Backhistory: Black Widow & Winter Soldier #1 WHO: The Winter Soldier, Black Widow WHEN: Some time in 2003. The span of 5 months. WHERE: All over the place. WHAT: The Black Widow moves to the next level: training with the Winter Soldier. Things do not go as their handler's planned. STATUS: PART 1. WARNINGS: I mean, they are a couple of assassins so talk of murder (in this case, of a child), fighting, bruising, and finally, a whole lot of smut.
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There were times when Natalia enjoyed her profession. This bastard, Miroslav Drakov, had enjoyed the fruits of the Motherland until the she no longer kept him to her bosom. Then he betrayed her, left for parts unknown. Parts unknown turned out to be the outskirts of Paris. He thought he could start a better life with his trophy wife and his daughter, and all the secrets that he planned to share with the United Nations.
Natalia's impeccable planning had given her an in for the daughter's nanny position. It had taken weeks of spending 10 hours a day with the child to learn that her parents only loved their daughter as long as she was achieving for them. Yelizaveta was a precocious girl who knew that her father was not a good person. Her mother, on the other hand, she could do no wrong. Natalia suspected that Miroslav had a heavy hand when it came to dealing with the women in his life. She made him pay for that. Extracting information was a specialty of hers, after all. She didn't even have to use her feminine wiles on the fat pig. All the better.
The Red Room required her to be done in 2 months. She was completing the job in less than six weeks. A bullet to Karina Drakov's head; she didn't suffer, but Miroslav… He suffered a great deal, and it was when she finally put him out of his misery that a small gasp interrupted her. She'd slit his throat just right. No arterial spray.
It only took one second to grab her gun, and little Yelizaveta was laid to rest with her parents. Natalia didn't immediately regret it. She wouldn't know for a while what about this particular job bothered her for some time.
As she headed out of the house, through the back door and around the carriage house, she lost her jacket and turned her shirt around, leaving the top few buttons undone. The sleeves came off, dangling strings. The skirt came off. Under the skirt, she wore a pair of jean shorts. Mussing up her hair and smearing her make-up cemented the punk look. She chewed a stick of gum to look as unaffected as anyone else.
A few blocks away, she found her extraction team. She hadn't needed one, but when word came that she'd get one, Natalia wasn't one to say no. The black car with diplomatic plates pulled up beside her. Nonchalantly, she pulled the door open and slid inside.
It was not for him to ask questions.
The timelessness of his existence had taken up a certain cadence since he was activated. Hours behind the one-way mirror, watching, pulse temperate and steady as the notes of classical music were interspersed with sharp claps of flesh meeting flesh meeting floor; nights of no sleep, only the strains of Control's voice as he stared into the darkness; weeks of waiting, of watching footage and listening to reports, not so much indifferent as patient, like water imperturbable in its expectance of distortion.
It would come, the distortion. She would come.
At the five week marker, without preamble, he had uttered a single word -- her -- and then he was in Paris. The trainee had progressed swiftly beyond the given timetable, and the killing blow, when it came, would have caught the Red Room handlers by surprise if he had not already been in place.
He waited for the door to shut behind her before speaking. “Three kills.” Not a question, but confirmation of what he already knew. The order had been two; the mission, no survivors.
Natalia knew better than to question authority. Foma Tabakov was her normal handler. This was not her normal handler. Quick as she could, she studied him. His hair was unwashed, unbrushed. The clothing -- leather, utilitarian -- said operative not the standard bureaucrat. She noticed the arm more than anything, the single star on the shoulder, the graceful lines of what would pass for muscle.
(Yelizaveta's face, cold and pale, was on the forefront of her mind.)
"The girl interrupted." This way seemed cleaner. The Red Room liked orphans, especially smart ones with a knack for ballet. She could have been useful, still… "No survivors."
There was no call for reassurance. An assassin who needed such a thing was of no use, and the only means he had of offering such a release from uncertainty (from guilt, a concept not quite understood but known to be a fatal factor in many promising assets) was that of a bullet to the brain. The trainee did not seem to require that now, her eyes clear and sharply blue.
