Chapter Text
“Are you sure you have to put on clothes?”
“Pretty sure this isn’t a nudist party, Clint. At least, I’ve never known Steve and Bucky to throw a clothing-optional party.”
“Are you sure we have to go?” The dork actually pouted, but Natasha was pretty sure he was kidding. Despite the fact that he was now keeping her firmly encircled in his arms, he had happily agreed to go when she asked him earlier.
They were currently tangled together in bed after a post-coital nap, not an unfamiliar position for them lately. Natasha was pretty sure she’d had more sex in this one week than she’d had in her entire life. She was also pretty sure she was happier than she’d been in her entire life. But they hadn’t left the apartment at all this week other than for work; amazing sex notwithstanding, she was going to get stir-crazy soon.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” she reminded Clint. “You want to just spend the entire night at home, naked?”
“Why not? That’s how we spent Christmas.”
“One naked holiday per year.” She kissed him and then slid out of bed. “That’s the limit. Now go put on some clothes. Dress clothes.”
He grumbled discontentedly, but Natasha was pretty sure this was his ‘pretending to be irritated’ grumbling, not his genuine, ‘someone ate all my Lucky Charms’ grumbling. She’d gotten pretty good at identifying his noises and moods, even before this last week.
Sure enough, he soon sighed and smiled at her, throwing off the covers, unabashedly naked (and really, there was nothing to be abashed about). As he stood, the four words across his stomach caught her eye, as they always did. His soulmark no longer caused a painful twisting in her stomach, but rather a pleasant warmth to spread through her body. She instinctively rubbed the cast on her arm, where her mark was hidden underneath the skin.
“I kind of feel like this is our soulmate party,” Clint said as he came back into her room a few minutes later, fully dressed. It was dark jeans and a plain black t-shirt, but neither was wrinkled so Natasha was going to count that as a win.
She scoffed at his statement, though. “I don’t think anyone has had a soulmate party since the 80’s.”
“Probably because they all want to spend their first week like we have.” He waggled his eyebrows. She didn’t bother to respond, because he was probably right. Instead, she held up two dress options and he shrugged.
“They’re both pretty.”
“Useless,” she muttered, turning back to riffle through her options some more.
“Still, though,” Clint said. “It’ll be kind of like an official soulmate intro party. How many people know we’re actually soulmates?”
“Like, everyone? Steve and Bucky obviously.”
Clint groaned in embarrassment at the memory.
She and Clint had discovered they were soulmates on Christmas. After resisting each other for two months, they had a lot of built up tension to get out. She’d ignored her phone the entire day, which had apparently worried Steve and Bucky so much that they’d burst into their apartment while Natasha and Clint were in the middle of something on the couch, both only half-dressed.
They were very happy for them, once everyone was fully dressed and able to explain.
“I told Phil,” Clint said. “He came by the shelter the other day.” There was a pause, then, “He wants to meet you.”
She couldn’t read his tone, so she turned to look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, twiddling his thumbs and not meeting her eyes.
“I want to meet him, too,” Natasha said sincerely, and Clint’s face relaxed into a smile.
“Yeah?”
“Of course. He’s important to you.”
Clint was giving her that ‘I’m about to get all mushy on you’ face, so she turned back to the closet, grabbing the red dress. It wasn’t that she didn’t like mushy Clint; he was quite adorable, even if he was more emotionally open than she was exactly comfortable with. But she’d noticed that mushy Clint tended to lead to amorous Clint, and they were already running late.
So she headed him off. “I assume you told Tony?”
“Why would you assume that?”
“Because you can’t keep anything to yourself? Remember when you told me they got engaged when you were specifically told not to?”
“Hey! I only hinted,” Clint protested. A beat. “I did tell him, though. And Thor. And all the other shelter people. And anyone who came into the shelter this week.”
“Sounds about right,” she said, making only minimal efforts to disguise the affection in her voice. She had told Wanda and Pietro as soon as she saw them at the studio, and she’d called Pepper the day after; she didn’t blame him for being excited to tell people.
Dress chosen, she went to pick out the lingerie to go underneath. She let Clint see her pull out a set with garters that he hadn’t seen yet. His jaw slackened, and he didn’t bother to hide his staring as she put it on.
“You’re teasing me on purpose,” he accused, voice a little deeper than usual.
“Yes.”
