MrsTater AKA khaleesa AKA my very good friend gave four such fabulous prompts for this Secret Santa exchange that at first I couldn't decide between them…but then it hit me. Why decide between them at all? All four of them could conceivably happen at different points in Bruce and Natasha's relationship, so why not explore their changing dynamic over four different Christmases? This fic is based on the following four prompts, but not precisely in this order:
Prompt #1: Tony suspects Bruce and Natasha have feelings for each other, so he hangs mistletoe all over the Tower trying to get them to admit how they feel. But it's not easy to trick a super spy.
Prompt #2: Bruce doesn't sent postcards from Tahiti, but Natasha does get a Christmas card that gives her a clue to his location.
Prompt #3: One of them isn't feeling the Christmas spirit, so the other helps them find it, in the way you only can in NYC.
Prompt #4: Christmas at the Barton farm.
Like I said, all really good prompts. I couldn't let them go to waste! Especially when she deserves the best Christmas fic possible. Happy holidays fellow BruceNat fans! If you're looking for more BruceNat goodness, make sure you check out MrsTater's fics. You won't regret it. I didn't, when I started reading her work!
Most of all, a very Merry Christmas to MrsTater. I hope you enjoy your Christmas fic, my dear!
Four Seasons (of the Heart)
2012
For the first time since Lila had been born, Natasha wasn't at the Barton farm for Christmas and she wasn't happy about the fact. But the threats from the terrorist who called himself "The Mandarin" were only escalating, and Nick had decided that he wanted her on hand just in case. Christmas would be an ideal time to strike, after all.
Fury ruining her Christmas plans — there was a St. Nick joke in there somewhere, but she was too annoyed to think of it. Or maybe the fact that Stark had decided to celebrate the season by changing his ringtone for Fury to "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" had infected her brain. In any case, Stark had gone off to spend some quality time with Pepper Potts over the holiday, and Natasha had the run of the newly-completed floors of Avengers Tower. The usual sounds of the construction on the upper half of the tower had fallen silent as mid-December brought a holiday for the construction workers along with everyone else, Natasha excepted. The Tower was dark and Natasha was alone as she watched the Mandarin's videos and combed through surveillance reports.
Although alone wasn't an accurate description, technically speaking. Bruce Banner had taken up residence in the Tower as soon as the living quarters had been completed, even if she had yet to see him outside his lab. And she'd only managed to see him there during her time glancing at the Tower's security feeds. He was like a ghost.
A Christmas ghost straight from a Dickens novel, given the way the half-completed Tower was practically dripping with evergreen garlands, beribboned wreaths, and cascades of lights. She still wasn't sure how Tony had managed to so thoroughly cover the walls and doors and windows with festive decorations. Or, more importantly, why. It had spread overnight like a particularly virulent plague.
Christmas was a largely pointless holiday in her mind, a chaotic mishmash of pagan and religious traditions that had faded into a collection of sanitized fairytales for children. She'd only ever enjoyed the holiday at Clint's house, where Cooper and Lila's excitement made the experience worthwhile in a distant, vicarious sort of way.
Ghosts and ubiquitous decorations notwithstanding, she kept focused on her mission and tried not to think of Clint and Laura's Christmas tree, strung with hundreds of glimmering lights, yards of tinsel, and dozens of ornaments made by Cooper and Lila over the years. She tried not to think of baking sugar cookies with Laura and the kids and the way Clint managed to steal some of the icing every time. She especially avoided all thoughts of cuddling up to watch animated Christmas movies before marking another day off the Christmas countdown calendar. The light in Cooper and Lila's eyes always intensified the closer they got to Christmas Eve.
She divided her time between work, glaring at the Christmas decorations, and watching her phone for calls. Her focus was absolute, even if she was hoping for calls from the Bartons instead of from Nick. The Tower's gym wasn't complete yet, so when she had downtime, Natasha gravitated to the coffee machine in the expensively furnished lounge. It was there that she finally laid eyes on Bruce.
