Re: log, Harlem: Selina K/Steve R
[He couldn't have said who the velvet warmth of that smile was for, in all its sybaritic insinuation, but he knew it wasn't for him. For all her purring, for all the talk of rubbing against shins with back arched and for all Banner's anxieties forced upon her, Selina had never come on to Steve—she called him handsome, but it stopped there. This read as something of a wall, strangely enough, but it was better than her thinking he was attacking her, so Steve did nothing to dissuade it. He smiled back.—The talk of growling, however, shook that expression as the man tried to puzzle out who she meant.
It was only at the mention of not-Ra's that he wondered if she meant Banner. (And not for the first time in the past however many days, Steve was glad he had not been turned inside out as of yet, his worries and fears painted on the public consciousness by his own hand.) He abandoned his shield with deliberate movements.
Selina seemed to cut lucid for a moment, and the man chose then to come closer. Her fingers twilled up her sleeve, and his unwrapped the new hummingbird-hollow of a needle. Steve looked down at Selina's arm. A swab of iodine on the crease of her inner arm cleaned some of the dirt and sweat away. He didn't look up at her when she talked of only having a few days left.
Chronic illness he understood. Hell, even terminal illness. He pressed his lips together as the needle sought the purple string of a vein the way the Fates chose their next thread.]