(Of course, there had been a survivor, an operative-turned-cook, the one who had nudged the child in Natalia's direction, putting the final element into play.)
The engine revved and he pulled them off the curb, smoothly entering the sparse traffic. "That was the mission,” he said, his Russian flat, more than just the disaffected tones of an agent who had seen it all; there was something artificial to it for all that it was clinically flawless. “Now you begin the next stage of training.”
It didn't go unnoticed.
Next stage of training? Natalia wasn't sure what that could possibly be. No one mentioned any next stage, and her graduation had been months ago. Shit, was this guy another assassin? Had she blown her cover with anyone else in that household? No. Rationally, she knew that if she had done any of the kind, they wouldn't have bothered with an extraction team. Or he would have just put a bullet in her from the roadside.
Her heart rate and posture, however, remained placid as she went through her thoughts. "I'm all yours."
Technically incorrect, but such were the lies the girls of the Red Room uttered in order to deflect, to hide away whatever questions remained despite the depths of their training. He was not Tabakov; she did not know him, for all that he had studied her for months now.
"You want to say something else."
That's when it dawned on her. This was a test. All of it. Maybe they wanted Drakov and his family dead, so they made the mission to get in, get the information, get out, but this was a test for whatever this was. And she'd passed it. Yelizaveta had been sent into that room as a test.
(Why did that stir up feelings in her?)
"You're not Red Room. You're not Soviet either, but you've got training." So who was he? What did he want with her? Had she stumbled into someone else's plot? "They wouldn't waste that arm on a pencil pusher, so who are you?"
Often it was difficult to grasp the concept of who. He was the asset, the piece put into play when the circumstances dictated a specific need. The orders came, and they were executed with no question, no opinion, no doubt (weapons did not doubt). It was for others -- his handlers, the Soviets, Control -- to question and demand. It was for killers such as this girl to learn to forget such a destructive habit.
And yet, she hadn't. Which did not stop her from pulling the trigger for all that she required a name of him.
"I am an asset of HYDRA." The metal hand remained firm on the steering wheel as he switched gears, speed increasing. "Now your teacher."
"Yes, we are all assets that belong to someone or something, never ourselves. We have purpose." Her voice was steady, calm. She understood that he had no name. She was only Black Widow, had been since her graduation. It was soothing to have that to fall back on. A person had faults and feelings. An asset did not have to look back. "Shall I call you teacher then?"
If such a question discomfitted him, it didn't show, his face a blank study as he turned off onto a slip road that would eventually lead them to an unmarked airstrip. He was not used to being presented with a choice; it shouldn't, he thought, matter what she called him.
"As you want."
* * *
Deep cover did not always mean fabricating a story, an identity, a living lie. Sometimes it was just that: deep cover, interminable waiting in the near dark for the order. It could last hours. It could last weeks. And while the Black Widows could slip into the visage of new people, could assume a persona without the strain of effort, the Soldier could lie in wait, sleepless and patient, directionless until given the command. If the emptiness of waiting could be described as anything, it would be as such: calm.
This, their time in abandoned army barracks, was not calm. The days of waiting had become a week, almost two. It'd been necessary to enter the region quietly, for southern Russia was ever tormented, and the rumours of a peace negotiation pre-empted a large scale scouring of the area, necessitating being in position twelve miles from the grand estate the glittering leaders of the fallen Union before they even arrived. He had not experienced another's company for so long like this, ever; up until now, their months together had been interspersed with the demands of the Red Room, of Control, but this? Uninterrupted time? Not calm.
Standing in the centre of the room, arm strapped behind his back, he nodded, giving the signal to start.
Over the short time, she'd come to understand a few things about her comrade, most of which were nothing more than statistics. Even without the arm, he was stronger than she was. She was faster, quieter. Eventually, she'd learned to use that to her advantage. Knock him off his feet, get him to the ground. She'd grown eager of this time spent together.
