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Maria Hill does not consider herself a cuddly person. Perhaps, if her life had gone a different way, then she may have been. If she hadn’t had to practically raise herself, if the only other human contact she’d ever felt hadn’t brought with it mottled purples and blending yellows, then maybe she’d be more inclined to reach out for those around her. But life is never simple, and Maria Hill is not touchy.
Phil had tried, when they were still fairly new to each other, to be friendly in the way he often is – with a pat on the shoulder, a squeeze of her arm. Just little touches here and there. It hadn’t taken him long to notice the minute recoil in her posture each time, the flinch that wasn’t quite there, and soon he’d stopped all together, a respectable distance between them each time they spoke. She’d trained herself out of it young, taught herself that flinching begged questions and questions begged punishment (and later on, when flinching came to mean weak, she’d taken it as a blessing). She’s not sure how Phil had managed to notice (given no-one else had since one particular incident at age seventeen that she’d rather forget) but she can’t say that the anomaly hadn’t been a factor in their eventual companionship. Now, even if they’d never so much as hugged, she’d trust him wholeheartedly with her life.
When Clint brings home a black widow assassin, Maria is put in charge of her deprogramming scheme. It’s hard to get a read on the woman. Natasha’s attitude seems to change wildly from minute to minute, and her hostility seems to fluctuate just as far. In the months before she’s cleared, she gets several warnings about ‘fraternisation’ and Maria can’t seem to wrap her head around it when she’s witnessed first hand what happens when anyone tries to touch her during the day. She doesn’t spare it any more than a passing thought at the time; it’s not like she’s going to be getting any closer than she has to be.
It takes a month after Natasha is cleared for regular duties for her to start appearing in Maria’s peripherals, miraculously in the same room but never raising her eyes. (Maria muses that she’s rather like a cat in many aspects of her life, apparently.) It takes another month for Maria to finally acknowledge the presence verbally and Natasha seems hesitant at first, but Maria guesses it’s hard to make friends with a reputation like hers – and one that she has only confirmed in the time she’s spent there. It’s another two before Natasha starts initiating the conversations and Maria considers that they might be friends. There’s something about Natasha’s guiltless habit of doing things her own way, taking her own time, that Maria finds oddly charming (when she isn’t busy trying to chase after her on comms).
Clint is very touchy, Natasha learns very quickly. She’d nearly broken his wrist for it the first time but, being just as fast of a learner, he’d learnt very quickly, too, to keep his distance, every encounter carefully spaced. Once her deprogramming had been completed, he’d risked a clap on the shoulder and, instead of hurting him, she’d flinched almost violently. It goes against everything she’d ever been taught – everything she’d had ripped out of her now. (Was she even herself anymore? What now was left of the Natalia that the Red Room had taught?) He didn’t even get to apologise before she’d run off. (She still can’t decide whether to feel guilty about that one. She never did apologise.)
Evenings off are spent in strangers’ company, where she can convince herself that she isn’t so broken, that this is touch (and it is, but it isn’t comfort). She can tell herself that the crawling under her skin is something good when it’s a stranger in the dark, keep telling herself that the twisting in her stomach is what people describe in these situations. It’s fine. It’s fine if she initiates it. That way she’s in charge. It’s fine. Rough hands and rougher treatment are a reprieve from the cold caress of memories in the dark, like shadow puppets behind her eyelids. (In the end, it’s all a gentle touch in comparison to the past.)
Maria’s stillness in the room is a respite she hadn’t realised she’d craved until she’d gained it. Something about the way the woman has never made a move towards her, never felt the need to keep an eye on her. She exists easily in her presence, like she knows nothing of Natasha’s past or present, and she finds herself soothed, for once in her life. It’s a strange sensation to not worry about someone touching her, like watching the storm that has followed you home, dry and cosy now through the living room windows. (Sometimes it feels like Maria is thinking the same thing.)
Neither of them can really pinpoint when they started spending more time together, when Maria’s office became Natasha’s breakroom. They’d settled into as easy of a friendship as two people such as themselves can manage, and neither of them could ever voice how deeply they appreciated the other's company. Now, Natasha brings Maria coffee when she really should be taking a break, and she manages to worm her way into a conversation that wicks away twenty minutes of Maria’s time before she can think to argue (Natasha wonders if it’s obvious that she’s keeping track). Their hands have never brushed as the coffee is transferred, and neither of them will admit to themselves that they wish they would.
Maria can’t explain to herself why she feels like reaching out for the first time in her life, like holding her burned, toughened hands up to an open flame, feeling out the warmth that has turned too quickly to heat so many times before. She watches Natasha fold herself up in the chair across her desk and the six feet suddenly feels impossibly far. The urge to move herself over to the chair next to her fizzles in her bones and she tucks the toes of her boots around the legs of her own chair to lock herself there. She finds herself cradling her mug, pressing her palms into the ceramic and curling her fingers around the handle for as much contact as possible from where Natasha’s had been. She feels like a child and she blinks herself back into sanity.
