all. Who knows how much she’s deduced from Natasha’s quick recce.

“I assume Tony brought out the good Scotch?” Natasha says, perhaps a little too brightly.

Pepper nods solemnly.

“Not for general consumption – even Tony’s generosity has its limits. But for you he’ll let me raid his stash.”  She grabs Natasha by the arm and pulls her towards the mahogany bar. “You deserve something good, because I have some bad news.”

It’s a testament to Natasha’s training that she doesn’t as much as twitch. Instead, all she says is, “Oh? And what would that be?”

Pepper steps around a dropped wine glass on the floor, carefully avoiding the pool of wine that is slowly spreading on the parquet.  She whispers into her wristwatch, “JARVIS? Clean-up by the Giacometti please?” and turns back to Natasha. 

With her eyes set to maximum sympathy she says, “I’m afraid Clint isn’t here. I did send him an invitation, but I haven’t heard anything back. Kate and her girlfriend RSVP’d to theirs so I know it got there, but he must have gotten stuck in Albania.” She adds hastily, “Not that I know that’s where he was, of course.” 

Natasha is briefly at a loss for words. Why on Earth would Pepper tell her all this? The woman is nothing if not deliberate in anything she does… 

Fortunately, they’ve arrived at the bar in the interim and Natasha is spared the need to respond. Pepper asks for two shots of the ’85 MacAllan, casting a semi-apologetic look at the people the bartender is ignoring in favour of the woman who pays his salary.  “It’s under the counter, left hand side, in the crystal decanter.” 

The whisky is liquid gold, with a hint of smoky peat. Natasha lets it rest on her tongue for a minute before allowing it to glide down her throat and warm her inside. The thought that ‘Clint would like this’ crosses her mind; she dismisses it as quickly as it arose. 

“Worth coming here for,” she smiles brightly at Pepper and raises her glass. 

Pepper picks up her glass with one hand and lays the other on Natasha’s arm. 

“I’m really sorry, Nat,” she says, her voice heavy with genuine regret.  “I really tried to get him here; I even got Kate on his case, but I never heard back. But don’t leave - maybe he’ll still show up. No answer isn’t a no.”

And with one last sympathetic squeeze of Natasha’s arm she glides back into the crowd, dispensing smiles and weaving her magic with gestures of welcome.

Natasha follows her with her eyes, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. There’s Steve, with his arm around Sam, waving at her with a bottle of beer. Banner is in a corner trying to be invisible, so she does him the favor of pretending she doesn’t see him.  On the balcony, a shower of rainbows briefly lights up the sky: Thor, or Jane?

All in all, she should be happy to be here, among friends, all of whom will likely stick around for a yak and a laugh after the duty invitees have disappeared. 

And yet…  Who is she kidding? It’s not them she came here for. But Clint has avoided her ever since she’d planted that kiss on him eight weeks ago, in a haze of pain and adrenaline, in the middle of a battle the rest of which she has since forgotten. And who could blame him? After so many years, out of the blue… 

And since then, nothing. No call, no text, no indication – even via a third party, like Kate – that he’d even understood what she’d been trying to say.

And honestly, what he hell had she been thinking? If he had ever been interested, he’d have made a move years ago. And now, her sudden impulsive – no, call it what it is, idiotic - decision to put her cards on the table might have wrecked the friendship they did have…

Out of the corner of her eye she sees two young women over by the food station. Unselfconsciously beautiful, all confidence and athletic grace, Kate and America are fully absorbed in each other. For the moment, anyway. Natasha downs the rest of the expensive Scotch in one big gulp and heads for the door before they can see her.

*****

Darkness has fallen outside.  Clint is staring at the envelope as if it contains a lethal dose of anthrax spores.

Natasha may be there, Kate had said. Was that supposed to be an enticement, or a warning? 

Deep down he knows that he should be far beyond the teenage moping phase, but if he’s honest with himself – which he tries to be at least occasionally – Clint really doesn’t know what to think.  

Natasha had kissed him. 

They’ve been through more shit together than two humans should see in a lifetime. They’ve shared space, time, battle scars, even the occasional bed – and… nothing.  And why should the most amazing, beautiful, accomplished woman on the planet give a second thought to someone like Clint Barton, carnie and ex-con, human car crash (so declared by several of his ex-lovers including a former wife), a guy who swigs two-week-old coffee from the pot? Can’t think of a reason? Clint can’t either.

