The idea for this story was born out of an otp meme thing I answered on tumblr. It started out as just a silly little headcanon but then I couldn't fall asleep the other night and it turned itself into a story. You know.
As always I (unfortunately) do not own the Avengers. But a girl can dream.
It started about a year after they were officially partnered together. They were on a mission in Melbourne, and it was a week until Natasha's birthday.
Clint still didn't know her that well, despite being with her almost constantly (under Fury's orders) after brining her in nearly two years previously. Still, they were friendly, and getting more so every day, so he felt obligated to get her something. Especially since he had a feeling birthdays had never been a big priority in her old life, whatever it had been.
The only problem was what. What on earth would a 20-year-old, deadly assassin want? Hell, forget the assassin part, what would any 20-year-old girl want? Clint was at a loss. He knew there wasn't much point in getting her something that might be useful for her line of work. That was pretty much all provided by SHIELD, and anyway, buying some sort of deadly weapon while also trying to stay off the radar of an illegal weapons dealer were not two things that typically go hand in hand. So work was out.
He also knew that she wasn't really one for decorating. Clint had only seen her room a handful of times, but it was pretty much identical to his own. Well, all the SHIELD quarters were identical, technically, but some agents took the time to personalize them with posters or knick-knacks. Neither he nor Natasha were knick-knack sort of people. Besides, even if she were the type to decorate, what then? Any sort of fancy pillow or rug or curtain just seemed utterly ridiculous. Maybe a poster? But he didn't know any of her favorite movies or bands. So home décor was out, too.
That lack of knowledge also ruled out any sort of CD or DVD or book. He could get her a gift card to someplace once they got back, but something about that just didn't feel right. A gift card seemed to Clint something you got from a family member and family was not something either of them liked to think about. Clothes were always an option. But once he thought about it for more than a fraction of a second, no. Clothes were definitely not an option. Even if he had known her style or size or anything else you might need to know to get someone clothes, they would still not have been an option.
Clint mused over all of this as he walked down a crowded city street in the Australian city. He was glancing into various shop windows, simultaneously debating his gift for Natasha and trailing one of their two eventual targets, a pair of brothers who bought and sold highly illegal weapons on the black market.
Too bad they don't sell highly illegal gifts for 20-year-old assassins, thought Clint, as he rounded a corner. His mark had stepped into a store, so Clint followed, not noticing at first what it sold. It was only after he reported the action over his comm unit that he became aware of his surroundings. He was in possibly his least favorite type of store on the planet. Not a clothing store, but a souvenir shop.
The tiny store was filled to the brim with tacky and tasteless items; shelf after shelf of obnoxious t-shirts and coffee mugs with dumb phrases and cheap plastic key chains with probably every name on the planet except his own. Ok, so maybe some of his resentment toward souvenir shops was lingering child childhood bitterness, but still. The stuff was ugly and useless and, worst of all, grossly overpriced. Still, somehow, the shop was crowded with people apparently thrilled with their purchases. Clint was appalled, but he had no choice except to hope that his target would leave quickly.
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"A coffee mug?" Natasha looked dumbfounded, staring down at her gift with a mixture of horror and confusion.
"Well?" Clint asked.
"I don't even drink coffee," Natasha replied, still watching the cup as though it might suddenly come to life.
"You will," Clint said, matter-of-factly.
"Are you never going to give up your quest to make me into a coffee drinker, Barton?" Natasha asked.
"You know," Clint teased, "despite the label, it doesn't have to be used for coffee. The tacky tourist police won't jump out and arrest you if you use it for some other liquid. Tea, for example, which I have noticed you drink by the gallon."
"Well it's better than coffee," Natasha threw back. "Wait, tourist police?" She picked up the mug again and turned it in her hands, noticing for the first time the word "Melbourne" emblazoned across the mug in bright orange letters. "You got this in Melbourne?"
"No, no, in Tokyo, actually, it's a crazy story…" Clint started, but Natasha cut him off by throwing a pillow at his face. Clint caught it and threw it back at Natasha, who kicked it up onto the bed.
"When did you even have time to get it?"
"Honestly?" Clint asked, slightly embarrassed at the circumstances of the acquisition. "I picked it up while I was trailing Becker. He went into one of those awful souvenir shops and I must have been inadvertently staring at him while I was pondering how horrible everything was. When I caught him looking back at me I had to make it look like I was just thinking about the stuff in the store, so I just grabbed what was in front of me."
"A coffee mug."
"Actually, no," Clint went on, "it was a t-shirt. But I have a strict no-clothes rule, so I moved on," he explained.
Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Clint, who realized what he said just a moment too late. "And by that I mean I make it a strict rule to never buy clothing as a gift. Not that I necessarily have a ton of people that I'm buying gifts for. But you know, on the few occasions that I do I never get clothes."
Natasha couldn't contain the smile that found its way to her lips. "Sure," she said. She studied the mug a moment longer. "How did you manage hide this from me?" she asked.
"Oh, I have my ways," Clint replied with a grin. "So you like it?"