"Are you the ghost of Christmas past?" she asked when he appeared in the doorway. He blinked at her in surprise, but didn't retreat. She crossed avoiding me off her mental list of reasons Bruce had been MIA.
"Natasha," he said. It was a greeting and a question. "I didn't know you were here." He was as hard to read as ever, but she thought he was telling the truth. His surprised expression seemed genuine; surprise was, after all, the hardest emotion to fake. She glanced him over briefly. He'd changed a lot since the last time she'd seen him. The long, curly hair was gone, buzzed short and harsh. His beard was thick enough that it must be a choice rather than temporarily neglecting to shave. She wasn't sure she liked the look, not that it mattered. His dark eyes were as deceptively placid and as shrewdly piercing as ever as he waited for her answer.
"Just using Stark's tech for a while," she answered with a shrug. "The perks of being an Avenger. Didn't JARVIS tell you I was here?"
Bruce's face creased with embarrassment as he ran a hand over his cropped hair. "He might have. Sometimes I don't hear him when I'm busy. If I'd known, I would have come by to say hello. So…" He dropped his hand enough to offer a stilted motion that might have been a wave. "Hi," he said. His smile was self-deprecating, but genuine enough.
She smiled back, and moved to make room for him by the coffee machine. He grabbed a mug and got to work; it took her a moment to recognize that he was making hot chocolate. The uncertain set of his shoulders dissuaded her from teasing him about the fact.
She drifted to the couch that was placed a little too close to a giant, wall-mounted plasma-screen. She felt rather than saw Bruce's doubtful gaze.
"Whatever you're doing, don't let me get in your way," she offered.
He shuffled over to the end of the couch. "I was going to check something," he said, gesturing vaguely at the TV. "But if you're working in here…" He took a step back toward the door. His closed posture and quiet tone reminded her of the first time she'd ever spoken to him. He was always reluctant to take up space.
She knew the feeling.
"Go ahead," she said quietly, and pulled out her phone to underline her lack of investment in his decision (and to check for calls from the kids). Bruce was the sort who occasionally responded more to apathy than to interest. Scrutiny made him uncomfortable. She knew that feeling, too.
A few moments passed before the couch squeaked as Bruce sat down. She didn't miss the fact that he was as far away from her as he could manage. He was practically pressed up against the armrest as he fumbled with the remote. Sneaking clandestine glances at his channel surfing wasn't hard, even though he kept the TV muted — except he didn't seem to be channel surfing at all. He stopped on a single channel and started scrolling through the listed programming for the day. Natasha decided to drop the not-paying-attention act.
"I didn't figure you for a TCM kind of guy," she started, glancing between the listings that included titles like It's a Wonderful Life and Bruce's embarrassed expression that was only half-hidden by the glare of the TV on his glasses.
"And why is that?" he deflected — rather smoothly, Natasha had to admit — and kept watching the titles onscreen.
She shrugged. "You're not old enough, for one thing."
Bruce blinked and finally turned to look at her. His uncertain expression relaxed when he realized that she wasn't making fun of him. "Debatable," he said. "And I'd like to see the data behind that conclusion."
Her experience with Bruce Banner's sense of humor was limited and had occurred almost exclusively in very bad situations, but she recognized the self-deprecation and the dry sarcasm. At least this time it wasn't framed by the threat of a Hulkout or an alien attack.
"The best data of all," she answered with a smirk, determined to see whether his sense of humor responded to encouragement. "Personal experience."
Bruce was silent for a long moment, but his finger paused on the remote. "Then I'd say your sample size isn't large enough." His lips twitched only a little.
"Has anyone ever told you that you're a huge nerd?" she asked casually. "Or did you only figure it out when people wouldn't stop throwing degrees at you?"
Bruce laughed at last, or at least snorted in a faintly amused way, and he almost smiled.
"But maybe you're right," Natasha continued. "I should expand my horizons. What are you looking for, anyway?"
Bruce pressed the power button on the remote. She just caught a glimpse of a title before the screen went dark. The Shop Around the Corner.
