investigatory_suspect

magnetgirl

The ride home was long, and Natasha sat with her eyes closed, longing for the steamy bath she would draw as soon as she had made it to her apartment. She kept her eyes closed as the air shifted and Clint sat down beside her. She knew it was Clint from the mild odor of heavy exertion —though he had made a respectable effort at washing up with the lavatory faucet—, from the way his body claimed the seat with aplomb, from the fact someone sat freely and willfully altogether. Despite the smell of stale sweat, she almost indulged the thought of leaning her head against his shoulder. Perhaps she could have caught a moment of real sleep. Clint had used her as a pillow during the initial trip.

Natasha did not use Clint as a headrest and she did not fall asleep, but she did open her eyes at Clint’s mention of pizza at his place. Instead of the agitation that had built as the mission extended from ten days, to eleven, to fifteen, Clint’s voice was eager. All at once she gave up the idea of scrubbing the dirt, the dust, the grit, from under her nails, out of her hair, off of her skin. Since she had not admitted to herself her desire to exfoliate the last few months caked as layers on her shoulders, she did not need to reconcile that foregone opportunity as well.

“Mushrooms.”

Clint wrinkled his nose and agreed.

Not a minute after they had landed, Clint and Natasha were striding down the ramp, Clint’s arm slung around Natasha’s shoulder. Rather than bear down on her tight muscles, Natasha somehow felt lighter. She smiled. Clint grinned.

Back on solid ground, Herrera called out to Clint, an invitation to drinks. Natasha’s smile fell. She registered brief annoyance at the idea of a noisy social scene but the feeling did not last. From day one, Clint had invited her to every game night, every barbecue, every party. When Natasha declined, he mentioned that he had just changed the sheets on his bed and she should make use of the larger quarters while he was gone, or informed her that the missing James Bond had been returned to the media room, or said that, actually, since they were in the city and had the next day off, he had been wanting to go to the arcade bar where Coulson had staked him for a month before recruitment, and he bet that Natasha could not beat his high score. Natasha could not, and when the matronly bartender ribbed Clint with the camaraderie built from a decade of knowing someone, she felt like a fly on the wall of his life story, but not quite so unwelcome. Other times, when it was just Clint and Coulson, or Morse, or May, she said yes, and he guided them to a quiet corner table, never prodding her to speak but regularly turning to her with a smiled, or a raised brow, or a roll of the eyes, as though she had always been an equal participant in the conversation.

Natasha’s apartment now was still smaller than Clint’s, but her bathtub was not. She could still order pizza-- though it had become something of a tradition between the two of them-- and eat while she soaked. That sounded alright. That sounded good.

Clint waved Herrera off and warmth washed over her.

At his apartment, Clint told Natasha to take the first shower and promised to phone in the order. While he took his turn, the delivery arrived, and Natasha ate her slices while listening to Clint exit the shower and putter around his room. Used to his restless habits, Natasha swiped the Sudoku off the coffee table and settled onto the sofa.Though budget quality, the seats remembered her body.

Clint’s “goddammit,” stoked Natasha’s attention from where she had just penned a curved line to the seven penciled into Clint’s unfinished puzzle. Prepared for her defense, Clint hated when she messed with his brain teasers-- “What is this, Queen’s English? Now all these other answers are wrong.” “The colonists did not need to dump proper spelling when they dumped the tea.” -- she looked up. But rather than glaring at her appropriation of his coffee table mind teasers, Clint was glaring at a knot consuming almost an entire string of Christmas lights. Surreptitiously, she returned the Sudoku to where she’d found it.

“Give it here.”

Clint passed her the wad wordlessly and her fingers followed the path of a strand. From the corner of her eye, she watched Clint turn his focus back into the contents of a shabby cardboard box. 

Several bulbs were missing from wire, which itself was scuffed from where hooks must have rubbed. Natasha wondered if there were replacements among the assorted paraphernalia. When she asked, Clint just shook his head and sat back on his heels.

“We need a tree.”

Curious, she clarified, “a Christmas tree?” and quickly sorted out that yes, what Clint wanted was a five- or six-footer Fraser fir, and he wanted it that night because “its already the eighteenth, and I think the corner lot closes late.”

Natasha looked outside the frosted window and shivered. She did not like the cold. Although she knew her decision was made, she did not immediately move off the couch. Tilting her head, she said neutrally, “I did not know you celebrated Christmas.”

Of course, it was a silly question, and not borne out of any thought towards religious affiliation. Clint’s childhood did not suggest warm family traditions, but Clint himself seemed to enjoy special occasions as much as the average American. Late in Natasha’s first November at SHIELD, Clint had given her a garishly frosted cupcake. “For your early birthday,” he’d said.

She’d frozen for a moment and then shoved the baked good back into his startled hands, smearing pink frosting along the edge of her finger.

“What, they don’t do this in Russia?” he’d asked.