Her movements were fluid, like a dancer's: graceful, but contained, controlled in its calculations. Always prepared several steps ahead. This was what had earned her the title Black Widow. No matter what move he made, she was there with a counter-move. Her advantage didn't last long, of course -- it never did -- but it was more than most people got against the Winter Soldier. Natalia spun around, arm set to -- swing right into his hand.
"Damnit!" The word was caught between her teeth as she growled at herself. Always that move.
The programme that had created him (the programme which still maintained him, steady weapon that he was) had not taught him to understand what thrills of triumph were -- certainly not on a personal level. And yet, as his hand neatly swallowed her forearm in its grip, the emotion he felt was not that of a teacher unimpressed by his student’s failure to learn the pattern, nor that of combatant crowing at his opponent’s show of weakness. It was… something else. Other.
On the tail-end of her curse came his following move, foot knocking behind her knee to take her down.
That, she'd known, was coming. She wasn't going down without a fight, and it didn't take much pressure on a knee to get it to buckle. Her heel of her palm came at his from the side as she used the momentum from her fall. Only an instant after, and he came crashing down on top of her.
"We all fall down," she answered, smiling and breathing heavy from the exercise.
“Natalia…” was something beyond a winded exhale; and then, silence, as his palm moved from her to stretch across the cold concrete, fingers avoiding the locks of hair fanned out beneath her sweat-dampened body.
“Good,” he then added, almost stiff in intonation.
His weight wasn't unwelcomed; there was even something… pleasant about it. The way he said her name sounded strange to her ears. It had been some time since anyone had called her anything beside Widow or Romanoff. She liked the sound of it on his voice. Then confusion swept over her. This uncommon feeling was an alarm in the pit of her stomach. She was all too aware that this was not normal, so it must be a trap. Another test.
She swept his load-bearing arm out from under him, again with the heel of her hand, and then kicked out his leg and spun him onto his back. Her hand immediately went to his throat. "You said my name. We have no names. What do you want?"
Whatever shard of openness that had appeared in his expression slammed shut, the contours of his face deadening, his metal arm a hard line beneath his back, deforming his posture. It would have cost him nothing to snap the leather strap that kept it in place, a simple jerk of movement; less. He went still beneath her.
But he couldn’t keep the words at bay. “You’re afraid of your name.”
"You're afraid of my name," she replied hoarsely, too quickly. She wasn't afraid of her name; she was afraid of him saying her name. She didn't understand the why of it, it wasn't something she had experienced.
The back of her knee throbbed where he'd knocked her with his heavy boot. It would bruise, but it would toughen up. Her breathing was still stilted, heavy. She was all too aware of his skin beneath her fingers. The girth of his hips between her legs. Quieter, she asked again. "What do you want?"
What did he want? A horrible confusion welled up at those four words -- what do you want? -- and the line of his jaw tightened as he pushed the unfamiliar emotion away. The Soldier did not want anything. Things did not have desires.
"... I don't know."
He could have turned this around on her easily. His metal arm was held by what might as well have been a thread. A quick movement, and it would be free to tear her apart. Beyond that, his other arm was at his side, pinned (a loose interpretation of the word) beneath the hand not holding his throat (she'd slackened her grip). He had a range of motion most people would envy. There were countless ways.
And yet, he did none of them.
For a long moment, she studied his face, watching for any sign of emotion, finding him fighting against it. There was so much programming there, she realised. He'd been conditioned the way she had. It was as if something clicked into place. Natalia leaned over him, her face hovering just above his.
"There's no one here," she whispered, and it may as well have been a breeze on the wind for how soft it was. "You can tell me."
"You're here." Natalia. Natalia. It would have been so easy to reach up, to push past her grip to slide his hand across her throat, her jaw; to push, or to caress. To punish. For all of the lethal grace, she was so much smaller. So much more flesh and blood. So easy to throw her off him and crush her beneath the weight of his boot or within the grip of the hand that lay still against the arch of his spine.
"I don't want anything."
"Say my name again." He said he didn't want anything, but did he need anything? She thought to test the waters, to see just how far she could push him. Her hair spilled around her face and hid them both from prying eyes. The red mingled with his brown, and she suddenly realized what she wanted and needed.