Once she was dressed and brushing her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, Clint had recovered himself enough to continue the conversation.
“I guess everyone knows, then?”
“Seems that way. Anyone we didn’t tell, I’m sure Steve did. He loves a good soulmate story.”
“Pretty sure he’s going to ask you to repeat the breaking your arm story for the next ten years, at least,” Clint said, coming up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a kiss into her hair, mussing what she just brushed.
“Still kind of like our Debut, though,” Natasha admitted. “Since most of them haven’t actually seen us since we found out.”
“Debut?” Clint asked with a teasing grin. “And you made fun of me for bringing up soulmate parties?”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, a little breathlessly. His hand had wondered down to the bottom of her dress, and was now steadily making its way up under it. She was suddenly taut with anticipation. “Some countries still do Debuts.”
“Yeah,” Clint said into her neck. She should really swat his hand away before it got any higher, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do it. “If they’re still in the 19th century.”
“Clint,” Natasha said, voice high-pitched (but definitely not a whine). His hand had found the edge of her underwear and his other hand was dangerously close to her breast. “We’re gonna be late.”
“It’s barely nine, Tasha,” he mumbled. She leaned against his back, willing his hand higher. “Long as we get there before midnight, right?”
She gasped as his fingers finally found their destination. “I promised Steve ten,” she said, but she was already melting into him.
“Ah, you promised? Okay,” Clint said, pulling his hand away. She considered stabbing him.
He backed out of the bathroom, an invitation in his smile, and Natasha warred with herself for exactly two seconds before she followed him.
They made it to Steve and Bucky’s by 10:45, which frankly Clint considered an accomplishment. The way she looked in red, it was amazing he ever managed to leave the apartment.
The party was in full swing by the time they got there. Judging by the identical smirks on their faces when they opened the door, Steve and Bucky had a pretty good idea of why they were late.
“We were beginning to wonder if you were going to show up,” Bucky said, while Steve dove straight in to hug Natasha. He hugged Clint next, squeezing tight.
“She looks happy,” Steve whispered to him. “That’s nice to see.” He grinned at Clint when he pulled away. He felt oddly as though he’d just gotten a stamp of approval.
“So,” Bucky said. “How has your week been?”
Clint smothered a grin, wondering how many details he really wanted.
“You pretty much saw how it’s been,” Natasha answered.
“Nat,” Steve whined. “I just got those images out of my head.”
“Now you know how I felt,” she said with a theatrical shudder.
“Seriously, you look happy,” Bucky observed, as Steve had. It made Clint wonder how she’d been for the two weeks prior to breaking her arm. He knew from experience that Natasha did not often wear her emotions on her sleeve, but for the people close to her it was easy to tell what she was feeling. He was glad to be part of what made her happy.
With these thoughts, he couldn’t stop himself from throwing his arm around her, pulling her in close. He worried sometimes that he was going to overload her ability to handle PDA, but so far she had seemed fine. She even leaned into his side a little.
“I am,” Natasha said, and Clint nodded.
“I told you,” Steve said, not a little smugly. “I told you that you had a soulmate.”
“You were right,” she said. “And I’m very glad to have been wrong.”
Clint remembered a conversation from when they still believed they were just friends, about how Natasha hadn’t believed she had a soulmate. As far as she’d known, her mother and her grandmother both hadn’t either, as they’d never gotten their soulmarks. But he always thought she had one. He held out hope that somehow, impossible as it seemed, it could still be her. And it was.
“I wish my mom had lived to see,” Natasha said quietly. “I wonder if my father was her soulmate after all.”
“Maybe,” Bucky said.
“I bet they were.” Clint believed that. Maybe they’d been the same as the two of them; friends first and then giving in… only to tear themselves apart with the belief that they couldn’t be together, never discovering her hidden mark.
Natasha did that little hair flip that she did when she was getting overwhelmed, so he cast about for a change of subject.
As they were talking, Clint estimated about five strangers pushed past him, and they were surrounded on all sides by people. He could hardly take a step without bumping into someone.
“Guys,” Clint said, casting his eyes around the room. “I didn’t even know you knew this many people.”
Bucky cleared his throat, giving Steve an impatient glare.
Steve sighed. “Alright, alright. It’s possible that I maybe should not have invited the entire building. I didn’t think this many people would actually come!”