But here he’d been patching her up, like he’d done dozens of times – and she had done for him – and all of a sudden, her hands were around his face, pulling him close, and….

She’d kissed him.

He’d responded in kind, of course - who wouldn’t? But also, because he really, really wanted to and had for a very long time, not that he’d ever done anything about it, because… See above, rinse, repeat. 

They’d carried on with the mission and he’d given Natasha some space to come to her senses, because she’d been hurt and must have been out of her mind at the time. After that… nothing.  Of course.  Because it hadn’t meant – no, couldn’t have ­meant - anything. 

He’s avoided her ever since, and – quite obviously – she him.

His phone rings.  Kate.

“We’re heading over now! Be there or be square!” He clicks the call off without saying anything.

At the sound of Kate’s voice, Lucky comes over and starts snuffling. Clint scratches him behind the ears and eyes the golden envelope again, muttering a curse. Lucky follows his gaze and what does the crazy mutt do but trot over to the table, put both paws on it, reach for the envelope with his teeth and bring it over and drop it at Clint’s feet? 

“What?” Clint asks. “You too? Traitor.”

The dog slobber has loosened the glue and the back of the envelope curls up, so Clint takes the hint and opens it all the way. Might as well look at the card, right? 

It turns out to be a picture of Howard Stark at the 1943 WorldExpo, pointing at some futuristic car; remembering last year’s glitter cannon card (not to mention the possibility of a cloud of spores) he unfolds the card slowly, holding it carefully level.

‘Barton!!!’ booms Tony Stark’s voice, triggered by a mechanism buried in the spine of the card. ‘Pepper says I should invite you to my party. Against my better judgment, I am. Bring a date, if you can find someone willing - or subdue someone who’s not. And wear a clean t-shirt. Be there or be square!’

How could anyone possibly resist?

Clint looks around his apartment – a bit grungy, but familiar. Lucky, equally grungy, equally familiar. Trade all this for… what? An evening of glitter and glitz, expensive food he can’t spell, and expensive booze, when all he wants is pizza and a beer? People looking at him, wondering what the hell he’s doing there? 

Natasha, ignoring him and flirting with… Banner or somebody. Anybody, to make sure Clint Barton doesn’t get any ideas.

He looks at the card again.

Natasha may be there.

And she’d kissed him.

Lucky gives him an encouraging woof.

Clint heads to the bedroom, grabs a clean t-shirt - for Pepper, most definitely not for Stark. In a nod to the festive occasion, and to hide a rip in the sleeve that may or may not have started out as a bullet hole, he throws an old tuxedo jacket over top that SHIELD had bought him for some high-class op back in the day.  

He tosses Lucky a couple of sliced of pizza from the fridge and heads out the door before he can change his mind.

*****

The cold air on her skin feels like the embrace of an old enemy – unpleasant, but oddly comforting in its familiarity.  Natasha isn’t entirely sure whether it’s that which makes her decide to walk back to her place, or the fact that doing so will postpone her return to her empty apartment by another forty-five minutes. Neither thought is particularly welcome.  Perhaps the stray cat who’s been showing up on her balcony will drop by for a bowl of cream cheese and some company?

Natasha Romanoff – Black Widow, erstwhile Agent of SHIELD, Avenger, soon-to-be cat lady.

She snorts quietly at her own joke and focuses instead on admitting to herself why she is out here in the cold, rather than at a Christmas party with free food, free Scotch, central heating, and the prospect of conversation with people she actually likes.  

Honestly? She’d run not so much because Clint wasn’t there – no, it was because he might yet show up. Kate Bishop can be very persuasive.

She turns a corner and heads into Bryant Park, for anonymous company if nothing else. The thousands of lights strung along the trees are enough to turn the dark evening into almost-day, even without snow to brighten things up. Jaunty music wafts over from the skating rink and the air is fragrant with the scent of cinnamon, fried food and mulled wine. The craft booths in the winter village are still doing decent business, both from very-last-minute shoppers and those just pretending that they have someone to buy things for.

Natasha slows down her pace to look at the kiosks; it’s not like anyone is waiting for her. There’s everything from woolen hats and scarves in all colours of the rainbow, to gaudy decorations and designer chutneys, doomed to expire unopened in the cupboards of Manhattan. She slows down at a jewelry booth, if only to check out what kinds of things other people might be expected to buy for each other. Research, she tells herself.

