Shailee Thakkar and Natasha Romanoff are not (thesavior) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-01 10:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | black widow, hawkeye |
Who: Shailee Thakkar and Callum Westerberg
What: Shailee helps soothes Callum’s nerves before his first mission. Tension ensues.
When: A half hour after this conversation
Where: Callum’s motel room
Warnings: Shailee T’s got a mouth on her.
Shailee hated that she needed to change to go see Callum. She wasn’t the kind of girl who spent half an hour looking at her wardrobe before getting dressed in the morning, and the fact that she had to stand there and figure out what said “casual pizza and beer dinner with a friend” to anyone who might be watching was really fucking annoying. In the end, she opted for a pair of well-worn jeans, a black tank top and unbuttoned plaid shirt, choosing comfort over anything else. For a split second, she realized that this was exactly the kind of outfit she would have worn back in Prague as ‘Anna’, but figured that the familiarity would probably help more than hurt at this point. Callum seemed on edge at the end of their conversation, and anything that might be useful to calm him down before his next meeting was going in with her.
It took her a little over her predicted half hour to get to his rundown motel, large pie of pizza in one hand, six-pack in the other. She knocked on the door with her boot, and waited.
The television was blaring some inane prime time blather that he was hardly paying attention to, instead laying on his back on the hard motel mattress, Max sprawled on the bed beside him, one hand lazily stroking the beagle’s ears as he stared at the ceiling and counted the stains on the off-white tiles. Callum would say over and over again that he wasn’t the sort of person who got nervous. It just didn’t happen. But there was still something chewing on him as plans started to fall in place around the deal with Cassano. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done many times in the past, no real reason to let it get to him, but it was the first time he was going in with other intentions, and that’s what had his stomach in knots, fingers kneading some of the tension away as he continued to run his fingers up and down Max’s ears.
The knock interrupted a long train of thought, the dog sitting up, Callum’s hand landing on his back as a warning to stay still, to stay quiet. So long as the dog didn’t bark, he didn’t seem to be in any danger of attracting too much attention, and fuck the person who thought they’d take the dog away from him. Stepping towards the door, he took a brief look out the peephole before throwing back the chain and deadbolt and opening the door, stepping aside to let Shailee in. He wasn’t dressed any different from normal, worn in jeans gone threadbare at the knees, his grey shirt rumpled, stained, feet left bare. “Longer than half an hour,” he said as he closed the door behind her, throwing the locks once more, giving her a look with a lift of his brows as he took the pizza and beer from her, putting them down on the tiny table that served the room. It was as close to a joke as he was getting then and there with as tight as he was wound.
“I wanted to give you enough time to get pretty,” Shailee replied with a shrug, walking past the table to the kitchenette. She looked through a couple of cabinets until she found what she needed, pulling two plates out and bringing them to the table. Even though Shailee didn’t know how Callum preferred to take his pizza, as long as she was around, they would eat like civilized people. “You weren’t exactly specific, so I ordered the meat lovers.” It was a shitload of calories, but given the nervousness she’d heard in his voice, Shailee figured that good-old greasy comfort food was important at the moment than worrying about the fat on her pizza.
Taking one of the seats at the small table, Shailee dropped a slice onto each plate and popped open a couple of beers. “We should eat this while it’s still hot.” The nerve wracking conversation would go easier on full stomachs.
Callum gave a roll of his eyes at her comment, letting her piddle around in the tiny kitchenette of the hotel room, instead dropping down on one of the chairs at the table, legs crossed beneath the table. “Meat lovers is fine. I’m hungry enough right now that I’ll eat anything.” He watched as she brought the plates over, waiting until she had seated herself before he grabbed a beer, draining half of it before he sat it back down, tucking into the slice. “I fucking hate cold pizza,” he said around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni, thumbing away the grease from the corners of his mouth. It gave him something else to focus on other than what was going on, what would be happening in the weeks to come. The grease tasted good, but it didn’t do much to help settle the nerves in his stomach, though he did a good job at hiding it with how he ate the pizza like it was his last meal.
If Shailee noticed Callum going at the pizza as though he was coming off a month-long fast, she didn’t comment on it. People reacted to stress differently; a clear sign of shit hitting the fan in Shailee’s life was when she skipped meals without noticing. “If I had known you were that hungry, I would have brought two.” She took a swig of her beer and smirked when she noticed him trying to wipe the grease off his mouth with his hands, and tossed a few paper napkins his way. “What are we, Westerberg, heathens?” Her voice lacked its trademark bite - this was nothing more than good-natured teasing; an attempt to dispel the tension emanating from the other side of the table in waves.