Clint didn’t know a lot of people there, but Natasha knew a few more. A couple of people from Steve’s station came up to talk to them, already having been told by Steve that they were soulmates.
“I totally knew this was our Debut,” Clint whispered as the latest well-wishers walked off. Natasha just rolled her eyes in a way he now recognized as fond.
Tony and Pepper were next.
“The alcohol selection at this party is abysmal,” Tony said by way of greeting. He shook his plastic cup at them. “No scotch. No bourbon. No rum.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” Pepper said, coming up behind him. “You drink champagne.”
“Or vodka,” Natasha said, pulling a couple of tiny bottles out of her purse that Clint didn’t know had been there. Goddamn, he loved her.
“Russia here gets it,” Tony said, making grabby hands for the bottles.
“No way,” Pepper said. “You are not mixing your liquor.”
“Champagne hardly counts!” Tony protested, but Pepper ignored him, instead pulling Natasha and – to his surprise, Clint - into a hug.
“I’m so happy it all worked out,” she said, grinning.
“Yeah, congratulations,” Tony said to Clint. “Natasha… good luck with him.” Pepper smacked his arm.
Sam was next, proving them wrong in their assumption that everyone already knew about them.
“Hey Nat –“ he said, coming up with a smile, which dropped into a confused frown when he saw Clint with his arm around her. “Uh… hi, Clint.”
Clint and Natasha exchanged a glance, and Clint signed, ‘I don’t think he knows.’
Sam, it turned out, did not know, as he’d been gone for most of the last week, meeting his soulmate’s family for the holidays.
“That’s great!” He said, and became the third person to hug Clint in the last twenty minutes. “Steve told me how hard you were taking it,” he said to Natasha, who looked a little embarrassed. Clint rubbed her arm soothingly; he knew how hard he had taken the thought that they may not be together. He imagined it had been about the same for Natasha.
“And hey!” Sam said excitedly. “Now I won’t feel bad introducing you to my soulmate. I thought you’d be all depressed and shit.”
“All depressed and shit?” Clint repeated. “Is that the official therapist term for it?”
Sam rolled his eyes playfully. “How you gonna put up with him?” He asked Natasha.
“With therapy and shit, I guess.”
Sam looked back and forth between them with poorly disguised amusement. “I can’t decide which of you is the bad influence.” Then he turned, yelling over his shoulder, “Darcy!”
“What?” Came an answering yell from somewhere in the mass of people.
“C’mere! Time to meet more people!”
“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” a pretty brunette woman said as she pushed between a group of people. “I introduced you to my friends one or two at a time, not at one giant party.”
“I think this is better.” Sam grinned “Get them all over with at once.”
“Stop,” Clint said dryly. “You’re flattering us.”
“Darcy,” Sam said. “This is Natasha, Steve’s best friend. And this is Clint, her soulmate.”
Clint smiled proudly, and Natasha sent him a little smile of her own; this was the first time they had ever been introduced as soulmates.
“Hi.” Darcy waved. “I’m obviously Darcy. This is the guy who gave me the world’s most boring soulmark.” She moved her hair to the side so they could see the words ‘Excuse me’ written on her neck.
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “Natasha wasn’t that original either.” He showed her and Sam his.
“’Nice to meet you’?” Darcy nodded. “Alright, so our soulmates are both unoriginal. We should start a club.”
“Hey,” Sam protested. “I gave you material. I was dressed as an elf. No wonder yours is less common.”
Despite some playful arguing, Sam and Natasha did eventually agree that their soulmates had the more original first words.
Damn straight, Clint thought, though he wouldn’t trade his words for any others. These were the words that told the world he belonged to Natasha, and he wouldn’t have it any other way, common mark or not.
“I’m glad it was you,” Clint whispered to her, stroking his fingers over her cast as he’d seen her doing a lot this past week. The words ‘Please let it be you,’ weren’t visible, but he knew they were there. He had a picture of an X-ray hanging in their living room to prove it.
Natasha gave him an affectionate smile, reaching up to give him a quick kiss.
“Me too.”
This party was turning out a lot better than the last one Natasha had been to; she knew more than two people there, for one thing. Plus it was less formal, and, most importantly, she was there with Clint. True, the last party had led to her discovering her soulmark, but it wasn’t exactly what she’d call ‘fun.’
