bakerstreet | (no subject)

[There's a cliché in this, washing someone's back, but even if Taylor cared enough to be aware of that the rest of the situation would probably balance it out. Manticores had been a threat so far shaded into the dark that she could have almost forgot about them, until this organised exploration into the ship had drawn them out, as if the passengers needed to be reminded of their existence. They'll have reminder enough to hold on to now.

It's likely the wound on Natasha's back will scar. There hadn't been time to get it stitched up before the jump, and now it's mildly irritated from the stasis fluid. Taylor's done her best to wash it out, to keep any shower soap from getting in it, her hands steady and firm on Natasha's skin. It's pragmatic, practical, focussing on the necessary rather than think too much further into the reports she's going to have to write up and review, headcounts, how many lost and how many injured.]

Should find a doctor.

[Murmured, low over the drum of water hitting off the shower's white, anti-slip flooring.]

Damnit, Jim.

[ It's cliche, but Natasha doesn't have a problem with that. Tropes, for a while, used to be held in the hand that lay parallel to her fist — it would be hypocritical, and Natasha's trying to be more obvious these days. Under the water, the red of her hair turns the color of old blood, gathered over one shoulder.

It's likely the wound will scar. That's nothing — the manticores are over, and that means the fear is over, for now. And that's enough.

Natasha hums, just a little, and tips her chin to look at Tyke over her shoulder. ]

I hope that translates.

[Every now and then, she wouldn't mind the long soak to soothe weary bones, but Sif understands that they cannot always make the time for it. With the dismantling of SHIELD and this new world order where Thor is on Midgard attempting to juggle domesticity and duty to protect (she gets it, she has wanted to drop everything for one person as well before) and Odin is behaving strangely and sending Sif on one too many retrieval missions on Earth, the size of the team she was once a part of has come down to just two.

And most days she doesn't wish for more, in spite of having worked with Coulson's team as well on good terms, because Natasha understands more with one glance than many do with a thousand words. When she sends note that Hydra has Loki's sceptre, Odin sends Sif.

That was...months ago. She hasn't exactly lost track of time as much as she's focused solely on the road beneath her feet and ahead of her. Months of working and sharing living quarters with Natasha again, and attempting to maneuvre the fine lines between who they are in battle and who they are in the new safehouses they find across the world.

It doesn't matter that Sif wears jeans and leather jackets down to make herself go around unnoticed, that Natasha's name outside these doors is rarely ever Natasha, or that all of her life's secrets are spilled online. When it comes to the end of the day, and they make the time - because they do, you have to - what matters is that they're alive and what they are doing builds up to something.

So clothes are shed, and a shower is shared to save time more than water, and somewhere along the line, she's running her fingers through dark red locks and pushing them away from Natasha's neck so she can lean down and press her mouth there.]

[ Months. It's been months of working, of wearing a slightly different skin than the one she would normally wear around Sif. That's fine, that's how the job goes, sometimes — Natasha knows how to seperate the things she is from the things she needs to be. It still never feels safe. Not entirely. Natasha, though, relishes the little things: the way Sif knows how to drive and always speeds, just a little. The way her hair looks, tucked underneath the collar of her leather jacket.

It's good, and they're alive, and maybe they have to work together instead of be together, but that's fine too.

Natasha might still be struggling with that core concept of who she is, to figure out something less malleable than she has been. But she knows, in this moment, that she's Sif's just as much as Sif is hers; she sighs, curls her hand around Sif's hip and pulls her closer. ]

We're supposed to be getting clean.

[ She doesn't actually care that much. ]

[She turns her around with the sound of that sigh, presses her back up against the tiled wall and leans down to trace the line of her collarbone with her mouth, sucking water droplets from her skin with languid precision. The queen of deceit and she can't pretend they have time to be doing this? Come on, Natasha, don't disappoint her.]

So we are. [But once you step down the path, once Sif steps onto it, she doesn't plan on getting off until somebody gets off. It's more than just a need to get rid of adrenaline built up from the last infiltration mission, it's a need to reconnect with this woman who holds her heart in bloodstained fingers without Sif minding it one bit. It's a necessity, imperative, to reconnect them.