“Two, and I’ll just make myself sick,” Callum said as he finished the first piece in near-record time, catching the napkins before he resorted to using the collar of his shirt to wipe his mouth clean. Ms. Manners would have had a hay day with him and his absolute lack of table manners, but the napkins got a nod of thanks from him as he wiped his mouth off with one, wadding it up and reaching for a second piece. “You have something against heathens, Thakkar?” he asked back, giving her a long look over his second piece before he rolled his eyes and tucked in once more. This piece was not attacked, eaten more like a civilized person.
“Only when I have to watch them chew,” Shailee laughed, taking another swig of her beer. She appreciated Callum slowing down on his second slice, and told him as much. “Besides, the last thing I need is for you to start choking on a piece of crust. I might be trained in giving the Heimlich, but I’ve never actually done it.”
They made their way through most of the pizza over the next ten minutes, with Callum doing a majority of the damage. Shailee managed to put away two slices and was working on her second beer when she decided Callum had had enough time to safely broach the subject of his upcoming assignment. “So, about your upcoming meet. What do you want to know?”
Callum reached out to snag a second beer, popping it open and getting up from the chair to move to the bed, sitting down heavily as the conversation went where he knew it would, to the meeting in the following days. He didn’t say anything for a long while, just drank his beer and gave a scratch to his stomach beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt. For a moment, it was unclear if he had even heard the question, but eventually he turned to look at her, meeting her gaze for several beats of his heart before he glanced down to the ugly carpet at his feet. “How not to die would be a good start, I think,” Callum started.
“You’re not going to die,” Shailee stated flatly, turning in her chair so that she was looking straight at the bed. “We’re the CIA, and you’re our responsibility. You’re my responsibility. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” She paused for a moment to let her words sink in before continuing. “Now that that’s clear, I’ll start from the beginning. You’re going to walk into this meeting the same way you would have last month, last year. The difference is that you will be mic’d, but no one’s going to know that except us. Not as long as you act normal.”
“And you think I can actually do this?” Hello, performance anxiety. Callum drained the rest of his beer with a shake of his head, stifling a belch with the back of his hand. “Excuse me,” he muttered before he sat the beer on the bedside table, angling himself towards her. “So just like normal, except not, because I’m working for you and not myself anymore. They’re gonna know something’s up. I’m not a good actor.” He pushed one hand through his hair, letting his fingers settle at the back of his neck, giving his nape a scratch, his hair standing up every which way from the attention of his fingers. “And if something does go wrong? What happens then?” And that was his concern when it came down to it. The what-ifs. What if things didn’t go well. What if they suspected. What if they pulled out a gun and shot him where he stood. Those were the sort of things that he worried about before the agency, when he was just one man looking for work and had no one else to worry about. But here, there were responsibilities, things he had to do, and a hell of a lot more hung on his abilities than just making sure he got through another few weeks with some money in his pocket and food in his belly. This was a whole new set of responsibilities that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with yet.
“Yes, I do.” Shailee leaned forward, elbows planted on her thighs, hands gesticulating as she talked. “I’ve done it for months on end, and trust me, I’m a pisspoor actor. And nothing is going to go wrong. If it does, we’ll be right outside. We’ll hear the conversation through the mic, and you’ll be able to hear me the entire time with the earpiece we give you.” A strand of hair fell loose as she gestured, and she pushed it behind an ear absent-mindedly, distracted by the momentum of her spiel. “Don’t worry, it’s invisible from the outside unless someone’s right up next to you and looking into your ear. But anyway, the second we feel like you’re in danger or something is up, we’ll be coming through those doors to get you.” Shailee understood Callum’s nervousness; after all, it wasn’t long ago that she was in his place, on her way to her very first undercover mission. This meeting was far less dangerous than some of the longer assignments she had been sent on, but it was his first, and he had every right to be uncertain. In fact, she would have been more worried if he had been completely unconcerned. This showed her that he was in it for real, and that if things went well, they could expect actual results. “You’re going to do fine, Callum. I promise.”
Her reassurances were just words, a balm for rattled nerves that he wanted to put some stock in, but he had to admit he was taking them at less than face value just because of the inherent paranoia that came with growing up the way he did, around the people that he did. But then, she used his name. His first name, not Westerberg, not anything else, and that was something Callum was fairly sure he hadn’t heard her utter, not for several years, not since Prague when they were both different than they were today. His hand came away from his neck, scrubbing over his face, but finally, he gave a nod of understanding. “I’m trusting you on all of that,” Callum said, and he nearly ended his words with her name in turn, but decided at the last minute to keep it impersonal. “It’s a role I know how to play, but there’s more hanging on this than before. Hence the nerves.” Callum managed a brief smile, just a hint of how it might look in better conditions, before he gestured to the one of the remaining beers sitting on the table. “You mind?”