“I am allergic to chocolate,” she’d replied, though she’d thought he might have seen her take an Andes mint from the jar on Hill’s desk the week prior. Thus far she had just told Clint to fuck off when she did not want to talk about something, a privileged form of self-disclosure she reserved for the idiot that did not shoot her when he’d had the chance.

Using both hands to hold the bottom of the cupcake, he said, “okay,” tone so absolutely mild that she had known then that he had seen her take the Andes.

At that time, it had not occurred to Natasha that Christmas was coming shortly thereafter.If there was an equilibrium to reach or self to establish, it had not happened yet. Clint had been relocated to a different base a few days later and Coulson had followed up on Clint’s gift by wrapping skeptical trust in a bow for the winter holidays. Not allowed to leave the facility without supervision, the twinkling lights and canned carols offset the quieter atmosphere of a near-empty cafeteria. Natasha had retreated to the bare walls of her room, downed eggnog until she vomited into a mesh garbage bin, and smeared the sour residue on her floor by trying to clean with single-ply toilet paper.

The next year, last year, Natasha had been sent on assignment just before Thanksgiving and had not returned until mid-January. So, all in all, this was a new experience with Clint. She felt too removed from the spirit to react to him when present-day Clint acknowledged her remark with, “its fun.”

It was Natasha’s turn to say “okay,” though she tried to infuse a bit more investment in the word.   An hour-and-a-half later, she worried about her return on that, as Clint frowned at the needles flaking off one of the last trees to have any at all in the lot. They deferred final selection until the next day and Natasha saved her observation that that would just be one day closer to Christmas.

At a street corner, a pastel ballerina arrested in attitude drew Natasha’s eye to a poster fixed on a pole. Clint opened his mouth but before Natasha could cut him off, he snapped it shut himself. “Let’s make hot chocolate,” he said instead, and Natasha grabbed his cold hand with her gloved one. Clint swung it back and forth to the time of her unrecorded history.

*

The next morning, they did not go get a Christmas tree. SHIELD called them in, justifying the interruption of their weekend with urgent leads in recent intelligence. That day, and the next several, were spent decoding data, analyzing information, and sketching out mission specs that they prayed some other soul would have to carry out.

On the twenty-first, Clint came in wearing a Santa hat and knit sweater of the kind Natasha had seen in thrift stores. When he came close to her, Natasha thought it might smell like that too, and then had him in a headlock before he could put an offensive polyester hat on her head. The only parry Clint had was to remind her naughty assassins got lumps of coal. Natasha reminded him that those made good blunt force weapons.

By afternoon, neither one of them had been called for mission prep, and Clint projected mounting hopefulness into a whistled rendition of I’ll Be Home for Christmas. The last bars were fading away when Coulson appeared.

“What a grinch,” she whispered behind his back, as she and Clint followed him into the conference room. Clint’s scowl resisted the attempt at humor and persisted out the door several hours later. Natasha, for her part, fished the red and white polyester from her bag and fit it over her head. Although Clint grabbed her hand, he did not say anything in response. Out on the sidewalk, their breaths puffed.

“Mom used to drive us around town to look at the lights each Christmas. It’s pretty, this time of year, you know? You forget the trees are dead when they are all lit up with fairy lights. I liked going down Main Street the most. They always made a big deal of it. Giant wreaths, bells, garlands. Barney liked the food best. Mom always tried extra hard. We made gingerbread houses. No one liked the taste, and Barney smashed mine at least once, but the cookies were good.”

Clint paused, giving space for Natasha to share that he knew she would never use.

“We went to church on Christmas Eve. All of us all dolled up-- that’s how I first knew I looked so sharp in a suit.” Natasha snorted. “Dad rolled down the aisle like we were there every week, but at least he’d be sober. Always on his best behavior.”

Clint sighed. Natasha was aware that the holidays carried a theme of melancholy for many people. Hearing it in Clint’s voice tightened a knot in her chest. 

“I am sorry,” she tried, wishing she could gift him something better. Some words or some fellowship. “I’m sorry you won’t be here to celebrate. I’m sorry they aren’t either.”

Clint shrugged. “It was supposed to be our first Christmas together.” It took her until the hours of early morning to follow the thread of conversation that Clint had woven.

*

They left while it was snowing before the sun had risen on the 24th and landed in Tallin during the time that, had they not just done so,, Clint would probably be eating French toast, as his tradition went. The doors opened to a gray skyline. Stepping out, the northern air kissed the cheek of its prodigal child. Traversing the city, Natasha looked for shadows in every alley. Somewhere, a bell tolled.

They returned late on the fifth. Natasha had been grazed by a bullet, and Clint was concussed, having shielded Natasha from the brunt of an explosion’s force. Arriving at the threshold of Clint’s apartment a battered pair, a strand of burnt-out bulbs and ginger cookies gone stale greeted them.