Natasha always takes up space when she’s with Maria. It’s so ingrained into her to be small and inconspicuous in public that, even with her deprogramming, she doesn’t mean to curl in on herself, to hide in corners, to silently observe. It’s only when she’s with Maria (or Clint, on a good day) that she will curl herself up in the same chair – the one on the left – only to untangle herself five minutes later. A leg over one armrest, the other out in front of her, an arm slung over the back. Maria is quiet by nature, and Natasha also finds herself filling the gaps despite her own disposition. She chases away the silence with anecdotes and quips and each comment from Maria in return is like a touch in itself. Each time she laughs Natasha feels warm and when she looks at her, smiles at her, Natasha thinks she can feel that too, thinks maybe she gets how the heart racing and the stomach flipping is meant to feel.
She feels, sometimes, like she’s putting a target on herself by making her presence in the room so known. Like maybe one of these days Maria will notice that she’s actually there, and not just some ghostly apparition like her repertoire makes her out to be. She isn’t sure why, sometimes, that sounds exactly like what she’s aiming for (and that doesn’t scare her, it doesn’t). Sometimes, she thinks that, for once in her life, she wants Maria to reach out, wants someone to touch her first without pretence. She’s sitting on the wall watching the tide roll in until the waves splash up against it, pointing her toes so that maybe, maybe the spray will reach up and dampen her shoes just a little.
It’s evening now, though they only have the clocks around them to tell by this deep in the helicarrier, and Maria knows that Natasha has probably come to make some awful innuendo about much more interesting ways she could spend her evening in an attempt to charm her enough to maybe actually go to bed for the night. (Natasha is only there because she wants to be, and she pesters Maria about her work ethic as a last minute attempt to cover her motivations every night.) Maria will admit to herself, just this once, that she is tired, and maybe that means that she agrees when Natasha offers to walk her back to her quarters instead of staying ‘just to finish this’. Maybe it means that her ribs ache with Natasha’s pleased little smile, wedging itself in her chest like an awful, beautiful, hope. No-one is there to say if it does.
She finds herself almost asleep on her feet by the time they reach her door, and there’s the familiar knowing sort of glint in Natasha’s eyes as she watches Maria from that same safe distance. Her hands are slow and dumb as she struggles to unlock her door and Natasha’s soft laugh does little to help. (They’re not dumb enough to try and reach out, to say good night with more than just a nod.) She smiles from her position in the doorway and wishes Natasha a restful night as if they don’t both know the way they all turn out, sincerely hoping that her reluctance to fully commit to hiding away somewhere she can’t follow isn’t as obvious to Natasha as it is to herself. (Natasha would follow, of course, if she was asked – and she won’t notice, too busy lingering herself.)
The door closes, and the quiet snick of the latch rules the end of their reaching what-ifs like a gavel strike in the sudden silence. Natasha stands there in the hallway as if the door might open again, as if Maria might change her mind after all these countless months and invite her in. (Or that, if she glares hard enough, the hinges might simply melt and allow her in instead. That’s probably more likely.) When the door continues to remain shut tight, Natasha shakes her head, tearing her feet from where they’ve seemed to fuse with the floor. She mutters to herself in the quiet of the corridor, thankful for the privacy of the late hours as she curses her hope and delusions. (The halls never used to feel so empty, did they?)
Being world class agents doesn’t save either of them from their own cowardice. They tell themselves that they can live with it, that it’s nice how things are now, that the risk is calculated and it isn’t worth it. (Lying is their job, after all, and they are world class.) They’ll carry on as they are indefinitely, with stolen glances and almost-reaches, and every time they part they’ll try not to think about how a spy’s time is limited, about what it might be like to stop waiting for an opening that will never arrive. Their balance is careful, a measured distance between them, and both of them are aware of how far it is to fall from here. (Neither of them realise that they’ve stepped off the ledge before there even was one, free falling from the start.)
It takes one bad week for their perceived delicate balance to come crashing down. One bad week of sleepless nights and overtiredness turned into overexhaustion in the gym, and each time they find each other there they’re one step closer, one line crossed. They can touch if they’re sparring, this has been a rule from the beginning, though neither of them have dared cross the line from mandated training into sparring for fun (into asking for touch, no matter how violent). But when you’re having a bad week, when you can tell that the other is somehow having a worse one without so much as a word between you, the space seems so much wider, and the fall feels so much softer.
One bad week has them toeing lines, and one awful day has them stumbling blindly over them like children playing hopscotch.
Casualties for the mission are higher than they’ve had in a long time, despite the precautions they had taken. They had known that the case would be risky, that the chances of a full team returning were slim at best, and Maria had chewed the inside of her cheeks raw over the choice to let Natasha go for a week straight.
She prods at the tenderness of it as Natasha sits opposite her, six feet away just like always. But this time Natasha isn’t sprawled comfortably out across her chair, she doesn’t have that air of nonchalance that seems to linger around her very being. She sits perfectly straight, and her jaw is set as she fixes Maria with a strange, hard sort of fire in her eyes. Maria can’t quite place it, but it seems to cut straight through any will power she’d brought into the meeting.
Natasha has noticed the way the lines under Maria’s eyes have deepened, how her quarters seem to have been used less and less over the week. This job is high risk and high reward, and they both need a win right now. Natasha is only the right choice for the job. She’s sure she can see Maria close off a little each time she mentions it, and she wonders if Maria thinks that there’s better people for it, wonders if she’s disregarded orders one time too many already. (She hopes that she’s worried, that she would rather hold back their best agent just so that Maria doesn’t have to live without her, but hope is childish, and she’d grown up far too young.)