Shailee would take whatever semblance of a smile she got. He had even used the ‘t’ word, which was more than he had ever indicated in the past. “You’re in good hands. Trust me, I’m very good at my job.” She tossed him one of the unopened beers still on the table, before downing the rest of her own. “And the nerves are normal. Agents who’ve been in the business for 20 years still have them, and any who say they don’t are filthy fucking liars. You’re actually doing pretty well. I spent the night before my first undercover assignment cuddling with the toilet. So this?” She waved an arm first in his direction, and then the pizza’s, “this is good.”
“Just wait until you leave. I’m enough of a gentleman that I don’t throw up in front of the ladies,” Callum said, catching the beer in both hands, cracking it open to take a sip, this one savoured unlike the others that he had drank and hardly tasted. Setting it on the table, Callum got up to his feet, hooking his thumb towards the bathroom. “I’ll be right back. Not climbing out the window, so don’t worry.” And he padded into the bathroom and disappeared within, the sound of water running several moments later. He emerged some minutes later, sans shirt, drying his hands on a severely bleached hand towel. His skin was pale, just a handful of scars littering the expanse, a dark tattoo giving some decoration to one bicep. “Sorry. Got my shirt wet from the damned sink. It... has a mind of its own.” He paused, glancing at her for a long moment, an almost crooked smile pulling at his lips. “You should go wash your hands, Thakkar.”
“Thanks, but just so you know, I’m a pro at holding back hair.” Shailee watched him disappear into the bathroom, wondering idly if she’d actually hear the sounds of a window opening. She figured she was safe for now; she didn’t think it Callum’s style to say that he trusted her right before trying to give her the slip. In his own twisted way, Callum Westerberg was more straightforward than that.
Shailee had just opened the last beer when he emerged from the bathroom, and it took every ounce of her practiced poker face skills not to physically react to what she saw. The man was very much in shape, and Shailee had to work to keep her eyes off the taut muscles across his stomach that moved with every step he took. Any woman less than a fully-trained agent of the CIA would find herself in trouble real quick with Callum Westerberg - a fact that Shailee had until that moment quite conveniently forgotten.
“You’re right,” she said (somehow) evenly, examining her hands a little too closely, glad for the excuse to look anywhere but at him. Rising swiftly to her feet, she moved straight towards the bathroom, making sure to give him ample room as she passed. “I’ll be sure to be careful around that sink.”
Callum wasn’t ignorant. He saw the way she looked at him, and then the way she looked anywhere but at him as he settled back down on the edge of the bed. But he wasn’t crass, not really, so he didn’t say anything as he threw the towel back behind him, watching as the door to the bathroom closed. The sink, as he stated, had a mind of its own and enjoyed drenching its user with a finicky spray from the faucet. He doubted she’d remove her shirt if she got drenched, but it was worth waiting for just in case it would happen. The tension had leaked away, alcohol giving him some amount of relaxation, some amount of comfort in what would not have been an easy situation otherwise to get through. Every time he saw her, especially those rare moments when her guard was down, Callum was reminded of Prague, of who she was then, of what had happened then.
Despite the ample warning, Shailee let out a small yelp of surprise as the jet of water hit right below the collarbone. “I think not,” she said to the faucet as she clamped a hand over it to stifle the spray, successfully taming the water enough to get the pizza grease off her hands. Unfortunately when she stepped back out into the room moments later, she was still dripping from the neck down. “Evil fucking sink,” she muttered, ignoring the still shirtless man on the bed and reaching past him for the towel he had discarded instead. “Have you complained to the front desk about it?” Shailee dabbed at the plaid shirt with the towel, but it was pointless. Her black tank top was soaked too, but she was going to sit there and be wet and cold as long as she needed to, because there was no way in hell that was coming off.
There was no helping the grin that pulled at his lips when he heard her yelp within the bathroom, and when she emerged, soaked from the collar down, Callum simply gave her a grin unlike any that she likely had seen him wear before. “Why complain when I get a free wet t-shirt contest in my motel room?” Callum asked, his words slightly strung together from the beer, but he was still about three cans away from being drunk. No, this was just relaxed, unconcerned with the worries and nerves that had plagued him hours ago. It was not a place he visited often, could hardly afford to visit often, but it was comfortable and familiar, and a testament to his trust of Shailee that he allowed himself to be here around her.
“Oh, can it, Westerberg. I’m sure there are plenty of drunk sorority girls in the streets just waiting for you if you’re in need of a show. Besides,” she arched a brow at him, looking pointedly at his shirtless torso, “if the point of this so-called contest is to actually see something, I’m clearly winning.” Draping the used towel across the back of one of the chairs, Shailee sat back down and reached for her untouched beer. She realized it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to keep drinking while still in his motel room, but didn’t think there was a way for her to extricate herself without bringing back at least some of the tension that had finally dispelled. So instead of making her excuses and walking out the door, she swung her legs onto the empty chair in front of her, and took a swig.