And now she was terrified. Don't say it. Don't say it.
-- he didn't say it. Instead, there was a snap, and suddenly it was his hand at her throat.
He was not meant to feel this. He was not meant to want to form the syllables, to want to roll her name in his mouth, to want. Not allowed. Not permitted. But for all that he was everywhere, Control was so far from him now, and the distance had been allowed to stretch too far.
The grimace was an open slash across his face as he flipped her, the ground rising up hard to meet the Widow's body (and didn't he know it well by now, what it could take, how far he could push it?). His knee dug into her pelvis, keeping her anchored down between two unyielding forces.
"Widows beg for nothing."
"Widows know nothing." Nothing except the mission, the target, the job. But that wasn't true, was it? To be really good at the job, you had to feel everything. To really make it believable, you had to dig down deep into yourself and make it real somehow. A Widow had to find something she could identify with to really sell a story.
The pain in hip was too real, but her face gave nothing away. The arm was a problem, but finding the right nerve in his groin would be easy enough. She could chance it, turn the table on him once more, but she was curious. She wanted to see what he would do.
"I'm not a Widow. I'm The Black Widow. There is only one like me. You're proof of that."
"Of course." Natalia. Natalia. "That's my purpose. Train you. Make you... better." Words he himself had heard, once, but which now lingered in the far, dark peripheries of half-memory.
Her stillness was a danger, he knew. A further pulse of pressure through the weight of his knee before he rolled back, jumping to his feet and moving himself away by two steps, three.
"I've caught your arm like that three times now. Not good enough."
* * *
Stake-outs were the least interesting part of this job. Natalia's strengths were not in sitting around and waiting. The monitoring equipment tucked into one of her ears had been silent, save the occasional gust of wind or groan of the refrigerator. The house they staked out was empty -- for now -- but the diplomat who lived there should be arriving with a large guest list for the night.
They needed this information, of course, but Natalia didn't understand why she couldn't just pose as a member of the party. Get in, get out. But it wasn't for her to question. So there she sat, a pair of binoculars over her eyes as she scoped out rooms in the embassy.
It was for her benefit that they were working in shifts, an hour -- two at most -- spent together before one took up the watch while the other curled themselves into the corner for a stretch of rest. It had been a few days now, the Widow and the Soldier passing each other like ships in the night save for the brief hand-over and the briefly shared time. And while she might have slept, it was a while before he succumbed to the biology of his nature: programming could not hold out against the body’s baser needs, and he had been parted from Control for so long that he could barely hear the drone of the voice in the recesses of his mind.
And so, body going slack against the wall, he fell into something approximating sleep. Fitful, yes, and light, but certainly there was a lowering of thickly built walls inherent in the words which crossed his lips, a jittering string of German and English.
She'd heard mutterings earlier, a few times in a few days. Among them there were turns of phrases she'd only heard in the films they made them watch in the Red Room to perfect their English. As the years past, the films changed with them.
The embassy was quiet, so she turned to watch him. Among the German and English, she heard numbers, a name. Was that his name? No one seemed to know it. They just called him the Winter Soldier. She called him teacher. He didn't look like a teacher right now. Maybe it was the softness in his face from sleep, no matter how shotty it was, or just the idea that he was not a robot after all. Either way, there was something incredibly vulnerable to her in that moment.
Her watch beeped, one tiny low emittance that meant it was time to switch out. Not wanting to startle him out of his sleep, and because the embassy would be there (and empty) in two minutes, she padded over to where he was huddled and balanced in a squat. She reached out to shake his shoulder and ventured, "James? James, wake up."
Three two... five... five...
James.
Two five --
James.
We've improved you. A new world order --
James.
JAMES WAKE UP--
Instinct was triggered before reason. He knew where to reach before his eyes had even snapped open, before they had the time to adjust to the half-light, because Natalia was ever present, the dark, inescapable focus of his attention. The Soldier’s hand, flesh, dashed out, grabbing her jaw as the momentum carried him forward.
