Work Text:
The second brood grows as fast as the first, and like the older siblings they adore Bucky and love Christmas and all kinds of dreadful human sweets. It's wonderful to see Bucky with them. These days he looks almost like the old photos Steve treasures so much, and uses his enormous qiviut blanket as a bag to carry them around in, which they love. It's one of many pleasures that they'll have to say farewell to once they attain human size, so Natasha is glad Bucky has so much time to play with them.
As they get closer and closer to their deep sleep (she doesn't call it a long one because apparently that's another human way to dance around saying 'death,' and it makes her adorable, superstitious, mammalian mate nervous) the boys start to catch up to their sisters. They're still noticeably smaller, but on the same scale, now. They complain and cry about the places they can't fit into anymore and Clint does his best to soothe them. This will only be worse after the deep sleep, but at least they have a few months to get used to it.
The older girls are back at school now, and Clint helps them with their math and Natasha checks their spelling because Clint is terrible at it. They're beginning to notice boys that aren't Spiderman, and Natasha tells them every day not to bite anyone without asking. She knows that her daughters are good girls, but she also remembers how powerful pheromones can be at this age. She makes sure that her girls get plenty of exercise to burn off their extra energy, and also quietly encourages their interests in arts and crafts so they'll have skills that are no use in a fight. This is important to Natasha in a way that's hard to articulate, but Clint understands. He's still willing to wind yarn for their weaving and to let them know that their blankets are lovely and warm, but once they start making their own clothes he abdicates all responsibility.
“I can't judge, Tasha,” he says, “they're my babies! They're only five years old, of course every skirt seems too short to me.”
Natasha doesn't have the same frame of reference as a normal person, so she arbitrates her daughters's clothing based on what type of mission it would be best for. Anything that would do for honeypot work must be modified. Even if the spiderlings develop so quickly, right now they're only equivalent to thirteen-year-olds, and micro-mini dresses are inappropriate. Ariadna complains bitterly, where Alisa is happy to dress almost like her calendar age. Zhanna and Zoya are a little too proud of having the earliest and largest breasts of the brood, but take Natasha's amendments to their necklines philosophically. The second brood has its own opinions to offer, but they're all about color. Apparently Natasha and all the spiderlings are tetrachromats, distinguishing shades even Clint's hawk eyes can't see.
“This yellow is best yellow,” Lev says very seriously, holding the ball of yarn out to Oksana with both tiny hands, and she chuckles, taking it.
“Thanks, kiddo.” She's working on a sweater for Anastasia, a sort of ombre fade from pale yellow at the shoulders to this deep, golden yellow on the bottom. The hue is beautifully matched across the gradient of saturation, and Natasha smiles, going over to pick Lev up. Soon he'll be too big to scoop and cuddle like a cat, and she wants to enjoy it while she can. He hugs her around the neck with his little arms and breathes in her scent, making a contented noise. Of all her spiderlings, the boys are the snuggliest, content to just bask in her presence in a way that reminds her of Clint. The girls are running around frenetically right now, like they're getting it out of their systems before they have to lie still and grow, and she barely has time to see Ania and Olga skitter by.
“Daddy,” Raisa trills, and Clint chuckles in the next room, where he has been doing his best to monitor a large and free-form game of tag for the past twenty minutes or so.
“Hungry again, baby girl?” he coos, and the answer must be an affirmative because he gets up and moves to the kitchen where he starts frying crickets. As expected of Natasha's chose mate, he has the sense to make a huge batch in the wok, because for spiderlings, fried crickets are like popcorn, and the smell draws everyone out of the woodwork. Adding insects to their diet is another one of those Clint insights that are so painfully obvious once he points them out. Bugs satisfy something deep inside Natasha, and the spiderlings are the same way, and Dr. Cho says that all of their blood chemistry is better balanced these days.
The first brood are really still full from dinner, but this close to their sleep the second ones are ravenous, and Lev joins the general cry of, “Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!” his tiny voice muffled in Natasha's shirt. She chuckles and carries him to the kitchen, where Anatoly and Olga are sitting on the counter, watching in wide-eyed fascination as Clint expertly flips the crickets into the air, catching them in the hot pan. Olga holds onto her little brother to keep him from wandering forward into danger, and Ania is standing in the baby sling on his back, huge eyes watching him cook, and Raisa is across the stove from Olga, happily munching on the test cricket.
The other girls are perched all around the stove, and Svetlana reaches down from the top of the refrigerator, eyes looking nearly silver. She doesn't speak much at all, but Natasha understands her perfectly, so it doesn't matter. Now she sets Lev beside her, and Sventlana beams, hugging him and then hanging down to pat Natasha's head before drawing back to let her open the fridge to pull out a box of locusts. Natasha kisses her tiny hand, smiling up at her before going to join Clint at the stove.
“Hey,” he says, kissing her cheek in the moment before the crickets are ready. He flips the wok to dump the whole crispy pile into a big bowl, warning the girls not to touch yet. “You hungry too?” he asks Natasha as she opens the locusts.
“I'll want a few of these, but they're really for the children. They need calories for their sleep.”
“Coming up already, huh?” He sounds and smells a little sad, and Ania hugs him.
“Don't smell sad at us,” she says in her tiny voice, and Clint laughs.
“You're right, baby girl,” he says, and hands her a crispy cricket as Natasha sets out eight bowls and Clint fills them, carefully keeping them exactly even, despite Anatoly almost never eating his full share and Raisa and Olga vacuuming up whatever any of the others leaves behind. Clint starts the locusts, and when the first brood sends Ariadna in as a representative, he promises them a full batch of crickets and some locusts to try.
“Hungry babies,” she coos at her younger siblings, and then has to go around the table to submit to and return kisses and facepats. All of the older girls have become more affectionate than ever lately, knowing that soon the second brood won't be adorably, impossibly tiny, and that they won't be able to play with or cuddle them for some time. All of the girls seem to share the feeling, even Rada, who is probably the least gooey about them as a general rule. One by one they abandon their homework and come wandering in to snuggle their baby siblings and to snack on more fried bugs.
Clint catches the vibe, and by the time everyone is starting to wind down, he's nothing but a mound of spiderlings in an armchair. He doesn't move when the babies fall asleep on him, and the older girls stop by as they go about their business to lavish affection on their younger siblings and to pet Clint's hair and reassure him that the babies will be all right.
“They've had plenty to eat,” Marina says, perched on the arm of the chair and gently stroking a lock of Susanna's bright blonde hair out of her eyes, “and they have you and us and Mama and Grandpa to protect them.”
Clint chuckles, careful not to be loud or to jostle the babies as he frees one hand to take Marina's hand and give it a grateful little squeeze. “I know, baby, and I'm glad.”