Clint’s lack of visible reaction was the most concerning to Natasha. “I’m going to bed,” is all he said, shouldering his canvas bag. Natasha looked at the clock to verify there was no reason to prod otherwise. She saw none, until he closed the bedroom door behind himself and she felt suddenly, remarkably, shut out.

*

By the time Clint rose, it was nearing afternoon and the apartment was saturated with the scent of herbs and spices. 

“What’s this,” he asked, canting his head from where he paused at the kitchen counter.

“Christmas,” Natasha said, like it was obvious. She was wearing an apron, and though her hair was pinned, loose strands were plastered to her forehead from the heat of the stovetop.

“I am not still concussed?”

“No.”

“Then where are the presents?”

“Sorry, that is New Year’s.” She did not sound sorry and scrubbed sticky dough off her hands with vigor. Done with questions, Clint waited only long enough to ensure Natasha’s back would stay turned, and reached for a pastry. Natasha whirled around and swatted his hand with a floury towel all the same.

“No eating until the first star appears,” she clipped, withholding the additional information that the traditional fast should have started thirty-nine days ago. That was need to know. Natasha’s disinterest in handing him that leverage meant Clint did not need to know. His resultant whine validated her choice.

“But Naa-aaat, I’m hungry. I’m injured. And you said it’s Christmas. Remember when I told you about eating all the food on Christmas.”

“It’s Orthodox Christmas.”

Natasha expected Clint to continue. And she looked up at Clint’s continued silence. His face was, at once, both open and serious. Damn his face.

“I didn’t know you celebrated Orthodox Christmas.”

The silence stretched only as long as it took Clint to confirm that she had nothing to add.

“Does Orthodox Christmas have special meaning?”

“The Soviets lost,” Natasha deadpanned, then thought of a young Clint with holly pinned to his Christmas Eve suit. The words came slow, “forgiveness…family,” and her redirection of attention to the assembly of dishes came quickly. Clint hummed.

“I forgive you for not having presents. But I am sick and injured. Starving. Wasting away.”

Releasing a deep breath, anxiety that Natasha had not noticed build, loosened.

“We have another Christmas tradition.”

“What’s that?”

“Fortune telling,” Natasha responded, and eyed the place where she usually carried a knife. Clint held up his hands with equal exaggeration and took a half-step back. Natasha gave a satisfied nod. “Good.” Clint slowly started to lower both hands and then, quick as a flash, the one closest to the counter darted out, claiming a cookie and place in Santa’s bad books.

The rest of the day passed in the kitchen. Clint did not know how to cook, but that was alright, because the recipes were new to Natasha as well. They left greasy splotches on Clint’s laptop as they googled recipes for kholodet, pierogi, mushroom soup, and cod. Natasha was pretty willing to break with tradition when Clint grimaced at the last, and sent him back out for more pork and lamb instead.

They laid out a linen cloth and scattered dried pine needles collected from the building hallway at four. They were broken and wet from the slush that boots had carried in, but Natasha figured that made them more analogous to the hay they should have been, anyway. At five, when Clint argued that they were waiting for the apocalypse before the stars appeared in the city. Natasha conceded, but held firm on maintaining a Lenten spread, reserving the meat and heavier fare for the next day. To his credit, Clint did not argue and he waited for Natasha to be seated before resting an open-faced hand on the table.

“Grace,” he explained, answering the rise of her eyebrow, and sending her scrambling for google again. Their meal was delayed as Clint scrounged up a candle, and they streamed someone else’s rendition of the Troparion while lighting the wick. Natasha wondered if there was a word for nostalgia of a time that never happened.

In the sink, the piled cookware spilled up and onto the counter. At the table, they sampled each of their twelve dishes with the only clean cutlery left.

At eleven, Natasha directed Clint to put on his suit – “the one you look sharp in” -- and led him without hurry through the neighborhood. The quiet streets were filled with stories about Ded Moroz, winter storms, Moscow’s Christmas market, and empty gift boxes opened in July. When Natasha trailed off at the last, Clint picked a fight contesting the superiority of New York’s winter decorations. Natasha looked for enough snow on the ground to dump down his coat.

Just before midnight, they stopped before a church, the tall dome massive when seen from directly below. The architecture stirred enough awe that Natasha did not pause to rationalize it from intentional geometry, instead ushering Clint through the heavy doors. Clint was taken by Natasha’s profile in the pew, illuminated by soft light. He did not speak Russian, but would have spent the long mass staring at Natasha anyway. Back home, at three a.m. while Natasha was covered up to the elbow in soap suds, he pulled out mistletoe. 

“American Christmas,” he said, and she kissed him.

*

At one p.m on January 7th, the buzzer to Clint’s apartment, again rich with heavy smells, startled a peaceful moment.

“We expecting someone?” Clint asked, though he knew they weren’t.