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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[ Here's the truth of it all:

You live long enough, and everything feels like a repeat of a repeat of a repeat.

Natasha, parts of her understand the Winter Soldier. They served under the same regime and parts of the same program, in her youth; none of this informatoin she's divulged to Steve, but it's Steve who is on the other side of that motel door, with his head in his hands and this desperate need to do something, to fix. Natasha understands that, too. But given the choice, this is what she knows best: that ever-beating question of who am I, who am I, who am I.

Natasha joins him under the spray of the shower. It's lukewarm and barely big enough for two, but she steps inside with him, jeans and shirt and all. She sits down next to him, shoulder lightly touching his, and doesn't say anything.

She just hums softly instead. Something old, something Russian. Something that shouldn't be familiar, but is. ]

[it was like that for him for a long time--no concrete sense of days, months, years. just the start-stop of being pushed and pulled from the ice, fed only names and places with a matching bullet or knife as the only accompaniment.

but two months later all this...this is definitely new.

he hasn't fully accepted any of this yet. steve (who he knows must be on the other side--he's never far) tracking him down and looking for a shadow of his friend that was long fried out. the one that tagged along occasionally, sam, looking at him like a ticking time bomb. sometimes there are only flashes pelting at his like bits of hail. sometimes he doesn't know where the pieces fit in a 70-year old puzzle that's been fucked up beyond repair.

it's overwhelming in a way that's more terrifying to him than the sickening familiarity of that room and that man (he won't say his name, can't even think about it without feeling sick).

but she isn't.

she comes quietly, and even over the noise of the water against his back he knows she's there. some things can't be forgotten, and even though she fits so neatly against him there are five ways he thinks he could kill her one handed. three ways he could escape this room and run off to...nowhere. a month ago his left hand would have fit just as neatly around her windpipe, finishing the job he couldn't back on the interstate. that's progress for you, he supposes with a low noise of acknowledgment.

he feels like it's something he's supposed to know, but like everything else it's just a fuzz crackling maddeningly at the edge of his mind. so he lets her finish it alone and leans his head back, water droplets trailing through the long brown strands that desperately need a trim and onto his shoulders. the silence when she finishes is comfortable, at least until it's broken by a voice low and gravelly from lack of use. there's a wariness at being able to speak more than just acknowledgments and commands.]

When did he call you?

[it's simple. avoids acknowledging that this is the first time he hasn't had a gun pointed at her since their last encounters. that's a little harder to spit out right now.]

[ Her jeans stick to the shape of her calves. Thick, unforgiving material that bunches around her knees. Natasha doesn't seem to mind it or give it much thought — physical discomforts stopped bothering her a long time ago — and she just sits there instead, absorbs the silence just as much as he does. Water trails down the side of her face and the slope of her nose, wets the red of her hair into the color of old blood.

(She fears him. But fear doesn't always mean distance.)

Her shoulder is still touching his. One warm, single point of contact between their two bodies, still seated, still under the spray of the shower. ]

He didn't need to.

[ No point asking who he is. ]

I've been two steps ahead. I just— [ A huff of a laugh, dry. ] —took a step backward.

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