December 10, 2014

Steve's story haunts her the next day. She has had exactly one good Christmas over her years on the planet. One Christmas where she'd had a light in the tunnel of work and her alcoholic father. But Steve, Steve's had… lots of good Christmases. She knows it. A mother and a best friend that smuggled Christmas dinner into a hospital bed, the way he spoke of how he didn't care that there were no presents, nothing material. But a good Christmas nevertheless.

There's nothing in her past that can come anywhere close.

It's another stark reminder of how different they are, how incompatible they are. It's reaffirmation of the absolutely stupid idea it had been to even start this, to agree with him. How can a woman like her, cold, dark, SHIELD's ice queen, compare to Steve's general good will and unwavering faith.

"Hey. Ready for the windows?"

Maria looks up at Steve, takes the cup he offers her. She feels like she's shaking, but her hands are steady.

"Maria?"

"Can we just walk?"

He blinks for a moment, but she's not sure if there's something in his face or if he's really just nonchalant about the whole thing. Either way, he simply holds up his hand.

"Where to?"

"Anywhere," she replies, already walking, pulling him along. "Just- Not the windows."

She's not ready for the windows. Not after his picture perfect Christmas he's painted for her the previous evening.

She's not sure how long they walk before he finally asks, "Everything okay?"

She wants to say yes. She wants to tell him that there's nothing to worry about, but she also knows he isn't as stupid as oblivious as people often assume he is. The words climb her throat, choking her until she forces them all down with a thick swallow.

"Lost in my own head," she finally manages.

He waits a beat, then two. "Want to talk about it?"

No, is the answer. She does not want to give him a reason to step back, not a reason to push harder. She knows, eventually, what he will discover for himself that they are not suited and she can't say she's particularly eager to get there.

But she also knows he's really trying and that she really has too. She's not stupid enough to think that this doesn't matter, to him personally or them together.

Because he wants her to share, always wants her to tell him thinks about what she's doing, what she's feeling and she can't. She just can't. It's not her style, talking. She takes Christmas shifts. She takes the heat and blame when things go wrong on her watch. She protects her people from blame they don't deserve and she does it without people knowing. She hates being the centre of attention. She hates people knowing her. She hates being vulnerable.

She doesn't talk. But he does and while she is very aware she doesn't owe him – he'd kill her for even thinking such a thing – she thinks maybe she wants to give him this.

"I've had one good Christmas."

His gaze is startled when she manages to look up. Startled and a little greedy and she knows this is right. A certainty settles in her gut that no matter what she's about to tell him he will be there, stalwart and true. He just wants to know her, all of the places, all of the corners. He'll wait too, she knows, and she can't seem to keep herself from leaning in. He grunts a little as her hip bumps his harder than she'd meant.

"One good Christmas?"

Oh. Right.

She laughs a little. "Clint's idea, before Fury pulled me up the ranks."

Pulled her. Sure. Like she didn't want to climb that ladder. The look Steve gives her tells her he's painfully aware of both the workaholic tendency that would have fit Fury perfectly and the ambition that she has in spades. She rolls her eyes, even as her heart warms strangely at how well he knows that.

"He's just brought Natasha in. The Black Widow." Maria shakes her head. It's funny to look back on, the weird knowledge that she'd been facing the best assassin, a legend in the her own right, preparing to celebrate Christmas. It had been strange and a little daunting at the time, but Maria's never been a coward.

There's a smile dancing across her face as she looks up at him. "Could you imagine? Clint wanted to celebrate Christmas with the Black freaking Widow just months after we'd brought her in. She was still going through the reprogramming, given what amounts to a day pass from prison for it. But I was young and Clint was insistent."

She rolls her eyes, but he has a little smile on his face. It looks so amused and more than a little adoring and her heart flips again. It's moments like these – like their phone calls when all of this started, the way he gets after a nightmare, the pleading look on his face when he asks her "Please, Maria, don't run" – that crack her open, wide and deep and vulnerable.

"What did she do?"

"Nothing," Maria replies. "It was… Christmas."

"It's Natasha. And Barton."

"Both of whom are - were-"

He winces, like the reminder that SHIELD's gone still hurts him. Or maybe that's more about his missing friend. Regardless, she glosses over it because if she doesn't, she's never going to get all of this out.

"Phil cooked, thank God. Natasha isn't the cooking type and Clint burns water. Literally."

Steve snorts.

"Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing… I'd never had a Christmas like that before. Never did afterwards, either." She doesn't have to look at him to know there's a question there, to know he won't ask out loud and risk interrupting her. He's not immune to the knowledge that this is the most she's voluntarily shared about the deep vaults of herself.

"I worked. Single, no family, nowhere to go and there were people that did."

She braces herself for the lecture, because that's how this always happens. She works so hard, she works so long, and when she admits to working through Christmas through "the best years of her life" that tends to be the last straw. But Steve, as he's prone to do, as he has done since the beginning, surprises her.

Instead of scolding, he chuckles. "That's so you."

"What?"

He side-eyes her, like he's nervous. Like he's about to tell her something she doesn't want to hear. "Giving up that time for someone who needs it."

And oh wow. Just wow. She huffs a little, hates the way he does this to her sometimes. The way he knows. The way he tugs her aside at the market when it gets too crazy, the way he doesn't ask questions when she puts the kibosh on his very exciting plans to look at the Macy's holiday windows in favour of wandering aimlessly. He hates anything aimless, likes purpose and pursuit but he also knows that sometimes she needs it.

She's known, of course. He's always so aware of her, or at least she feels that way. She's always catching his eye when they're across the room. He's always gravitated towards her on movie nights at the Tower. She swallows around the thought of his need to have her being a little more obvious to everyone but her.

"Not this year though," she murmurs.

He nudges them aside – and when had they stopped walking? – presses her against the brick wall. New York's pedestrian traffic floats around them, oblivious and uncaring, but she's kind of the same. She's focussed on him, very blue eyes and a face that says more than she can take in.

"What are you doing this year?" he asks and she knows he's not being obvious. He wants to know and hasn't assumed she'll be spending it with him, even if she can see the yearning for it in his gaze.

There are a lot of words she can't give him, but she knows she can give him this.

"I don't know." And his mouth comes down, brushes against hers in the December daylight. "Surprise me, Steve."

His smile, she thinks, will always make the vulnerability worth it.