The brooch catches her eye almost immediately, the small golden arrow reflecting the fairy lights that line the booth. She frowns at the thing, refusing to consider just why it has attracted her attention, or just how or why looking at it fits into her current mood.

“Sterling silver, gold-plated,” the woman behind the counter says, smelling a sale and trying to inject her voice with the kind of cheer designed to inspire consumer confidence. “Hand made, like everything here.”

Uh huh. Natasha suppresses an eye roll.  

She has no idea what makes her say the next thing.

“How much?”

“Normally, $39.95. But because we’re almost closing, I can let you have it for thirty-five.”

“Twenty-five and you have a deal,” Natasha says reflexively. Too much time in the markets of Central Asia; the haggling instinct is a powerful force, even for a thing she doesn’t really want. (Or does she?)

“Thirty,” the woman says. “That’s the best I can do. And with that I make no profit at all, only selling it so I won’t have to pack it up.”

It’s the spirit of the hunt: Getting something you don’t want, for more than you didn’t want to spend on it. Natasha pulls out her wallet. 

“Someone will be happy tonight,” the saleswoman chirps brightly, with a big, I-can’t-believe-I-made-that-sale kind of smile.

Hardly.  

“Nah. It’s just for me.” Actually, Natasha has no real idea just why she bought the thing; it sure isn’t ‘for her’.  But, to prove the point she just made, she takes it out of the box, opens her coat and pins it on her dress, pricking her skin as she does so because, damn, that dress is tight. Made in China, it says on the back of the little cardboard box. By hand, no doubt.

She hands over three crisp ten-dollar bills, nods a polite thanks and walks off, the woman’s “Merry Christmas!” speeding her steps.

*****

Of course there are no cabs to be found in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve; they’re all on the other side of the East River, where the snazzy parties and the ostentatious tips are tonight.  By the time Clint gets to the Tower it’s close to ten, and the party noise has reached a decibel level that, with his hearing aids in, makes the place sound like an earthquake in a cymbal factory as he comes up the elevator.

Of course, the first person he runs into is his host.

“Legolas. You clean up nice. Should do that more often, the ladies might appreciate it.” 

Stark sounds almost sober, enough for Clint to show him the finger.

“Fuck you too, Tony, and whatever-it-is you’re on, have some more. It might pickle you into ever-lasting life.”

Stark gives him a thumbs-up, presumably in reward for the witty repartee, and ingests more pickling liquid.

“Clint!” A female voice cuts through the din. “Ignore Tony. He’s pouting, because I won’t let him go back to the lab and play.”

Stark harrumphs and wanders off in the direction of the bar, giving a vague jerk of the head to suggest that his dear buddy Legolas might want to come along. Pepper, of course, is her usual warm and chipper self; Clint finds himself ignoring Stark’s summons and responding to her with what could loosely pass for a smile.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she says.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t either, to be honest.” Ouch. That was probably not the right response, so he adds, “But I figured you guys might have something better to drink than Albanian raki. Plus, Lucky’s great, but I thought maybe I should talk to someone who talks back.”

He lets his eyes glide over the crows, briefly arresting on the dark heads of Kate and America; they’re laughing at something Sam Wilson just said. Kate spots him and waves wildly.

Pepper takes a deep breath.

“If it’s Natasha you’re looking for…” she says, with a funny tone in her voice that makes him turn back to her with a snap.  

Now why would she think that that’s who he was looking for?

“Now why would you think…” he starts, but falters in the face of her ‘don’t bullshit me, Clint Barton!‘ look. Jeez. Has he been that obvious, all this time?

“She was here earlier,” Pepper continues. “But then she left.”  

She looks down at her fancy heels. 

“Right after I told her you probably weren’t coming. I’m so sorry, Clint. I screwed up.”

Clint is about to say something like, ‘don’t worry, I do that all the time, good thing Steve and Sam are here for me to talk to’, when Kate appears at his elbow, a spring roll in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. Of course, being Kate, she overheard the conversation despite the party din.

“You have to go after her, Clint,” she declares around a mouthful of beansprouts. “Clearly, she was majorly upset that you weren’t here.”

Pepper nods in eager agreement. And now there’s three against one; America has shown up too.

“I’ll just go say hello to Steve and…” He starts to leave but America blocks him with the wave of a chicken wing.