Standing in the corner with Clint, throwing shrimp tails at people’s heads, however? That more closely fit her definition.
“You know,” Maria Hill said, coming to stand next to her. “When I first met you, I didn’t peg you as the type to do something like this.”
“Don’t let her fool you,” Clint said. “She may seem all calm and mature, but deep down she’s goofier than I am.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Natasha muttered. But it was nice sometimes, to forget her age and have some childish fun. That was probably one of the reasons she fell so hard for Clint in the first place.
Her next shot hit Steve directly on the forehead, and she and Clint high-fived.
“Seriously?” Steve called from across the room.
Maria plucked one from her hand and threw it, hitting Steve again. “This is kind of fun.”
“Right?” Clint, unsurprisingly, hit whatever he aimed at with unerring precision. So she could only assume it was 100% intentional when he got Steve in the crotch. The people around him either sniggered or gave her and Clint disapproving looks.
Steve, after this third shot, marched over to them. Natasha held back a smirk, preparing herself for one of his ‘we’re not in college anymore’ speeches. But when he reached them and saw Maria, his face lit up instead.
“Did you tell them?” He asked her excitedly, and Maria glared at him.
“No,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Tell us what?” Natasha asked.
“Tell them, tell them!” Steve encouraged.
Maria sighed. “I got my mark,” she muttered.
“Congratulations?” Natasha said, almost a question because Maria didn’t seem very enthused.
“Where?” Clint asked.
“Inner thigh,” she said, clearly irritated. “Very inner thigh.” Natasha and Clint both grimaced, as this was not exactly a desired spot for a soulmark. Maria shrugged one shoulder. “Could be worse. My mother’s was right across her forehead.”
“Thank goodness that stuff skips a generation,” Steve said.
“When did you get it?” Clint asked.
“A week ago,” Maria said, as if she were referring to some repulsive incident.
Natasha was a little surprised at Maria’s reaction; for most people, getting their mark was an anticipated, exciting event, but Maria didn’t seem to view it that way. Natasha absentmindedly stroked her cast, wondering how she would have reacted had she gotten her mark above the skin like everybody else.
“What time is it?” Natasha asked to change the subject.
“11:30,” Steve answered.
“Already?” Maria scanned her eyes around the room as if looking for someone. “Damn. I have to find someone to kiss at midnight.”
“What?” Steve and Clint both exclaimed at the same time.
“You can’t kiss someone who’s not your soulmate!” Steve said. “You got your mark - it’s bad luck!”
“Don’t tell me you actually believe that,” Natasha asked, talking mostly to Clint, who had nodded along with Steve.
Clint sort of half-shrugged. “I don’t think you should risk it. My friend Bobbi kissed me at midnight a couple years ago, even though she’d already gotten her mark. Now she and Hunter are having problems, fighting all the time.”
“Bobbi?” Natasha muttered. He’d once mentioned a ‘Bobbi’ as someone he’d had a fuck buddies arrangement with several years ago.
Clint grinned. “Jealous?” She just rolled her eyes.
“Whatever,” Maria was saying. “I’m not letting some stupid mark on my arm stop me from living my life.” Then she stalked off.
“I can’t believe she’s not happy about this,” Steve said, looking after her.
“Steve,” Natasha said firmly. “I know that look. This is none of your business, don’t go chasing after her trying to stop her. That ‘bad luck’ nonsense is just a superstition.”
“Maybe,” Steve said reluctantly. “I’m just worried about her. She seems so unhappy about her mark.”
“Do you know what it says?” Clint asked.
Steve shook his head. “She wouldn’t tell me.” Then he sighed. “I’m just gonna go talk to her.”
“Steve!” Natasha called, but he had already merged back into the crowd. She shook her head, half exasperated, half fond. “She’s gonna kick his ass one of these days.”
Clint chuckled. “Probably.”
“Hey, Clint?”
“Hmm?”
“How did you react? When you got your mark.”
A slow, goofy smile spread over his face. “I was so happy.”
“Yeah?” Natasha asked softly, unable to stop herself from leaning into him a little, resting her chin against his arm while she looked up at him.
“Yeah. And nervous. Really nervous. I was afraid you wouldn’t like me.”
Natasha knew that was a common fear; Steve had had the same insecurity when he’d gotten his mark. But she found herself wanting to reassure Clint anyway, so she stood on her toes to kiss him.
