Steve
Steve loved Christmas, but he didn’t love how Christmas had become a thing. Unfortunately, Tony Stark loved things, so he’d naturally decided to love Christmas too. The Tower was decked to the nines, even if it was just the Avengers and a few of their significant others and close friends. A tree larger than the ones Steve had seen in Poland and the forests of Germany stood in the middle of the room, lights strung and wrapped around every branch, tinsel and crystal dripping from the evergreen and the entire sight was so overwhelmingly sparkly Steve didn’t quite know what to say.
“I spent forever on that,” Tony said, handing him a glass of champagne. “Isn’t it lovely?”
And without waiting for Steve to say anything, Tony whisked away again. He was incapable of sitting still, even after all this time. But Steve appreciated that Tony had said something to him, much less invited him. They’d figured out how to remove the HYDRA programming from Bucky’s mind while he was in the ice and while Tony had been instrumental in that, he’d somehow impossibly only shown up when Steve wasn’t around. And he hadn’t stopped by to see how Bucky was recovering or if his work had been successful.
Bucky was in a corner, studying the tree with a furrowed brow. He’d disappeared with Natasha briefly, only to reappear with a bowtie where he’d once worn a tie. Steve made a mental note to thank Natasha later for that change of wardrobe. Bucky in a tie looked like he wanted to strangle himself. Bucky in a bowtie...that was something else.
Steve slipped through the crowd and touched Bucky’s elbow. “Hey.”
Bucky blinked and his gaze softened. “Hey. Is Stark always like this?”
Steve glanced around the room, then shrugged. “Yes.”
Bucky snorted softly and took the champagne from Steve’s hand, draining it in a gulp. “You owe me, Rogers.”
Steve suppressed a smile. “Yeah? How do you suggest I repay you?”
Bucky’s gaze darkened, even as the corners of his lips curled upward. He tugged on Steve’s tie and then held it firmly, pulling Steve forward a little. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
Steve could not help the shiver that ran through him. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Bucky released him and held up the champagne flute. “I need to find more of this. See you in a minute.”
Steve watched him slide through the crowd, smiling and nodding to Barton and Pepper who were deep in conversation around Tony’s model train set. Then he said quietly, “You don’t have to lurk in the shadows, Natasha. You can talk to me.”
She stepped out from behind one of the room dividers, her red hair straightened and cut short to her shoulders. She looked as divine as ever, a little black dress that slid over her curves, and heels that made her reach Steve’s shoulder. “He loves you, you know.”
Steve’s breath caught in his chest. “I--.”
“I know,” she said, her voice low. “It’s a small word, isn’t it.”
It was, and he wasn’t sure how she knew that. That love felt incapable of holding inside of it everything he felt for Bucky. Everything he knew, he hoped, Bucky felt for him. It was more than friendship, more than love, and sometimes, Steve was afraid he’d drown in it. He’d already compromised, changed, and did things he hadn’t thought possible of doing for Bucky. Years and years and years ago, before they’d both gone into the ice, and now, in the last year. It felt dangerous, whatever this was, but it felt crucial to survival too.
He hated and loved the feeling in equal turns.
Nat touched his arm and said kindly, “Everyone always wants to know what Barton is to me. The only way I can explain it to other people is that he’s my other half. There isn’t a word for what you and I have, Steve. But know that you have it. It’s rare and precious.”
He didn’t want to think he wasn’t whole without someone else. That felt dangerous and shallow. But then Bucky gestured for him to come join a conversation with Peter, his gaze bright, knowing, and possessive like Steve hadn’t seen it in a long time, and Steve wondered if there could be any other way to explain it. He turned to thank Natasha, but she was already gone, appearing at Barton’s elbow without a backward glance at Steve.
So instead, Steve went to Bucky, where he belonged.
Natasha
Under normal circumstances, she would have simply stood next to Barton and maybe, once, let him get her a drink. It wasn’t as if her friends didn’t know what they were or that they shared a bed. But she didn’t like to get comfortable, didn’t like to feel compromised or needy, didn’t like to feel submissive or soft even when she wanted to be. But when she stepped up next to Clint, he gave her a quick, happy smile and draped an arm around her shoulders, still talking to Pepper about his own childhood train collection. Natasha didn’t pull Clint’s arm from her shoulders or step out from beneath it under the guise of needing something to eat or drink. She leaned into him a little, eyeing the trains.
The trains, it turned out, were not Tony’s, but Pepper’s and she was more than happy to talk about them. The last thing she needed was for Clint to get obsessive about something new. His trains remained in an attic in Iowa but she’d bet money--with Tony, even--that he’d be asking to fetch them soon. He could, she supposed, if he kept them here at the tower. They spent little time here these days, preferring their Brooklyn flat by Prospect Park for the quiet and the privacy.
Tony called from across the room, “Pepper!”
Pepper’s smile tightened a little bit. “Ignore him. He’s perfectly capable of doing whatever he needs doing himself. He’s a goddamn genius and he ought to try using his brain for the little things in life, not just the big ones.”
Natasha laughed at little. It was clearly a well rehearsed line, one Pepper had used recently. “Good luck with that one.”
“I’ll need more than luck,” Pepper muttered when Tony called her name again. “I’ll need a strong drink. Excuse me.”
Clint and Natasha watched her disappear and Clint said in a voice low enough to be just for Natasha, “I’ll never really understand that relationship. Do they seem happy to you?”
Natasha turned the question over in her mind. “Yes, but without the veneer. They don’t pretend to be perfect.” Not anymore either. “Besides,” she added. “I don’t think that I’m particularly good at being happy in public. They probably wonder what kind of loveless relationship we have too.”
“They couldn’t,” Clint protested, leaning away to study her face. She loved his face, the wrinkles and the lines, the way his eyes caressed her expression when they used to scan her as sharp and untrusting as he looked for a target.
Natasha quirked an eyebrow at him. “You know I’m happy because you know me.”
Clint shrugged a little, letting his hand slide from her shoulder to the small of her back. “I think you show a lot more happiness than you think you do. Or than you want to show.”
Natasha stepped a little closer to him. “Just around you.”
Clint’s smile warmed her skin. “Flirt.”
She laughed, tilting her face to press a kiss into the corner of his mouth, arm looping around his neck. “Yes.”
“For me,” he clarified.
“Only for you,” she promised. She let him hold up her weight for a moment, closing her eyes and savoring the feeling that in the middle of a crowded room of people who had all seen her at her worst, she could still be in her own little world with the person who saw her at her best.
This was what she had meant when she’d said to Steve that it was more than friendship, more than love. That she’d never found a word big enough for this, whatever she had with Clint and whatever he had with Bucky. That this went right to the marrow of her bones. He knew every corner of her, even the ones she’d fought so long and hard to hide from him, and he’d always seen her as herself, never as the Widow or as Natalie or as a cover. He’d always seen her, even more clearly than she could see herself, and she’d learned her way out of every darkness in her life by following his light.
He was the best part of every part of her, and she wanted so very very much to be the best parts of every part of him.
“Want to go home?” He asked quietly, his lips bumping against the lobe of her ear.
She closed her eyes. She did. But they couldn’t. It was important that they were here. “Not yet. Dance with me?”
“Always,” he said, and slid his hand into hers.