“What did you --”
He sucked in a breath. Waited. Waited.
“Don’t.”
For all his strength, this arm may as well have been steel. Her neck snapped back, but she remained focused on his face. Pain was fleeting, she could endure it for some answers, for a reply. He was having nightmares. What did someone who constantly insisted he was no one have to dream about? There were questions that she wasn't sure he had the answers to.
But the name stuck with her, and it obviously struck a nerve with him. Was it his? Or someone he knew in another life?
"Don't… what?" she growled. "You said a name. I just repeated it."
“Don’t repeat it.” For all that his vision eased, she was in its very centre. She was in the palm of his hand. She was in pain.
The pressure of his grip eased, if only slightly. “Don’t say it,” was quiet, as much of a plea as he could manage. It was his name, but he was not meant to have a name, was not meant to know he’d once possessed such a thing.
You said my name. We have no names. Her own words.
Right on cue, as if she was the robot: "We have no names."
But he did. He had a name, and it was James. English, not Russian. Not the German she heard him speak moments before either. Natalia reached a hand to curl around his wrist and eased his fingers from her chin. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but did not dare to. She wondered how many people had ever found out that the Winter Soldier even had a name.
Then she wondered how many people cared.
"It's your watch."
“Yes.”
His gaze searched hers for the space of heartbeat before his grip loosened entirely and fell away, fingers scraping the floor, skin warmed by the friction (by the feel of her own skin). “We have no names,” he repeated, but the words sounded false to his ears. He looked away and pushed himself up, stopping short of moving past her.
“Update.”
That was about all the confirmation she was going to get. It was. He was. It suit him. She found herself testing the name out in her head.
What the hell was going on, though?
She flicked the ear piece off. He'd have to turn his on to listen in to the bugs they'd planted days ago. Exhausted set in, and Natalia let it. She'd only get about two hours before she'd have to be back on her feet and watching and listening. Sleep was one few things she'd struggled with in the Red Room, though not for any reason other than her own ambition. Out here, with the Wint -- with James -- she had to stay on her feet, so she utilized her training to put herself into a slumber.
"Still dark. Still quiet. Shouldn't be long though."
“Fine.” He mirrored her action, only to switch his earpiece on, making a note -- focusing on her despite every instinct now telling him to redirect his attention elsewhere, to the mission, to the task at hand -- of the weariness in her young face, the redness in her eyes. The mark his hand had left on her skin.
He spoke the next words without thinking. “Sleep, Natalia.”
The corner was beginning to feel like home, cozy even. She sat down, a little too hard, and then pulled her legs in. She began to focus on the breathing techniques that would help her consciousness slip, slip, slip away until she was in something of a trance that would pass for sleep. It wouldn't be long.
She was dimly aware that he'd called her by her name. Again. It was no less unpleasant to hear. The corner of her mouth curled into a smile. "Don't call me that, James."
* * *
Three in the morning and the house was dark. A single wayward transmission revealed that security on the other side of things had been an issue, which was why the party was delayed by so many days. Tomorrow they would be there. And tomorrow they would position themselves for action.
Now, however, Natalia slept. He took little pleasure from the knowledge that her name warmed him in ways meant to be impossible, and yet still he savoured it in silence, the syllables and the vowels rolling in his mind, occupying the spaces another’s voice had once saturated. So long ago, it seemed.
She slept, and he let her, restless but not wanting to disturb her uneasy rest. A purpose-designed glove was slid onto his prosthetic arm, protecting the metallic knuckles, buffering the sound blows as he began to strike the wall in quick, tight succession.
Except she wasn't sleeping. She'd been staring at the ceiling for an hour, thinking. She should really email Control; maybe they changed their minds about sending her in. The house had begun to feel small, smaller than she remembered it when they arrived. Amidst her mission thoughts were little things: the way he almost pleaded with her not to use his name, the way her name rolled off his tongue, the English that seemed somehow native.
When she heard the monotonous thuds, she decided to get up and head into the other room. She tied a robe around her as she slipped into the doorway, watching the lines of his body as he punched the wall over and over. She wondered what was on his mind.