“I’m gonna show you how much I like you when we get home,” she whispered in his ear.
“Okay!” Clint said, grabbing her hand and trying to tug her forward. “Let’s go home.”
Natasha laughed. “Not until after midnight.”
Clint heaved a dramatic sigh, smile still on his lips.
“Tease.”
Not long after, Natasha somehow ended up becoming the makeshift bartender, creating more combinations than he thought champagne and vodka should be able to make. Steve was unsurprised (“I’m getting college flashbacks”), and Tony may have fallen in love.
“Where has she been all our lives?” He asked, drinking some orange concoction. “Why didn’t you meet her sooner?”
“I’m so sorry,” Clint said. “My mistake. I should have tried harder to grow my soulmark.”
“Well, as long as you learned something.”
He rolled his eyes. “You and Pepper set a date yet?”
Tony’s sarcastic smile melted into something more genuine and he said, “Well, we set a month: March. We just can’t decide on a day.”
“Doesn’t that depend on how many openings the venue has?”
Tony scoffed. “Do you know who I am? They’ll make an opening.”
Clint had nothing to say to that; he had a point.
“What about you and Natasha?” Tony asked.
“What about us?”
“Don’t be coy,” Tony said. “I know you. You’d have married her a month ago.”
Clint looked over at Natasha, still mixing drinks on the other side of the room, that tiny smile on her face that meant she was enjoying herself.
“Yeah, I would’ve.” Soulmarks be damned. Though he was infinitely glad that they turned out to be soulmates after all, he’d meant it when he told her he would have his mark removed to be with her. He didn’t need the words on his stomach to know he loved her. Nor did he need the traditional wedding, which was good because he wasn’t sure Natasha would want to get married. But he sure wanted to, and he hoped she would eventually feel the same.
“Seriously, though,” Tony said, not meeting his eyes. “I’m happy for you.” He cleared his throat, as if the genuine words were painful to get out. Speech over, he downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. Clint tried not to chuckle, because he knew how hard it was for Tony to be sincere when it came to stuff like this.
“Thanks man.” Clint gave his shoulder a light punch. He mentally checked off their emotional bonding quota for the year.
Close to them, Sam suddenly stood on a chair, staring at something on his phone, and whistled to get everyone’s attention.
“Turn the music down!” He yelled. “Alright. The countdown is about to start!” People cheered, and Sam waited a couple of seconds, watching his phone, before he started, and the crowd joined in. “Ten, nine, eight…”
Shit, Clint thought. He’d completely lost track of time, and now Natasha was nowhere to be seen. It was bad luck not to kiss your soulmate on New Year’s if you’ve met them, and now he had like seven seconds to find his.
“Seven, six…”
“I think she’s over there,” Pepper said helpfully, from where she’d suddenly appeared next to Tony. She was pointing towards the other end of the room, where Natasha was standing with Steve and Bucky. Their eyes met and Clint took off.
“Five, four…”
Seriously, someone needed to have a discussion with Steve and Bucky about the fire safety code, because he had to push through the huge crowd of people to try to reach Natasha and it was not safe.
“Three, two…”
He was close, he could see her now - smiling at him, looking like a dream, like the light at the end of the tunnel.
“One!”
The last two people blocking his path parted for him, and he practically leaped the remaining space between them –
And tripped, landing hard on the floor, just as everyone around them yelled, “Happy New Year!”
“Clint!” Natasha was hovering over him, brow furrowed in concern.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” He sat up, ignoring the pain in the back of his head, and cupped her face in his hands, pulling her into a kiss. He felt her lips curve up into a smile, and he deepened the kiss into not-quite-appropriate-for-public territory. But hey, everyone was too occupied to be paying attention to them, anyway.
“That was close,” he panted when they pulled apart. He left his hands on her cheeks, remaining in their awkward position on the floor because he might as well just own it.
“Afraid of bad luck?” She asked, teasing lilt to her voice.
“Hey,” Clint said, pressing another soft kiss to her lips. “We’ve already spent two months believing we couldn’t be together because you have a rare-as-hell genetic condition. I don’t think we should risk it.”
“You have a point,” Natasha admitted. “But we made it.”
Clint grinned, thinking that, minor head trauma aside, this was the best start to a year he’d ever had.
“Yeah. I think we’re gonna have a good year.”