So, she appears once again in her office, a proper, arranged meeting for the first time in months, and she decides to give the orders for once. She wishes she could say she isn’t surprised when Maria simply sighs, her eyes closed and her nose bridge pinched between her fingers as she finally agrees. Natasha refuses to acknowledge the dull ache somewhere in her chest. This is what she wanted. (Maybe the hope had nestled itself somewhere in the dark anyway, made a home in the cracks of her heart.)
So it’s an awful week and a worse day, with two revised evacuation plans and a dozen more casualties. Maria takes up Commander on the job and pretends that she isn’t listening in for Natasha’s comms twice as hard as anyone else's (that would be incredibly irresponsible).
When communications go down and evacuation teams are sent in as last resort with no way of telling what they’ll meet on the other side – who they’ll bring back – Maria reminds herself of Natasha’s files. She recites them in her head, case after case twice the level of this one whilst she continues to hold comms with the evac team. She revises plans for A through to F just in case, her mind in two places as she tells herself that Natasha is trained, she’s talented, she’s unkillable. (Only according to their enemies. Maria of all people knows just how human the indestructible amongst them are.) (She isn’t a part of the ground fleet to hear the way Natasha scrabbles for some sort of contact long after they’ve lost it, miraculously calm but far too persistent.)
She can barely remember whether they got the intel or not when medic reports roll in and a certain agent isn’t cleared for duty. The day really couldn’t get any worse if it tried. Don’t jinx it, she tells herself. She isn’t dead. (Yet, a voice in her head says.) It’s 8 hours before the team will be back and she makes it through twice as much paperwork and four times as much coffee as any other day as she waits, her knee bouncing under her desk and her cheek chewed raw again. (She presses her thumb to her teeth to stop herself, but that only ends up chewed too.)
The radio message comes through and she’s in the med bay before she can even tell herself that it’s a bad idea.
She wishes she could say that she’s surprised to find that Natasha is missing, wishes she could say she’s disappointed that she’d break protocol (and maybe she is a little impressed that she’s managed to escape so fast if she hasn’t even been cleared for training) but all she can think is that she’s alive. She’s conscious. She’s moving.
Something inside her takes her back to her office, tells her not to search the dark, hidden corners of the base, and lo and behold, she’s there. Sprawled out and bloody across her nice leather seat but she’s there. She’s home. She’s alive. She’s right in front of her. (Did she say home?)
Two steps. She’s right in front of her. She’s close enough to touch. Natasha smirks up at her, entirely lopsided, and Maria is sure half of it is a grimace but her eyes are bright as she makes some stupid quip and Maria almost wants to cry with the relief of it, with how mockingly familiar it all is. She wants to take her hands and her face and feel the warmth of her skin and make absolutely certain that she’s alive. Her hands stay resolutely by her side and all of the words desperately gathered on the tip of her tongue are swallowed saccharine sweet, replaced by a simple reprimand.
Natasha’s smirk only widens, and she’s never felt so alive, even as her breaths rattle and she’s sure she’s ruining Maria’s upholstery. She makes a comment about her being late and Maria’s humourless laugh is music to her ears. She laughs back only for it to turn into wheezing and a coughing fit and the room spins with pain. Then Maria is closer, right there, and Natasha isn’t quite sure what makes her dizzier.
Somehow, they make it to Maria’s quarters, and Natasha mourns the fact that she’s too far gone to truly make the most of being invited in for the first time. She can’t even scrape together the thoughts for an awful innuendo. She’s not quite sure how they make it back without touching – how she hasn’t simply collapsed somewhere along the way – and she can’t make up her mind whether to be thankful or disappointed. She stumbles halfway to the bathroom and Maria’s arms are out ready before she corrects herself, so so close, but not quite there – never quite there. (Neither of them breathe for a long moment after.)
Maria sits her down on the toilet lid before crouching in front of her and Natasha’s gaze follows with her whole head. She knows she’s skipped medical, and that she’s probably avoided any sort of once over the nurses would have tried during the flight. It looks like she has a concussion, but she doesn’t know if they’ll make it through a check up.
She meets Natasha’s eyes, and they manage to focus on her in some sort of way despite their hazy quality. She isn’t sure who’s more scared, when she really looks at her, and she wills her hands not to shake if she can bear it. Natasha nods, barely perceptible (but Maria has been an expert in Natasha and her imperceptible qualities for months now).
“Can you get your suit off?”
Maria’s voice is far too loud, too sharp off the smooth walls of the bathroom, and Natasha flinches against it. Her face is suddenly far too soft, far too close to the look people have before they put a soothing hand on her shoulder and she has to remind herself to act like a normal human being and suck it up. She reminds herself instead, here, that Maria won’t. (Why does she wish she would?)
She raises a hand to her collarbone, and now that the adrenaline has dissipated, now that everything has had time to settle, the movement is unbearable. (She tries not to think about why Maria is the only place her body had finally let her slow down.) She tries not to flinch so openly, but Maria’s eyes are softer still and she lowers her arm in resignation.