"Couldn't sleep?"
He’d split a flesh-knuckle, but it didn’t matter. “Couldn’t sleep,” he echoed, going for another five counts before he stopped, barely heaving a breath of exertion (a wall was no true opponent). Turning neatly, he took her in, and where once his reaction would have been none at all, now something tightened in his expression.
“Your watch is in two hours. Go back to sleep.”
Natalia's jaw clenched. Crossing the room, she reached out for his hand to inspect it. A single line of blood dripped between two fingers. "This was reckless. What will you do if orders change and we're supposed to go inside?"
Planted in place and free of his kevlar, the effort of not withdrawing from Natalia the very instant her skin made contact with his was blatant.
“It’ll heal.” Not a boast, but a simple fact. Pain was temporary and skin grew back -- faster in his case, but that was what was required of a weapon. If anything jammed, rusted, what use was he? “It always heals,” he added, as if for emphasis, and slowly turned his wrist within her grip.
Her brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. Something about that stung, even if she wasn't sure the reasoning. Her gaze dropped to his shoulder, where the metal appeared to be welded into his chest. Without thinking, she reached out to trace the scar that ran along its edge.
If a sound, involuntary, was kept trapped behind his teeth, it was apparent only in the shifting line of muscle in his jaw. But he didn’t move to stop her. He didn’t move at all.
Instead, a question: “Why?” Why do I want to say nothing but your name? Why are you doing this?
Her fingers charted down the metal, exploring, getting to know the feel of his skin. Something inside her shuddered and groaned, like it was aching to get free. Something in the pit of her stomach. She said nothing for just a few quiet breaths, tilting her head as if she needed to inspect every scar beneath her finger.
Finally, she looked up into his face, blinking just a little too quickly and breathed, "I don't know, James."
-- strange, so strange, to be touched like this. Had he ever been? He knew how the Black Widows were, what they were capable of through little more than the pressure of their palm, but this seemed a world apart from training, whether hers or his own.
It felt… And his name. He -- James -- swallowed, throat dry, skin going tight. He wanted, he suddenly realised. He wanted. “Say it again.”
This was so off the books that Natalia was lost. She'd never seduced someone for her own reasons. Every time she'd brushed her lips across someone else's, every touch, every taste was for the glory of the Motherland. Sex was a weapon; she didn't feel anything. She needed nothing. So why did her skin feel like it was on fire? She wanted to rake her nails down his back, whisper his name over and over again until they were both consumed. She did none of that, though her mouth, too, was dry.
She repeated the name, quiet as a prayer that she hoped the wind would catch and carry far away from here so that no one else would ever find it. No one was watching them or listening; she knew that for a fact. Still, she hesitated briefly in reaching out to brush the sweaty hair from his forehead, saying his name one more time.
Something clicked. Triggered, maybe, by the combination of the repeated sound of James and her touch, guided not by violence, but by something else, something tender. He didn't know tenderness; neither did she. So how was it that he wanted to fill his hands with her, to reach for her? Not to drown himself in the endless blue of her eyes, but to find a measure of clarity there -- she knew him, or at least a part of him, long lost and never thought about.
Pure instinct saw him reach for her, metal hand steady across the small of her back, the other sliding across her cheek. This hadn't been taught; he must have known this, once, and they had tried to erase it. He was not James to them, he was a thing, a nameless thing, like she was, an idea to be feared.
More frightening to him was the realisation that not only did he want, he wanted her.
Involuntarily, her eyelids slipped closed as she leaned into his hand, rolling her neck just the slightest so that the pads of his fingers skipped across her face. Somehow his calloused fingers weren't rough. Her lips ghosted over his palm.
The fear that they would be caught didn't make this more exciting. The realization that this was a thing she wanted desperately, that she would fight for, was all she could think about, but this was it. This was the missing piece. The Red Room sterilized you so that something wouldn't matter more than a mission, but they hadn't thought about this, had they? Tenderness. Touching for the sake of being touched. Not being owned, a thing to be used and put away when you were done with it. A child breaking its toys. Belonging, in some way that no one else could comprehend.
