Despite her name, she’s actually arachnophobic; and there has been many a time when she’s covertly reprogrammed Tony’s robot cleaners to get rid of spiders as well as dust bunnies and Clint’s leftover pizza crusts. Nobody knows this except Clint, although Tony often wonders about the lack of cobwebs in his unused rooms.
She also hates horror movies, especially the ones that involve possession or any other kind of mind control. This, on the other hand, was apparent by the third time the Avengers had movie night.
She actually can’t stand the taste of vodka. But she still loves pierogi and borscht; spurring many lunch dates down at Veselka with Bucky or Wanda.
Tony gave her an expensive red convertible for her birthday that he nicknamed The Communist Barbiemobile. Steve thinks that’s insensitive, but she secretly finds it hilarious.
She taught Clint how to do all sorts of ballroom dancing. She tried to teach Steve too; but bless him, the poor boy still has two left feet.
She can’t stand cooking, and really only knows about five recipes anyway. But (to Sam’s delight) that doesn’t stop her from enjoying baking instead.
She and Steve have often platonically shared a bed on missions. At first, it was just for convenience; since their covers were married and it was the middle of January and the guy’s basically a living space heater anyway. But it started happening more and more often, and now even when they don’t have to they just snuggle together and gossip sleepily until they fall asleep. She knows the nightmares won’t bother her so much when she has a pair of friendly arms wrapped around her.
She and Clint sometimes like to sit on the balcony of their apartment when they can’t sleep and imagine what they’d like to do if they weren’t superheroes or special agents. Their ideas are different every night; and range from Olympic trainer to makeup artist to pizza deliverer to burlesque dancer to counselor for abused children.
Her favorite Disney movie is Tangled. She’s seen it about ten times already.
She writes little reminders for herself on multicolored Post-Its and puts them on the refrigerator. Sometimes, after periods when she forgets to take them down, it looks like a flock of blue, pink, and yellow butterflies has descended on the kitchen.
She can play the guitar, piano, and violin.
She can also sing really well, but only does it around the people she trusts most.
She never wants to dance ballet ever again. It reminds her too much of being under the Red Room’s thrall.
She paints the nails of all the other Avengers when she gets bored or stressed; to the point when she’s memorized all their individual preferences. Wanda prefers monochrome dark colors; Thor likes little patterns, especially various star designs; Bucky goes for shades of pink or blue; and Tony usually requests a letter on each nail to spell something out, usually a swearword or two.
She really only dresses up sexy on missions when she thinks her looks could be useful. Jeans and hoodies and leather jackets are a girl’s best friend.
Her favorite part of being famous is all the young girls who tell her that she’s their hero, or inspiration, or that she gives them strength. After all, if she can make the lives of all those girls a little better, it’s worth all the shit she went through at their age to get here.
Her least favorite part of being famous is all the sexist bullshit that people regularly fling at her (when they’re not ignoring her in favor of the male Avengers). If she never has to hear “Do you wear anything under your catsuit?” or “What diet plan do you use to keep in as good shape as the boys?” or “Can you address the rumors about which of your teammates you’re sleeping with?” or the classic “How about a smile?” again, it’ll be far too soon.
Sometimes during battles or even in day-to-day life, she’ll blank out and disassociate for seemingly no reason. The smallest things, usually ones that she wouldn’t watch out for, can feed into her memory issues or remind her of painful experiences.
She and Clint both love Star Wars and one of their favorite “days off” things to do is rewatch the movies together. The only problem is that he can’t stand the prequels, but she loves them; so any movie-watching always gets delayed at least an hour by their squabbling over whether to see A New Hope or The Phantom Menace first.
She educated Steve, Bucky, Thor, Vision, and Wanda about modern American culture in much the same way: emailing them links to Buzzfeed articles and getting them Netflix accounts.
She and Bucky like to pretend to talk shit about their teammates in Russian. Usually, they’re really swapping cookie recipes or complimenting each other’s hair or arguing over whether Taylor Swift is better than Adele; but Tony doesn’t need to know that.
She knits personalized ugly sweaters for all her friends every winter.
She also knits Bucky arm warmers; partially to keep him from sticking his metal hand up Sam’s shirt to make him scream and partially to stop everyone else from daring each other to stick their tongues on the arm and getting stuck for the fifth time this week, Stark.
She has brunch with Pepper and Maria every Sunday she’s not off saving the world.
She will watch any movie – no matter how good or appallingly bad – as long as it has sharks, dinosaurs, robots, or aliens in it.
She still sometimes handcuffs herself to the bed after she’s had a particularly bad mental health day.
She, Steve, Sam, and Bucky (aka the real fantastic four) end up going on all the missions that need more than two people but not the whole team. As a result, she’s learned to work with them and trust them almost as much as she does Clint; and they’ve had many impromptu late-night diner runs, movie marathons, and carpool karaoke sessions together.
Changing her hairstyle every couple years or so has been a tradition ever since she joined SHIELD. Not only is it a convenient way to reinvent herself and date the pictures her friends take of her, but it’s also just…fun. Except for that god-awful perm she had in 2009; which we do not talk about put those goddamn photos away right now Clinton.
She owns about fifty different items of weaponized makeup; including one lipstick that doubles as a bomb and a tube of mascara with a hidden poisonous needle. Any of her team are free to borrow any of them at any time, as long as they don’t accidentally kill each other or wear the lipsticks when they have a cold.
Almost no one knows about her nightmares except Steve, Clint, and Bucky.
She never gets to sleep before midnight anyway.
She’s not as cold and uncaring as a lot of people would believe. It’s just that before SHIELD she thought she’d never be safe to love, and before the Avengers she thought that she’d missed her opportunity to be part of a family. Luckily, she was wrong on both accounts.