Once again, Maria hesitates. Her movement stalls before she can quite reach the zipper, and her eyes flick back up to Natasha’s. She smiles a little, almost cocky in any other situation, and Maria’s attention snaps back to her hands as she finally takes a hold of it. Her skin is warm even though she isn’t touching it, perfectly careful to drag it down without brushing her knuckles, and neither of them notice the way the other holds both their breath.
“Natasha…” Maria’s voice lays halfway between horror and admonishment and Natasha doesn’t like either of them.
Her ribs are mottled with purples and reds and Maria can see the way that her breath stutters now that she’s really looking. She wouldn’t be surprised if she’s broken at least a rib or two. In comparison, the minor scrapes and cuts scattered about seem almost insignificant, even though she’s sure a couple of them should really need stitches. They need to clean them at least, and Maria needs to get a good look at her back too to see what’s hurting her shoulder.
Baby steps. One thing at a time.
“Do you know if your ribs are broken?”
Natasha takes a breath, cut a little short with a flinch, and her smile is almost sheepish. “Only one of them.”
Maria raises a brow as if to say ‘ only?’ and Natasha’s smile morphs itself into a smirk. She ignores the warmth it spreads through her own chest, the secret way she’d hoped that she would smile like that again. No one likes seeing their friends in pain, she argues.
She knows Natasha knows how to check herself, and she knows that a broken rib tends to be a little more than obvious to the recipient but her fingers itch to touch, that too-close-to-the-campfire crawling sensation just under her skin. Her hand is raised before she can even convince herself of it.
When she hesitates again, her eyes stay on Natasha’s broken skin, the map of muddled blood vessels and blooming colours, her own personal sunset, entirely Natasha and entirely beautiful, even in its brutality (perhaps that is part of the charm of her). The movement has stopped, and Maria recognises a little dumbly that Natasha is holding her breath. Of course she is.
Her eyes are glued to Maria’s hand, and she’s sure she can feel it even as it lingers less than an inch away. She’s thankful for Maria’s focus – doesn’t think she could handle it if Maria looked up at her with those cool, understanding eyes, if she asked. They both stare at her hand instead, and when she finally takes a breath it’s like it brings Maria back into motion too, like one can’t continue without the other (and they suppose that’s probably true, in other ways).
She doesn’t know quite what she expects, but Maria’s fingers are gentle, almost ticklish (and a little cold, but that’s a less important matter). They trail just slightly over the contour of one rib and it’s almost as if Maria herself is getting the feel for touching another human being. Natasha wonders just how alike they might be.
Natasha’s skin is warm and Maria buries deep the urge to lay her palms against her. It makes her head spin a little as she runs her fingertips over the expanse of colours in front of her, so careful not to hurt her as she marvels at the sensation. She tries to focus on her task, doesn’t want to make Natasha any more uncomfortable than she already is as she makes her way methodically along each rib. This is routine, not indulgence.
Natasha closes her eyes, tries not to breathe too deeply. She’s certain she’s swallowed a swarm of wasps with the way her stomach somersaults, the way the back of her neck feels hot even as Maria presses over a particularly tender spot and she flinches. That’ll be the broken one.
“‘M sorry,” Maria mutters, soft and rough, and Natasha’s heart only climbs in her throat despite how she swallows around it. She presses again, just barely, but it hurts enough to elicit another reaction as she hums thoughtfully. “Only one,” she repeats back at her, her lips almost a smirk.
Natasha huffs out a little laugh (a mistake, her ribs tell her) and then Maria’s hands are gone and she practically sways with it. Maria seems to take it as a symptom of one of her countless injuries, and her hands are back on her again, at her shoulders this time, firm and steadying. Her smile is halfway between amusement and concern as she ducks her head a little to look her in the eye, searching for something. She seems to find whatever she was looking for, and she lets go again to leave Natasha reeling for a second time. (Did she imagine the hesitation? She must be projecting.)
“Do you have a concussion?” Her voice is soft, so carefully gentle in the space between them, (not that there is much of it left) and Natasha doesn’t think anyone has ever been so considerate to her in her life.
Maria’s eyes are so blue in this light. (The awful, cool toned brightness of a bathroom that she loathes at the best of times feels a little more tolerable with this new found knowledge.) So often she’s seen them hard and dark, rough like oceans that swallow ships whole and just as unforgiving, but never when they’re together (alone). Never when Maria is looking at her. Now they’re cool and calm, the ripples in a rockpool that draw you in and in until the tide creeps in too to lap at your shoes and you realise you’ve been there all afternoon. You leave with secret knowledge of little crabs and sand skippers, and you’re happy even if your socks are wet.
Maria’s eyebrows quirk ever so slightly and Natasha realises that she hasn’t answered. That’s not embarrassing at all. “I could be twelve shots deep at a bar right now.” Her lips tug into a halfhearted smirk and she pretends that Maria’s image doesn’t swim a little. A frown appears on Maria’s lovely (blurry) face and Natasha almost wants to apologise for the joke. “No screens for a week and I’ll be fine,” she dismisses.