She ran her middle finger across his lips, slowly, watching the slow inhale of his breath. That was when she realized that she was shaking. She pushed on, easing herself onto her tip toes until her mouth lined up with his. His breath was warm on the bow of her lips. The span of a few shallow breaths was all it took for her to gently press her trembling lips to his, her eyes still locked on his.
Something deeper than programming drove James now, this new, intimate point of contact hooking into something long buried -- muscle memory, perhaps, or the raw intuition of cells. His hand tangled in her hair, and it didn’t matter that strands of it caught in the still-fresh wound; his fingers curled against her scalp all the same, holding her close as he deepened the kiss. Inhaled her. Tasted her, lips dragging down her jaw, her neck.
This violated every regulation, every constructed command. It didn’t seem to matter now.
She was well practiced with pretending to long for something. She'd seen enough movies, studied enough people to know what it was supposed to look like. Natalia had no idea what it felt like. The exhilaration, the desperate drive to be as close to him as she could possibly get. The need. This was all animal instinct, a high that she'd never known could exist in herself, had only witnessed through other people's eyes.
A moan broke through her staggered breaths as she hiked a leg up and over his hip, pressed her hands into the indents of his back to urge him closer. The robe tumbled from her shoulders. She wanted to make him feel as if a whole new world had opened up to them, to share it. She didn't want to possess him, she wanted to free him.
It was the work of nothing to drop his hand -- metal and cold and never so careful as it was now -- from the dip at the small of her back to her backside, hoisting her up so that he could free both hands to touch her (the line of her back, the soft curves of her hips and the swell of her breasts, her mouth). That he couldn’t rationalise what he was doing didn’t seem to matter: instinct could only carry him so far through ignorance, but Natalia was there, guiding him with the clarity of her intent.
Neither of their bodies belonged to them, but in this moment, perhaps they could fool themselves, could assume some measure of identity through the simple gesture of bestowing a name...
“You’re here.” It seemed important to say that, somehow. “Natalia.”
The name. Her name. It was like an exaltation, somehow breaking through the mantra she chanted over and over in her head. I have no place in the world. I have no place in the world. But she did, no matter what they said, this -- her mission -- existed, and therefore she had a place. And maybe for a little while, her place could be with him.
Clothing was lost as fast as her fingers could sweep it away until the smooth, hard lines of his hips were exposed to her. When was the last time she'd enjoyed this sight? Never. She'd lied to herself so many times when she told herself she enjoy that part of her job because skin had never electrified her.
And still she couldn't help but say his name over and over again. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for, but maybe saying the name would keep this bubble they were in from bursting, like a magic word.
A sharply executed turn allowed him to bring her to the wall, holding her flush against its sparse, solidly unyielding planes. His hands dragged, restless and clumsy, across her skin, as if he could learn her through his hurried touch. There was so much she kept barred away, silent, like any Black Widow ought, but there was an imperfect truth to her, here, as she unwound around him. As she deconstructed him with every utterance of that name (his).
He wanted her to feel as light as he did now, but the hard fumble of his hands betrayed him as nothing else did. So he kissed her, feeling the way her lips moved against his and groaning deep in his throat as he felt himself respond.
There was nothing graceful about this coupling, and Natalia thought that was what made it special. Neither of them knew how to give or take in all the ways they desperately wanted to, but that was how she knew it was more. This wasn't some back alley fuck to get off, to get information; this was something more profound. They were breaking every one of their rules, for the other. For themselves.
They each stood to lose the same, but there was so much more to gain together.
The feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one that ached to get free before, it had a name: passion. Yearning. It surged forward, up through her throat and into her mouth, but she lacked the right words, the movements to express it. She was too demanding, too eager. Everything in her head told her that she was doing this all wrong; this wasn't how she was supposed to do this. She was a weapon of another kind, one that walked and talked and fucked in ways that were practiced and tailored for a target. Not another person.
