it doesn't have to be a snowman
snow days
rating: g
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
warnings: none
summary: What a newly-turned Russian operative and an ex-carnie make of winter is so different - and the same.
author's note: For findthesea and the prompt, "Natasha/Clint, “Would you like to build a snowman?” 08. Cold."
This she knows: snow softens. Shapes gentle under its heavy touch, bowing and curving until they are indistinct and unknowable, familiar and strange all at once.
This she knows: snow kills. Men die in its fury, limbs frozen and lungs chilled; children die in its arms, curled for warmth and hope and rescue. Women die in its soul, knives heavy and eyes burning and triumphing over a final test from their mentors.
This she knows: snow conceals. Truths and terrors, mountains and monsters are all lulled to sleep by its ice-song, hidden from sight and salvation; they are erased from the long path of history, until nothing is left but the drifts and their demons.
All this she knows in her bones, in her heart, in the heat that flares at the thought of the winter lying just outside the window, a step beyond their door - and yet when he invites her to come, this partner she is still growing used to, his words muffled by a glove held between his teeth and the thump of old boots broken out from dusty closets, she finds the word no does not come to her lips.
He makes angels, and men, and lumpy figures he swears are meant to be circus animals from his youth; she builds a fortress while he is occupied, her hands shaping bricks and corners on their own as she studies him from the corner of her eye. When he looks up, meeting her gaze over the strong walls she’s raised between herself and the world, he pauses - and she sees in his face that he knows, that he has been there, that what he makes out of the chaos around him is a place to hide, to make a stand.
He dares her to a snowball fight ten minutes later, his ammo tucked under his arm, and she accepts.
As Clint tells it to the Avengers years later, it ended in a draw. Natasha stays silent, snow and ghosts and a young woman still new to her freedom drifting through her eyes - but she smiles when he looks at her.