The frown doesn’t leave Maria’s face, but she allows the crease between her eyebrows to dissipate a little. There isn’t much they can do about a concussion if Natasha refuses to go to medical (she doesn’t even have to ask) so, she decides the next course of action should be to clean out these wounds.
She refocuses on the expanse of skin in front of her, more of Natasha than she’s ever really seen before, more of anyone really. She gives her another onceover instead. “Any other injuries?”
Natasha’s thigh flexes as if she has to double check it’s there. “Gunshot, left thigh. It’s just a scrape but it’s burning like hell.”
Now that it’s pointed out, she can see the way the blood glistens a little where it’s still wet, where the wound is deeper. The colour of it almost blends in with her suit and Maria doesn’t think that’s a good sign against blood loss. She really needs to get out of this suit.
“Can you take this off?” She gestures at it a little limply, aware that asking Natasha, of all people, to undress in her bathroom may not be the best way to maintain a friendship, even if she looks like she might pass out any minute.
Natasha stares at her for a moment, like her brain is sorting through the words, like she doesn’t quite understand. She’s heard those words (or close enough) countless times in her life, and they’ve never quite been spoken so considerately, with such genuine care for her answer. “I don’t think I can stand up anymore.”
She laughs as if Maria might laugh back but her eyebrows only draw together again. A request for help lingers on the tip of her tongue, a silent plea for contact trapped behind her teeth. She watches Maria’s hands raise from where they had fallen back to her own thighs, watches them take a careful hold of the fabric either side of the tear. They feel around at it, so attentive not to brush the edges of the wound even slightly, and then they tug, and when Natasha doesn’t flinch too far they tug a little harder.
The sound feels like it’s tearing her skull instead, but the relief of the pressure finally disappearing is enough to make her slump against the tank of the toilet a little, the porcelain pleasantly cool against her back. Her ribs complain about the movement and she grunts limply in response as Maria continues to tear open the leg of her suit until she can get at her thigh properly. The other leg seems to be in one piece, even if the compression of the suit is starting to get on her nerves.
It seems like Maria is going to wear out her apologies at this rate when she touches the edge of the wound and Natasha flinches, her hands drawing back immediately. The flex of her thigh reopens any forming clots, the blood a little thick where it drips under her thigh down to the tile.
“It’s fine,” Natasha grunts. “I’ll only have to clean them myself. Your hands will probably shake less.”
Maria glances up at her to find her eyes closed, her head tipped backwards to rest against the wall. Another soft pat of blood brings her attention back and she watches Natasha’s thigh tense preemptively as she brings her hands back.
Her touch is precise, and Natasha tries to ground herself in the sharp pain of it instead of the soft way she holds her. One of her hands lays against the outside of her thigh, soothing and steading as the other inspects the extent of it, and Natasha’s heart races with the strange comfort of it. (She’s sure that isn’t helping the blood loss.)
“This is going to need stitches,” Maria says at last.
Natasha lifts her head again and Maria is frowning, still prodding at the edges of it a little. “I’m not going to medical.”
Her voice is stern, and Maria doesn’t need to look up again to know that this isn’t an argument. “You don’t have to.”
“What; you’re gonna stitch me up in your bathroom?”
Maria opens the cupboard under the sink next to her to pull out an impressively large first aid box. She flips open the lid to reveal the contents and spins it around to face Natasha. “Sure.”
Natasha blinks at it a few times before a soft laugh bubbles up in her chest, and it hurts but she just can’t help it. She clutches at her side a little with her good arm (good is an overstatement). “This shouldn’t surprise me at all. Of course you have a whole hospital in your bathroom.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
Natasha’s teasing smile edges into fondness, but she doesn’t make the misfortune of laughing again. (Has she always smiled this much? She feels like she’s always smiling these days.) She hopes Maria doesn’t notice the softness in her expression, hopes that she can blame it on the tiredness that is making its home in her bones at last (and maybe the concussion).
The light catches her hair in just the right way that it almost glows around the edges, burning from the inside out. It’s like staring into a campfire, a cosy little bubble from the cold outside world, and Maria almost thinks to reach into it, to smooth out stray hairs and tuck them sweetly behind her ear, but Natasha smiles and suddenly it’s too bright, her face is hot and her fingers burn, and she ducks to look into her self contained hospital.
“I’ll take a look at your back after, but that’s the only place that looks like it should need stitches so far.” She rummages through her box for a moment simply for something to do. She knows exactly where everything is.
Getting Natasha’s thigh under running water sounds like more of a battle than either of them are up for, so she produces a handful of antiseptic wipes and tears one open carefully. This time her hands don’t hesitate before they come to rest softly on either side of her thigh, holding her steady and offering, what she hopes is, some comfort. (She’s almost proud of herself, until it suddenly feels immensely childish.) Natasha still trembles under her palms, and she can’t decipher if it’s simply the blood loss and pain taking its toll or if Natasha is fighting an ever present internal battle not to leave anyone who touches her as a stain in the carpet. It’s probably both, she decides, and she tries to work a little faster.
Her thigh tenses, shaking a little harder, and Maria is sure she hears her breath hitch just barely, but Natasha makes no other complaint about the sharpness of the antiseptic. Maria glances up on a brave heartbeat and finds Natasha watching her hands again, focussed entirely on where they meet her own skin.