Callum lacked the ability to be shy when he had a few on him, so when Shailee looked, he offered, head cocked to the side, watching her as she watched him, and then he laughed as she sat down and put her feet up on the chair. “Sorority girls or my handler. Sorority girls, or my handler...” Trailing off, Callum shifted back on the bed, folding his hands behind his head, half-propped up by the headboard. “I don’t think a sorority girl would last five minutes with me. I’ve never had a thing for those types of women. No class. Just alcohol and impulses. I’ll pass.” At the boots propped up on the chair, Callum’s brows arched up and he tilted his head towards that. “Staying for a while, Thakkar? You’re getting yourself mighty comfortable, and I just didn’t think that was possible for you around me.”
Shailee’s brows arched higher with surprise at his response, but instead of asking for clarification, she stuck with her beer. Without making any actual assumptions, Shailee had figured Callum was like every other man in the world, who liked ‘em young, stupid, and just drunk enough. This class requirement was an unexpected one, especially as they had been talking about nothing more than a hook-up. She filed it away with everything else she knew about him, certain that it would come in handy some day.
“Well you said you’d be sick the moment I left, so really I’m sticking around to do you a favor. It’s not you I can’t be comfortable around. It’s you when you’re cranky.” Her face split into a grin at her words, waiting for him to react to the same word that had got him all worked up the last time. Callum’s tongue wasn’t the only one getting loose with the alcohol.
Whatever Shailee was getting out of the conversation, whatever notes she was filing away, things she was noticing, those were not something Callum was worrying himself about just then. It was a comfortable haze he had worked himself into, and he had no inclination to ruin that just yet. Tomorrow he could be pissed at the world again, but for now, there was this and he wasn’t complaining. Relaxation was not something Callum did for fun, or even easily. It took a combination of booze and being around people he wasn’t afraid of, and even though he hadn’t known Shailee for that long, a matter of weeks turned to months, he knew there was something there that he could count on. So his guard dropped several inches, the smiles came easier.
“Never said that I was definitely gonna be sick if you left, just that I’d wait until you left if it happened,” Callum pointed out, though his thoughts were foggy enough now that he wasn’t sure if that was what he had said in the first place. Cracking a grin, his brows arched at the comment about him being cranky. “And I’m not fucking cranky, Thakkar. You just know how to push my buttons. There’s a difference in that.” He punctuated his words with a point of his finger at her, waggling it before it dropped back down to rest over his bare stomach.
“I stand corrected then.” Shailee took a swig of her beer, before pointing to the mostly-full bottle. “But I’m not leaving until I’m through this, so you’re stuck with me for a while.” She relaxed back into the wooden chair, curving downwards until she found a spot that was comfortable. “It’s not my fault you make it so easy. Snapping at me when I push your buttons is being cranky.” A part of Shailee knew she was treading on dangerous ground here, how easy it would be for Callum to call her out on her own drunk tantrum from a few weeks before, but the beer helped her ignore that part of herself. The fact of the matter was that Shailee wasn’t the only one in this room that knew how to push buttons, and the ease with which they managed to get under each others’ skin was equal parts unnerving and exhilarating. It was also why this was the first time in the months they’d been working together that they had managed to have an entire conversation without one of them getting defensive.
Looking at Callum was getting easier the longer she sat there and more beer she drank. “So any other pressing questions you have for me?” Shailee had meant it when she had announced her intention to stick around longer, and was perfectly willing to talk about nothing until she felt comfortable leaving him alone.
“It’s not being cranky,” Callum said by means of protest. “It’s reaction. Poke a wound and that person will react in pain. Push my buttons, and I’ll bitch at you. And it sounds like you purposefully push my buttons, like you know that I’m doing it.” He saw her there, long legs and damp fabric, and he made no effort to hide the fact that he was looking just as she was. It was a simple thing, being here right then, thoughts of Prague popping into his thoughts unbidden. A different time, a different place, a set of circumstances that had them both reacting in ways they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. He had no interest in calling her out, in bringing up anything with venom. This was the lull before the storm, when the clouds settled, the wind died, and there was just a perfect stillness in the world.
Her question drew his attention again, thoughts having wandered, meandered until he was no longer looking towards her, but his gaze snapped back to her in just a heartbeat at the sound of her voice. “No other questions. Just - stick around for a bit, yeah?” He’d have questions later, at the most inappropriate times he was sure, but he’d get through it.