Work Text:
She prefers him in candlelight where she can pretend that the intensity of his gaze does not soften for her, where the flickering light hides the expressions within their eyes, and where memory bleeds out into something less vivid than loving him in daylight would do.
She prefers it when he does not rasp her name along her throat, Natasha, like a prayer, like burning against her skin. She prefers when she does not have to hear him, feel him, smell him with the heat of training or battle, the ways she knows him in the sun.
She prefers to pretend she hasn't given her heart away to her partner. In daylight, she pretends she doesn't love him when she lights the candles and the sun goes out.