She folds the wipe neatly when she’s satisfied and drops it into the bin just across from her. “You still want stitching up?”
She risks another glimpse and Natasha is looking at her now, really looking. Maria knows the look on her face well. (She knows all of her looks well, has studied them in detail in the stolen moments between them.) It’s another short moment where Natasha is thinking and then she nods, the barest movement of her head.
“Okay.” Maria doesn’t say anything more. She simply returns to her magic box and produces her needle and thread, all of her focus on the task at hand instead of just what the implications of this situation are. (She’s loath to admit it, but Natasha has a fear of needles to rival a child in a dentist chair, and she’s even less fond of letting anyone close enough to perform any sort of medical procedure.)
Natasha watches her thread the needle with a keen intensity once the surrounding skin is clean, and Maria is all too aware of just how much this means, of how much trust is being placed with her right now. She wills her hands steady and focuses on the rhythm of Natasha’s breathing as she locks the forceps around the needle. It’s shallow but steady – deliberate – and there’s a slight waver to it that Maria knows all too well, even if Natasha could fool anyone else.
She steadies her free hand against her thigh again, just her fingertips this time, and she doesn’t risk looking up again, doesn’t even give her a warning – she knows she’s watching her hands like a wild animal. The air whistles through Natasha’s teeth when she hisses, and her thigh tenses under Maria’s hand. She shushes her gently, a soothing sound that escapes her before she can even think twice about it, and Natasha’s leg relaxes immediately, still trembling but carefully slack.
The needle is sharp, and whilst it hurts much less than anything else about her right now, it’s something she’s aware of and the feeling of it has always made her sick to her stomach. She’ll only admit to herself how much Maria’s presence soothes her, how much it’s helping her to stay present right now – and she won’t even go that far with the way Maria’s touch makes her feel. She maintains that the coolness of her hands is simply pleasant against the heat of her broken skin, that it makes sense that a gentle touch is appreciated after all these years of harshness. (She’s very adept at half truths.)
The first stitch is tied closed and the tug elicits a grunt from Natasha, though her thigh remains as relaxed as she can manage. (She can follow orders when she feels like it.) Maria is near silent as she works, the ghosts of apologies crossing her lips every so often as soft as the press of her fingertips. Natasha has never heard her mumble before. Her presence has always been so large, so forthright in the room, imposing and directing like her job demands, and it bleeds into every aspect of her life. Even when it’s just the two of them, when the rest of her being seems soft around the edges, her voice is clear and cool as always. It’s strange to hear her words half formed and whispered, just for Natasha and as gentle as her treatment. (Natasha thinks she likes this the most.)
The next stitch is as precise as the first, and Maria maintains her careful concentration until the very last one. If she puts all of her effort into ensuring each stitch is perfectly, immaculately straight, then she doesn’t have to think about how warm Natasha’s skin is, or the way her trembling only makes her want to touch her more. She’s never wanted to soothe someone before, not with gentle touches and and calming strokes, but she finds herself reciting that Natasha isn’t like that, neither of them are like that.
“I think the others should be okay,” she says, the first properly spoken words between them in a long while. Her voice is scratchy, her words catching in her throat and breaking around the silence of the room. Natasha wonders if that’s what she sounds like in the morning and the image of Maria half buried in her duvet, bathed in the cool light of dawn with a sleep-soft smile and rest-heavy limbs is promptly driven from her mind as effectively as she can manage. (Imagination is a dangerous, slippery thing, and Natasha’s mind is notorious for its dark corners. Though she supposes maybe this stowaway is better than those she’s usually stuck with.)
Thankfully, Maria is too focused on replacing her unused materials inside her magic box to notice the conflict in Natasha’s features (she’s sure her face isn’t as stoic as she’d like in this state).
“They still need to be cleaned, but some hot water should work. You can use my shower.” She looks back up from her box, a small, polite smile on her lips, and the reminder that Natasha is actually meant to move brings back every ill feeling with a vengeance.
The mere thought of trying to stand makes her head spin. “Unless you want me to drown, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She means for it to be humorous, but Maria’s lovely features crease in painfully familiar concern yet again. Her eyes flit between her eyes and back down to where her leg still trembles, thinking. They focus on the split in her eyebrow, lingering a little longer, and it’s as if her own body had forgotten to exist without Maria’s attention. The rest of her face heats too, the matching split in her lip throbbing alongside her eyebrow.
Natasha wonders if she’s spoken her desires aloud when Maria turns silently back to her box, entirely unsure if her body has betrayed her without her knowledge in such a state. She wants to ask her to clean them with her gentle hands and gentler words, to stay with her just a little longer (to touch her again). It sounds like begging, sounds like everything that has been smothered and stifled and beaten out of her. She couldn’t voice it if she wanted to. (And yet, she still isn’t sure that Maria hasn't managed to weasel that out of her against her better judgement, much like everything else she’s ever said in their company.)
Maria thinks that maybe, if she pours all of her focus into neatly replacing her equipment, she’ll be able to convince herself that she’s still doing this for Natasha’s sake. So they don’t get infected, she tells herself. (She’s been lying from the start, from the very first moment she didn’t march Natasha off to medical and handcuff her to the bed.)
