. (differentcall) wrote in districtmarvel, @ 2015-09-25 01:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | natasha romanoff, tony stark |
Who: Natasha and Tony
What: Sometimes you need a pleasant distraction.
When: A few days post-fracas in D8.
Where: Tony's bedroom.
Warnings: Some nudity but all of it post-coital, nothing to clutch pearls over.
Something that Natasha had figured out a long time ago: if sex wasn't occasionally a choice that she actively made for herself, out of actual desire to have it instead of bitter obligation, she would go insane. But there were several mitigating factors that got in the way of choosing a partner in order to accomplish that, and to that end, Tony had always seemed like a logical selection. He was fun, he kept things light, he knew what he was doing. He also understood the truth of who she was and vice-versa, but it was understood in a way where they didn't have to address it all the fucking time. Really, though, the most important quality that Tony possessed was that with him, there was absolutely no risk of this ever meaning something. There was no risk of either of them ever interpreting it as anything more than what it was: no strings, friendly companionship, the fact that sometimes, it was nice to not have to spend a night alone. Tony wasn't someone she could hurt. Tony wasn't someone who would need things from her that she wasn't sure she knew how to give.
Besides, his Avox made a damned fine egg fritatta in the morning.
And she didn't have to be any special kind of empathetic to see that Tony needed a distraction right now. This was just one of the less self-destructive forms of distraction currently available to him; she'd seen him come too close to drinking himself to death before (who hadn't, really) and she wasn't hankering for a repeat performance. Natasha had pieced together a little more about exactly what had gone down in Eight by now, between Steve and Bucky put together, and despite all appearances to the contrary, she knew that Tony wasn't entirely heartless. He wouldn't be unaffected, especially not when it was his weapon. It was the thing that set him apart from the rest of them, and it was things like this that reminded Natasha of it all over again: Tony hadn't grown up in a district. He had seen the cruelty of Stane and the Capitol in his own life, of course, they all bore scars from that, but he hadn't seen it on a grand scale. The scope of it, the severity. The crushing poverty and the desperate hunger and how retaliation for perceived offenses was never a finger-wag, it was a nuclear blast.
She knew he wasn't a fool and that he understood that those things existed, but experiencing it firsthand, that was something different. He'd never lived with it hanging over his whole life. Not the way that Steve had, certainly. Not like Clint or Wanda or Scott - not like Natasha.
Either way, she was happy to be a pleasant-enough distraction, and God knew that she'd wanted some distraction herself this week from the hideous thoughts working themselves around her brain in circles, again and again. And this was good for her, in a lot of ways. Her choice to pass on it or to agree, with someone she actually liked well enough, no weight of expectations - and best of all, she was free to stay if she liked or leave if she'd rather without having to run it by him first, and even in the middle of everything else, those choices felt like a particularly delicious freedom that never got old.
For the moment, though, his bed was comfortable and she felt relaxed enough with the sheets wound around her body, sprawled against his mountain of pillows. Pleasantly spent, and it was nice to not be in a rush to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. "These are different sheets," she commented, extended a hand to ghost her fingertips along his shoulder for a moment. "Pretty sure that the last time I came by, I rated something in a silk. Cotton feels a little bit like I've been downgraded, I'm going to have to try to not take it personally."