Did he trust the Black Widow? No. But he trusted Natalia, and it was Natalia here with him now, and if she was not a person wholly separate from the killer he had come to know during their time together, she was still one with her own aims and desires.
He'd seen enough of the rigors of the Red Room's programme to know what was meant to happen next, the steps to take. Desire left him heavy-limbed, uncertain; James wasn't familiar with the way lust coiled deep in the belly. What did she like, aside from the sound of Natalia pressed against her mouth?
Forehead pressed against his, she was all too aware that her breathing had stopped. The anticipation mounted as she searched his face, his eyes, for a sign that he wanted to stop. She was bright-eyed, for the moment, intense. Focused solely on sharing this moment with him. Only James. Her experience left her fumbling with the real thing. She remembered a question. "What do you want?"
That question again. James knew how to answer it now.
It was always another name they said. Another person, a facade that was well-constructed, but a falsehood. Never her. She kissed him again, sucking hard on his lower lip. Her legs relaxed just enough that he was forced to pin her harder against the wall or she'd fall.
"I'm yours. Only yours."
Working on reflex, James' hands swept down to support her backside -- then to move her, to draw her down onto him, a fine tremor running up his spine as he went still at the impossible heat of this. Of her presence.
"Tell me," he bit out. Guide me.
It took her a moment, just a fleeting instant realize that they'd crossed the threshold. There was no turning back, and that realization didn't surprised her. It didn't send fear through her. Words weren't necessary. Instead, she rolled her hips, until the heat at the center of her was not going to be ignored. Another roll sent a shockwave through her. She pressed the balls of her feet into his lower back, her hand pawing at his hips to move him. Natalia found herself swallowing hisses and moans as her legs tightened around him. She moved to explore his neck with her mouth.
It was easy to follow her lead. Every shove of her hips was met by a grinding thrust of his own, their malcoordinated rhythm feeding off itself, picking up slow but undeniable speed as James responded -- tried to -- meet her at every step. The world seemed scraped away then, with everything he knew (Control, obedience, the Red Room, the silence, the endlessly heavy quiet) suddenly beyond care; for the world just then was Natalia, and the white heat which enveloped him.
“You,” was a low gasp as he touched a hand to her cheek, meeting her gaze. He wanted her to know that he saw her.
She was struck with just how much pain she could see deep down in those blue eyes. There was so much struggling to the surface, that had been pushed down. He'd never been touched, not like this. She could see it all over his face. No one had ever thought of him as anything other than a weapon, or at least that was what they made him believe. She never wanted him to feel like that again. That realization terrified her more than anything else; this was a slippery slope that could only end in very few ways.
Her hand on the side of his face, her thumb skipped over his cheekbone, caressing gently to his brow. She smiled then, in a shy, almost awkward way that could never be misread. Her jaw tightened with emotion. The kiss she gave him then was slow and deep, the kind of kiss that was meant to convey all of the emotion she felt for him in that instant.
They meant something, these gestures of hers. She'd been taught to use them in very specific ways; he had been taught to never consider them at all. Gestures were hers to manipulate, and his to ignore, but now they sprang from her raw and unstudied, and the openness in her eyes twinged something deep in his chest (further).
Their pace slowed, not because he weakened at the thought of retribution, but because he was so close; they were so close, and to rush now would be to let reality take them again. His fingers dug into her hair, her skin. "What do you want?"
She could control so much of her body and her emotions, but once this dam erupted, the emotions threatened to sweep her away completely. That wasn't so bad a thing, for all it terrified her. He'd cracked through her veneer, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to go back to living the way she had before. It was easy to pretend that nothing was missing, that her job was important. That she was important, despite having no place in the world she was helping to create.
But now that he was there, raw and wanting and breaking out of his programming, in her arms and inside her, she didn't want to let go of that. They knew nothing about each other, except the parts they had shown to one another, and it was intense. Natalia felt her hips fall out of rhythm as she felt limbs go numb. Her head slammed back against the wall as she watched his face.
"You," she told him in English, between the groans and hitched breathing. "Nothing else but you, James."