"It's a Christmas movie," he explained. "One of my favorites." He was taking his time in placing the remote on the side table and adjusting his mug beside it. Natasha remembered the way he'd clasped his hands and idly rocked a wooden cradle during their first meeting many months ago. He fiddled when he was uncertain. Memories of soothing lies about "just you and me" and guns she'd stashed under tables surfaced and brought with them a vague sting of guilt. She grasped for a distraction.
"So this is how you spend Christmas? Watching old movies?" She kept her tone light, teasing him instead of making fun.
The smile that twitched across his lips was slightly stronger than the earlier iterations she'd seen today. "Mostly this one. I managed to watch it even on bad years."
She tried to limit her thoughts to the hilarious picture of Bruce watching old movies dubbed into Portuguese and Hindi, avoiding the fact that he had periods of his life that could be called bad years.
"You mean you've been living in New York City and this is the most festive thing you can come up with?" she rebuked, half to distract herself from the gloom that threatened. The thought of Bruce's many Christmases alone vibrated in sympathy with her own misery over being separated from the Bartons until it became a potent, universally tragic thought. "What about sightseeing? Have you even gone to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree?"
"No," Bruce admitted. "The crowds —"
"— aren't a problem when there aren't aliens around to set you off," Natasha interjected smoothly. "Your control in crowds is very good."
Even Bruce couldn't argue with facts, so he settled for a noncommittal shrug.
"When does your movie come on?" she asked, expertly keeping the grinding of her mental gears out of her voice.
"Two hours," Bruce answered absently. He stared at his cocoa, and Natasha wasn't sure whether he was trying to decide whether it had cooled enough to drink or if he was working on a counterargument. Either way, she had no intention of giving him the time to follow through. She'd just come to a decision.
"Good," she said. "Just enough time to see the tree." When she went on to announce that she was coming too, he looked surprised, but didn't object. She was strangely relieved; she'd half expected that he might not be keen on the expedition — or on her company. But no hint of distaste crossed his face as they abandoned his hot cocoa and left the Tower.
"Haven't you ever been to see the tree before?" Bruce asked as they climbed out of the cab and joined the flow of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.
"I've walked by," Natasha answered. "Never stopped to look."
"Lack of time or lack of interest?"
"A little of both, I guess."
The tourist crowds had thickened in recent weeks as Christmas drew closer. Neither of them were tall enough to comfortably see over the sea of heads around them; Natasha grabbed Bruce's gloved hand to keep from losing him in the crowd. They wove through the mass of camera-toting tourists swathed in scarves and knit caps even though it was a balmy forty degrees. Natasha barely felt the cold. Bruce didn't look uncomfortable either. Of course, he had spent several months in the Canadian wilderness, so maybe he was immune to any temperature above freezing. They made their way down a line of angels composed of shrubs, wire, and lights. The tree was already visible.
They finally broke out of the crowd to find the famous Rockefeller ice skating rink below them and the tree above. It was a massive Norway Spruce, eighty feet tall, at least, supported by cables bolted into the concrete on each side and decked with thousands of lights in every color. An enormous silver star rested on top. It was pretty, Natasha thought, but not breathtaking. She glanced at Bruce. Beneath his wind-reddened cheeks, his jaw had gone slack, and he stared up at the tree with a wide-eyed look that reminded her of Cooper and Lila's expressions when Clint plugged in the Christmas tree each year. She couldn't help her grin.
"So, what do you think?" she prompted. He blinked and came back to himself, adjusting his glasses so minutely that she was sure he was driven by habit rather than necessity.
"It's beautiful," he said simply. When she pulled out her phone and offered to take his picture, Bruce reacted more as if she'd pulled a loaded gun than the time when she actually had brandished a weapon in his face, so she put it away again. They stayed, looking at the tree and watching the skaters below and the children running around with manic glee until his amused expression began to shift into something darker. Fortunately, Natasha had always been good at making the call on when to scrap a mission.
"You need a souvenir," she distracted insistently, pulling him into Rockefeller Center to find the nearest gift shop.