She holds another disinfecting wipe in her hands, crouched in front of Natasha on her bathroom floor, and she stares up at her face with the sudden surrealty of the situation. Two trained killers, the best in the world, and her hands are shaking at the scant thought of touching her face. The same mottled pattern from her ribs blooms across her temple, more subdued in its pinks and greens, and Maria guesses that’s where the concussion came from. Blood has trailed its way over her cheek bone too to stripe her jawline next to the blood from her lips. She wonders vaguely how she’s managing to make her usual snarky expressions when it must hurt to move any part of her face right now.
There’s a realisation that she can’t reach her face from her position on the floor, and she can’t ask her to bend over. Part of her brain imagines climbing into her lap and sitting close enough to feel her breath against her cheek, imagines Natasha resting her own hands on her thighs to keep her steady. She manages to shake the thought from her head without doing so physically. You’ll pop her stitches, she tells herself, and then scolds herself again for that being her primary reasoning.
She pushes herself to her feet as if to run away from the entire situation. “I’ll grab another chair. Stay there.”
Another stupidly handsome smirk. (Maria is sure the pain can’t be worth it.) (Natasha is sure it is.) “Where am I going to go with a concussion and one leg?”
Maria almost allows herself a begrudging smile in return. “You know what I mean.”
She’s certain she’s imagining the flicker of disappointment when she turns towards the door. She wouldn’t be surprised if Natasha did find a way to disappear in the time it takes her to return. She wouldn’t be surprised if she never spoke to her again after tonight. She’s broken every single unspoken rule, crossed every invisible line, every mutual boundary. She has to be imagining it. (And Natasha only lets people see what she wants them to see. Right?)
Without Maria’s wonderful distraction, everything seems to double down on Natasha at once. Fire in her lungs, a vice around her ribs. Needles in her veins and heat under her skin. She can feel her pulse in every capillary of her being, feels like she can see the individual photons of the bathroom light, and it all makes her more nauseous than she’s felt all day. She closes her eyes against the brightness of everything and focuses on the sound of Maria in her quarters instead. The soft shuffle of her boots on carpet creeps closer and she allows her head to fall back against the wall again.
Maria pauses, just so, in the doorway to take in the sight, and she knows she shouldn’t, that this in a gross invasion of privacy, but the warm lights illuminate her in such an ethereal way that Maria can scarcely believe that she hasn’t dreamt this whole thing up. She’s certain she’s only been there a split second before one of Natasha’s eyes cracks open, staring at her half-lidded out of the corner, unbothered about turning her head to look at her properly.
“Still alive,” she quips, and Maria breathes a soft laugh. (She doesn’t correct her on just why she had hesitated at the boundary.)
She places the chair down in front of Natasha, close enough that she has to tuck them up, sitting cross-legged. Natasha’s knees press into her shins, just on the border of discomfort when she sits up fully again and Maria hates herself for the way it makes her heart tick in her throat. The cleaning wipes are still balanced on the edge of the sink and she tears one open as if she isn’t fighting back a very visible tremble in her hands.
Yet again tonight, Maria reaches into the fire, half expecting to snuff it beneath her hardened fingers, and yet again she buries deep the warmth that it spreads through her palms, along her arms. It fills her chest with an inexplicable pressure, like something has managed to worm it’s way behind her ribs, settle itself around her heart. (She ignores the implications of that line of thought.) Still, Natasha’s skin is warm against her hand, the line of her jaw against her palm and the softness of her cheek under her fingertips, and she steadies her as gently as she can as she dabs at the other eyebrow.
There is no warning before the sting of the disinfectant, and Natasha finds that she appreciates it in a strange way. Maria isn’t coddling her. She isn’t kissing a graze better. The disinfectant hurts. Everyone knows that. She doesn’t flinch. (Whether from some strange sense of pride, or the fear that Maria will suddenly realise that Natasha is there if she moves, she isn’t quite sure.)
The wipe is dragged carefully along the line of blood, all the way down to her chin, and then her lips are tugged almost into a pout as Maria dabs at the rest of the blood smeared around her mouth. She tries to ignore the voice in her head that says they look kissable. Not in this state, she tells herself, as if she’d be brave enough had Natasha come to her fully sober. Instead, she makes the mistake of dragging her eyes away to look back into Natasha’s eyes, and she’s sure she’s seeing things when they take a split moment to flick back up from her own mouth.
“Done?” Natasha asks, hoping for teasing. Her pulse thrums in the hollow of her throat, and she hopes that Maria will mistake it for anything else but the way her heart flutters in her chest right now.
Maria pulls away, and Natasha tries not to follow. “Yeah. Looks good. Shouldn’t need any more stitches.”
“And here I thought red was my colour.”
Maria doesn’t humour her with a response, shooting her a fleeting, wilting glance before turning to tuck the bloodied wipe back into its packaging and placing it in the bin. The one maroon shade looks better, she thinks to herself.
She finds the courage somewhere in herself to keep meeting her eyes, to keep returning to that dangerous place of comfort when she knows that each and every glance brings with it the risk of exposure. Another once over, disguising the way she memorises her features with calculatedly professional interest, concern for a job well done. (Anything but the desperate yearning for this to be a face she knows better than her own, one she wakes up to every morning and kisses every night.) There’s some blood left in her hairline, but Maria considers that Natasha would rather do that herself later on.