"It's terrible," Natasha said. "Thank you."
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Their next mission after her birthday was in Havana, taking out some members of a drug cartel. It was still several months until Clint's birthday, but when Natasha walked past a store with the ugliest, tackiest, most fluorescent t-shirt she had ever seen, she couldn't resist. After that, she got him the worst t-shirts she could find on every mission until his birthday.
When Clint's birthday finally rolled around, Natasha was careful to fold the shirts as small and wrap them so that they looked deceptively not like clothes. She deemed herself successful, if the look on Clint's face when he discovered the shirts was any indication.
He stared at her for a moment, shocked. He had expected a gift from her, as they could definitely be classified as friends now, but this went above and beyond all expectations. He was impressed, and really rather proud.
"Well?" Natasha asked.
"Oh," Clint replied, an evil grin creeping onto his face, "it's on."
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After that, it became an almost ruthless game to see who could find the worst thing in each city they went to. Eventually rules had to be established: First, you couldn't buy the same type of gift twice in a row; second, the gift must feature some sort of reference to the city in which it was bought; third, any gift bought on a solo mission was saved until the next big holiday; and finally and most importantly, whoever found the worst item was deemed the winner, and was treated to dinner by the loser.
Those were the three basic rules they began with. The first was established to get them to branch out from t-shirts and coffee mugs. The second, after Clint forgot to get something in Santiago and tried to pretend something from a previous solo mission in Barcelona was from there. This also brought about the third rule. The final rule was added about a year and a half after they started, when he felt that there needed to be some sort of reward for discovering something especially awful, aside from bragging rights, of course.
No matter what else happened in their lives, they kept up with their competition faithfully. No matter how badly a mission might eventually go, they still both managed to get a tacky souvenir. The reveal of the gifts after a mission became a ritual that comforted them both. They both knew that they had souvenirs of another sort, scars covering their bodies, from before and after they had known each other. The scars brought back the painful sides of missions that had gone ill, and the tacky souvenirs made them feel, for however brief a moment, like ordinary tourists arriving back from a vacation. In those small moments they could forget about everything that may or may not have happened and just recall and recount the happy parts, however brief they may be.
So despite their previous states of being, both Clint and Natasha became knick-knack people, became two of the agents with two of the most decorated rooms. Posters and postcards covered the walls and snow globes, mugs, and shot glasses filled every available surface. Anything and everything imaginable from anywhere and everywhere under the sun could be found in one of their rooms. Provided it was sufficiently ugly, of course.
Though neither would ever admit it to anyone else, they each had a favorite item that, while tacky and ugly, was perfect in its own way.
For Clint, it was a framed photo of him and Natasha. It was from Chicago, the first mission they had been sent on after finally getting together after years of ignoring their feelings. Their cover was, by chance, as a married couple visiting the city. They were attempting to uncover a potential terrorist threat, which meant doing as touristy of things as possible, since those areas were thought to be the targets. The photo was one they had taken at the Sears Tower. Everyone who waited in line had to get a picture taken before they went up; it was against a green screen, and a fake backdrop was added in after. Clint hated the mandatory photo booth, but was willing to play the part, since it was with Natasha; he wouldn't have done it for anyone else. They are dressed casually in the picture, Natasha in jeans and a plain white shirt, with a bright pink sweater tied around her waist; he was wearing khaki shorts and one of the first t-shirts Natasha had gotten him, from Berlin. Clint has his arm around Natasha's shoulders, and she has an arm around his waist, her head resting on his upper arm. Somehow, without him noticing, Natasha had managed to buy both the photo and an appropriately ugly frame. He considered briefly taking the photo out and putting it in an actual frame, but he knew it just wouldn't be the same. Because as it was, it looked like something couple would have, and Clint smiled every time he looked at it, both the picture and the frame.
Natasha's favorite was a snow globe. Clint had picked it up for her in Cairo when they were tracking a member of a political party poisoning the opposition. When she first saw it, she decided it was the dumbest scene possible, but the longer she had it, the more she felt it was perfect for her and Clint. The scene inside was of some pyramids and palm trees, and when you tipped it upside down, instead of creating a sandstorm, which would have made sense, like any other snow globe, white clumps covered the picture. Natasha felt it was somehow symbolic of her and Clint. He loved the heat, and would gladly live in the desert if he could, while she craved the cold and snow, despairing anytime the temperature got above freezing in the winter. Yet somehow they worked. When Clint got fired up, she was the only one who could calm him down, while his anger was palpable, almost like a heat, hers was deadly quiet, an almost peaceful calm. On paper, their combination shouldn't have functioned at all, but when contained together, everything somehow made sense. Natasha kept her gifts organized, the shot glasses in one place, the snow globes in another, and so on. But on her bedside table, beside a bunch of picture frames with silly inspirational quotes, say the Cairo snow globe. It was the last thing she looked at each night before she went to sleep.
And in case anyone was wondering, I am a northeastern Illinois native, so it'll always be the Sears Tower to me!
Thanks for reading!