bakerstreet | (no subject)

(no subject)

the SHOWER SEX meme
> Your character is in the shower with another character because they're close enough to do that together.

> You're helping each other get clean.

> You start getting freaky. Maybe this is the sequel to earlier sex or just unwinding after a bad week.
> If you're from a canon that is set in the olden days or a world without showers, you're in a bath or a hot springs or a bathhouse.

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He could have asked her how things went, how badly she was hurt. He could, but he didn't.

The way she stretched back against him said enough, and he tipped his head under the warm spray of the shower head to press the line of his mouth against her damp red hair, and then the curve of her ear. Her throat, he nuzzled quietly.

Washing the mission clean afterwords was a familiar ritual. When he reached for her it wasn't for her bare waist or the curve of her breast, but instead for her hands. Finely boned and bruising, he rubbed his thumb over each individual knuckle.

They had time before the water turned cold. Time to wind down properly. May as well.

Edited 2014-04-12 22:24 (UTC)

There was something to be said for first world plumbing and hot water tanks that you could hide a dozen bodies in. Something wonderful.

She relaxed against him, trusting him to hold her up. There weren't many people she'd give her back to. It was a list that had shrunk recently, and allowing it to expand again by one, it was more of a comfort than she would ever want to admit out loud.

Not that she'd have to. He knew. Of course he knew. "You've got about a million years to stop doing that," she said, tipping her head back against his shoulder and rolling it to the side to give him all the room he could want.

"Am I spoiling you?" He hid a smile into the curve of her throat, and his free arm coils around her belly, still cool but quickly warming against her skin.

The way his fingers circled and rubbed over her fingers and against the heel of her palm could have been gentle. They also could have been the same motions to clean blood from the skin, dried and tacky and rust brown. Affection and violence have always had a tenuous thread connection them, where their story is concerned.

It's hard to separate them now.

It was part of what made them.

She wouldn't change it. Every life had regrets, and she had hers, held them close, but she knew she wouldn't change them. Who she is now was built on the bones of her past, that rotting foundation that held together just long enough for her to reach the surface, to breathe free. He was down there, too, wrapped so tightly around her roots that she couldn't cut him out if she wanted to.

"You always do. Only the best in dilapidated boltholes and cheap rotgut. You'll ruin me for all other men." Which was its own brand of funny wrapped in bitterness, a smile and a slap. How long had they spent stealing what they had, neither one of them actually free to give themselves? Hadn't stopped them then, wouldn't stop them now - even if they lost their freedom all over again, Natasha knew they'd find a way to hold on to each other.

Freedom. It's a hard word to define, but he'd take it as this. These days he took the missions he wanted -- and he is allowed to want, a wondrous thing in itself considering the state they found him in -- and on a night like this he was free to remind himself what it was like to be a man instead of a weapon.

Not that Natasha didn't handle weapons with every bit of grace and ferocity as she handled her men. The thought brought a wolfish smile to his face as he released his hold on her hand. There were other places on her to spread his fingers and rub the slick trickle of water into her skin. Along the curve of her thigh, for example.

"I bought you champagne once. Paris, remember?" he murmured, before his teeth caught her earlobe in a swift, sharp tug.

Her breath caught in her throat in response to his teeth, mind immediately moving to what had happened after the cork popped, bubbles tickling her skin as he licked it from her navel and the hollow of her throat. "I remember," she moaned, reaching over her head, back behind her to thread her fingers through his dark hair. That memory had sustained her through a hell of a lot.

"You had white lilies. Perfumed the whole room. After a while I couldn't even smell the blood." Because there had been blood, of course. All their memories seemed to revolve around it. She'd stitched him up and they'd fucked on the bathroom counter because the shower's thin partitions would have shattered under the force of the two of them. Then she'd held him and they'd pretended that they hadn't just thrown a monkey wrench into the course of history. They'd sipped champagne and eaten strawberries the size of baseballs and made love and almost forgotten about the chaos in their wake for a little while. "I liked Paris." What she actually meant was: 'I liked who we got to be for a few hours in Paris.'

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