“Don’t be an idiot, Clint,” she says, poking the drippy bird remnant in his face. “Besides, you’re driving Kate nuts with all the pining and I want her attention on me, not you.”

“They’re right.” Pepper is putting on the corporate voice now. “You need to go, now. Before you change your mind.”

Clint wants to point out that he hasn’t made that mind up yet, but then he realizes that actually, he has. Or rather had, the moment he’d thrown on that tuxedo jacket.

“I can’t just show up there. I don’t have a present,” he says, sounding lame even to himself.

“Natasha won’t mind.” Pepper sounds urgent now, practically shoving him towards the door. 

“Bryant Park should still be open,” America says. “Get her a pretzel. Every woman loves pretzels.”

“Leave already,” Kate threatens, which is actually a bit rich, given the lecture she’d given him about coming here in the first place, and the extra phone call about being square. 

Clint gives up and heads for the elevator, looking back briefly to see the three of them standing there: the three wise women of Manhattan, exchanging triumphant looks and high fives as the elevator door closes. 

Of course, when he gets to Bryant Park everyone has packed up and there are no vendors in sight. The lights of the skating rink are flickering and going dark, the music having long since shut down. Even the pretzel stand is deserted - so much for that idea. The only place that still has someone in it, an old dude counting his money with a satisfied nod, is the Christmas tree lot. 

Well, isn’t that just the story of Clint’s life. 

“Need a tree?” the guy says, spotting him looking lost.  “Make you a deal. My last sale of the season.”

“My friend never has a Christmas tree,” Clint says.  “And besides, I need a present, not a plant.”

Tree guy shrugs. 

“If he’s never had a tree, now’s the time, man. Give the gift of evergreen life!”

Clint doesn’t bother to correct the man’s pronoun use. He looks around at the darkening park and the silent silhouette of Manhattan beyond and really, his options are pretty much nil. If he wants an excuse to go over to Natasha’s, a tree it will have to be.

“Got anything small?” 

There’s no way he’ll be dragging a fucking Douglas fir thirty blocks into Greenwich in a tuxedo and a t-shirt. Because on top of everything, it’s getting cold and he probably should have worn a coat.

*****

It’s almost midnight and Natasha is about to turn in for the night when her doorbell rings.  Who on Earth…

She reaches for the Glock that’s been sitting on the end table and heads for the security monitor.  What she sees is… green.  A tree, slightly unsteady. If this weren’t a fourth-floor walk-up in downtown Manhattan, her best guess would be camouflage: the Birnam Wood, come to Dunsinane. Does this make her Lady Macbeth?

Her curiosity wins out and she pops the lock, the gun at the ready.

“Do you have a vase?” A voice says through the branches.

Clint?

Natasha opens the door all the way and sticks the Glock in her waistband. The scraggly green thing wobbles into her hall and yes, behind it is Clint, in a tuxedo jacket of all things and slightly scratched up.  

He doesn’t look at her as he goes by.

“The guy told me it’ll need water once it’s inside, or the needles will drop by Boxing Day,” he says, followed by, “I’m sorry, I had no idea about dropping needles or I wouldn’t have bought a live one. Also, I’m freezing.”

Natasha would say something if she could, but right now words are failing her.  

An actual Christmas tree. In her apartment.

The scent it gives off is fresh, sweet and green, and it’s already permeating the hall. It smells like… a living, breathing thing, full of promise and hope.

She points at the umbrella stand she’d picked up at a flea market for Clint’s bow at some point, when he was still coming around regularly. He drops the tree in it with audible relief, leaning it against the wall and straightening it so it won’t fall over.

“I kind of forgot about decorations and lights,” he says, frowning at the bare tree. “But I know you’ve never had a tree so at least I knew I wasn’t getting you something you’ve already got.”

“Clint,” she manages, painfully aware that her voice is croaking a little. “It’s fine. It’s perfect. Thank you.”

He finally turns and looks at her.

“Really?”

“Really.” She smiles back, but then hesitates for a moment as her hand involuntarily reaches up to touch the cheap little pin on her expensive dress.“ I’m sorry. I didn’t get you anything.”

Clint’s eyes follow her gesture and alight on the tacky, not-quite-gold little arrow. His eyes widen and there’s a sudden glint in them – a reflection of the arrow she is wearing?

“Actually, I think you did,” he says, his smile broadening as brushes several dozen needles off his jacket.  “So let’s make a deal, here and now: no more pining.”