"A souvenir?" he protested, but didn't resist. He even eyed a few of the shop windows with interest as they passed.
"Isn't that what people do when they have a memorable experience?"
His voice was abruptly flat and low. "I don't know." Before she could grimace or try to reroute the conversation, he continued in a lighter tone. "How do you know this qualifies as memorable?" The words could have been sarcastic or unkind, but his face told a different story. The line between his eyebrows, the tightness of his half smile — all clearly said how do I know?
She knew a little something about the difficulty of recognizing a good thing when it came your way. And the even greater difficulty of holding on to it. She opened her mouth to speak and realized that it felt like offering guidance. She tried to shake the feeling and focus on saying only what she knew. "I saw your face. Looked pretty memorable to me."
Bruce gave the first unguarded smile of the day. "You're the expert at reading people," he said, and selected a postcard with a photo of the tree and the parade of trumpeting angels in muted black and white.
They were just in time for the movie when they returned to the Tower, and Natasha found herself lingering on the couch despite the fact that she had never particularly cared for older films. Something in the way Bruce's posture relaxed and the suggestion of a smile settled on his face kept her in place. Bruce was right; her expertise was in reading people. He was just closed off enough to be fascinating, and she had never seen this particular side of him before. She watched him just as much as she watched the movie.
The smile he flashed briefly at each joke was the sort reserved for an old friend met in passing. She suspected he would have laughed outright if she hadn't been there. It occurred to her that she'd never heard him laugh.
She dropped the occasional question in between lines of fast-paced dialogue, and Bruce held back his answers until he could speak without obscuring any important lines. He didn't want to ruin her first viewing of a classic, he said, entirely genuine. He missed the way her lips twitched in response when he turned back to the screen.
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan were the actors playing the star-crossed lovers Alfred Kralik and Klara Novak, according to Bruce. They stepped around and all over each other's feelings in the little shop that employed them in Budapest, blissfully unaware that they were each other's beloved penpals. It was a highly convenient and overly romantic plot, but it did have a certain charm. She'd have to show Clint this quaint little portrayal of Budapest, complete with feathery flakes of fake snow. He'd laugh himself senseless. A cast of actors speaking American English made the whole thing even better.
Bruce was oblivious to her mental list of nitpicks. As the movie went on, he made hot chocolate for the two of them, insisting that she couldn't step away to make her own since she hadn't seen the movie before. She decided to let him take that bullet for her, and didn't regret it a bit when she tasted the end result.
"Not bad, Bruce," she complimented, but he was already glued to the screen again and only nodded faintly in reply.
Onscreen, fake snow and silvery Christmas trees mingled with increasingly romantic plot lines.
"Why would he keep writing to her after he figures out who she is, but not tell her who he is or what he's doing?" she wondered aloud. "It's kind of a dick move."
"Yeah," Bruce agreed. "But it makes for a good movie."
When the credits rolled, she had to admit that he was right. That didn't stop her from having a little fun.
"Tell me again why you like this movie?" she jabbed with a grin.
Bruce smiled, but his eyes turned contemplative.
"It's nice when the hidden truth is hopeful, I guess. And I like the thought that what's right for you isn't immediately obvious. I try to remember that."
She couldn't resist that opening. "What's right for you. Like SHIELD agents ambushing you with offers to join the Avengers, you mean?"
He barely hesitated and his smile was only a little wry. "Yes. Exactly like that."
She didn't feel the tension she'd been harboring in her muscles until they relaxed after he spoke. He didn't hold any grudges. It was a relief, she realized. Bruce picked up their empty mugs and carried them to the sink beside the coffee machine. Natasha's mind drifted to the surveillance reports she needed to get back to as her eyes traced the holly-studded garland draped around the perimeter of the room. For the first time in days, she didn't feel like glaring at it.
She still didn't much care for Christmas divorced from the bright-eyed enthusiasm of Cooper and Lila Barton. But, she decided, the way Bruce did Christmas wasn't so bad either.