Her mouth follows down to the valley of her breasts, one two three kisses and Sif's kneeling, her hands tracing up the back of her legs, over her calves, her thighs.]

[ Natasha just— takes a moment. Her palm reaches out and smooths Sif's hair back, raven-silk underneath her fingers. Traces away the light shower spray from her vision. Natasha thinks that love used to scare her, once, and after that it used to frustrate her; these days, it is what it is. She holds it like a bird in her ribcage that beats its wings too fast, not because it's desperate to be free but because it wants more.

She rests her weight a little further against the wall, parts her knees a little. Doesn't hitch her leg over Sif's shoulder, at least, not until she either makes her or it becomes imperative.

Easily, softly: ]

You're trying to be kind to me.

[There's a laugh so soft that it's only discernible because she leaves it fluttering against the inside of one of Natasha's thighs. She pulls away, looking up with open smile, unguarded.]

And I am not succeeding? [She tsks her tongue in disappointment, and lets one hand take the place her mouth was at last, slowly rising further up.]

Should I not be? [A kiss is left against the gentle curve of her belly, tongue flickered under her bellybutton.] Should I not want to?

[She moves her hand up to between Natasha's legs now, middle finger gently dragged from her clit to where she's slicker.] Or do you only want me to be hard? [And pushes one finger in easily, draws it out and adds a second one when she presses in again. She's tight and Sif has missed this.]

Fuck.

[ It's been too long. Everything feels familiar and raw and new at the same time -- the way her laugh breathes warm against the inside of Natasha's thigh, the way Sif's mouth feels, the way her finger presses in. Natasha's head tips back with a low moan, made so much louder than she normally is by the acoustics of the glass stall, the kind of American vulgarity she doesn't employ because that's not the way she was shaped when she was new and claylike. A hand drapes slowly up the curve of Sif's neck, gathers hair messily, like an anchor rather than a courtesy.

Natasha can't help the involuntary clench, the shudder that ripples to the tips of her toes.

Her voice bleeds arousal, the hoarseness to it, the roughness to her consonants: ]

I want you to do whatever you want to.

You - [as a form of answer, spoken low and almost breathless just before she curls her fingers towards herself, finds the spot she hasn't forgotten about even in this long separation. There are places on Natasha's body that not even Ragnarok will make her forget. Her mouth finds her clit, and it's perhaps anticlimatic in the way she just licks the flat of her tongue against her, but it's efficient.

There's taste, there's slickness that seeps down her fingers to the inside of her palm, there's that clench in Natasha's cunt that is just delightful.] - better not have plans for a few days, love.

[ That she finds him first shouldn't surprise anyone. Steve is looking for a man who doesn't exist anymore, a brother in arms half a century gone; she's looking for a ghost, and she finds one. Haunting condemned warehouses in Kiev, shoeing though the wreckage of a life that wasn't really anyone's, and when he makes her the first night she follows him (if that is the first night), he is both certain and quietly grateful that it was intentional.

It's three weeks before his sidearm finds its way tucked, discreetly but safely accounted-for, beside the desk in her hotel room, his boot propping open the bathroom door like an invitation, a trail of nondescript clothes shed in his wake, and inside is just him, half-hidden in steam, letting water roll off skin he's just getting used to again.

He doesn't say я помню when she enters, but it's written there in the ease of the lines of his back, the absence of violence as stark as its presence. ]

[ She finds him first. He's fast, and he's strong, but Natasha— Natasha knows.

Three weeks later (three weeks where Natasha dreams in fragments, of things she is and was, of things they tried to make her under his thumb), she checks in on him again. Her keycard unlocks his room rather than hers, and she means to plan the three bugs she always plants before he finds and breaks them. But it's— routine, almost, and maybe there's an insignificant value in that.

Maybe they're all just children after all.

The gun ends up beside her desk. He's in her room and her shower, and Natasha— she pauses in the doorway of the bathroom. Watches him through the steam, the fogged glass of the shower cab.

She undresses slowly. Each item of clothing removed and pooling at her feet before she joins him, her cheek pressed against the middle of his shoulderblades, and she— breathes. Just breathes. ]

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natasha romanoff | mcu

you're getting ax-based ok

yessSSS

never enough shhh

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ok i lied, one meme

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