Natasha, of course, can feel the stiffness of it acutely, and she ignores everything in her that wants to tell her, to ask her to touch her again, to wipe at her face with that inexplicable care. She mulls over turning it into a quip, missed a spot, but it feels too close, too much like begging for it, and Natasha does have some self-respect left. (Even if the lead in her limbs and the heaviness of her head try to say otherwise.)
The next words should be easy. Maria knows that they shouldn’t really be any harder than anything else that she’d done so far tonight, that asking the Black Widow to take her shirt off in her bathroom should really take more courage, but nothing in her seems to be logical tonight, and her words stick in her throat like burrs, like they know the weight of themselves.
It’s something animal, something deep set in your muscles and tendons that says don’t turn your back. Maria knows it intimately, and she sees the way Natasha presses herself against walls, into corners, skating around the outside of crowds where she can. She knows what she’s asking, even if the situation seems so mundane, so black and white.
“Can you turn around? I need to see your back.”
Natasha wants to curse herself for the blind trust she has placed in this woman, for the way her body makes to turn before she’s even finished her sentence. You don’t turn your back on the enemy. But Maria isn’t the enemy, no matter how she spins it. (And she’s turned her back plenty of times. When has she ever been one for conventional fighting methods?) Somehow, the decision seems to carry a weight behind it, something deeper than the simple threat of a knife between her shoulder blades. She turns before she can give any more thought to it, before she can give away any weakness in her hesitancy.
This new position lets her lean her arms on the tank of the toilet, lets her rest her tired muscles just enough that the sheer exhaustion of the situation sets in. She rests her cheek on her forearms and she knows it’s a transparent attempt to keep Maria in her sights.
Her back is torn tissue-paper-ragged across her shoulder blades, little pieces of grit and debris cradled in the mess. Maria hisses quietly at the expanse of it, grabbing soft cloth and a bottle of antiseptic instead of the little wipes she had used for her face.
“Did you get dragged behind a truck?” she asks in disbelief, half a joke, despite her usual straightforwardness.
Natasha replies, perfectly serious, “Two-thousand-eight jeep wrangler.”
Maria’s hands pause, the cloth still pressed to the mouth of the bottle. Her whole head tilts upwards to meet her eyes and Natasha bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing. (A lesson from her ribs that she won’t be forgetting in a hurry.) She doesn’t think she could ever get tired of seeing Maria’s reactions, of seeing the little cracks under such a stoic visage. She’s sure she imagines a tint to her cheeks sometimes (surely the Assistant Director wouldn’t blush from something as simple as the leading remarks Natasha throws out like candy) but it makes her smile all the same. Secret and alone in her quarters, of course. (The Black widow doesn’t smile. The Black Widow doesn’t have crushes.)
Maria doesn’t really have a response anymore, and she returns to the task at hand before she can lose herself in the warmth of Natasha’s smirk, or the miraculous glimmer of her eyes, even in this state. (Things she’s memorised enough to get lost in even with Natasha oceans away.) She tips the bottle before placing it to the side and this time she doesn’t hesitate when she places her free hand on Natasha’s side. She steadies her where her ribs meet her waist, her palm spread wide over warm skin, and she feels the way Natasha flinches, deep and instinctual despite the way she suppresses it.
“‘M sorry,” she mutters again, soft, and her hand moves minutely lower, as if that might help somehow. (She doesn’t know why she doesn’t consider removing her hand altogether, like the contact is as important as the disinfecting itself.)
Natasha wishes she could explain, wishes she had the bravery in her heart to tell her that it’s okay. She doesn’t have to apologise, she doesn’t have to be hesitant and gentle and careful. She wishes she had the courage to ask for more. She hates herself for wanting to. Instead, she sits perfectly still, tells herself not to tremble when the cloth is cold against her broken skin and Maria’s hand stays perfectly solid at her side. She’s never had something soothe her quite as efficiently as it drives her insane.
Every few seconds, Maria pauses her methodical wiping to dig out one thing or another, balancing it delicately on the edge of the sink until there is a small pile of gravel and dirt that had previously found a home in Natasha’s back, and she watches her face as closely as she can with the light behind her. It burns at her eyes, and she blinks back tears as it washes out the edges of Maria’s image. The warm tone of it sits almost halo-like around her head, illuminating her hair into a hazy, secret brown and revealing the delicate scattering of lighter hairs amidst it all. Even as she frowns, her eyebrows drawn together in concentration and seemingly oblivious to the way Natasha stares, she’s beautiful.
Natasha’s job is to notice things, to look for details that others miss, and she doesn’t think there is a single atom of Maria’s being that she couldn’t recall. (She thinks, sometimes, that she’s memorised her so thoroughly that she could almost recreate her in the dark. For every sleepless night, for every hopeless morning, something solid and holdable.)
She blinks, long and heavy, and her head spins as Maria’s fingertips drag not even a centimetre upwards. It feels like it means something, even in such a minute gesture. She’s certain she’s projecting, or that she’s simply starting to outright imagine things, and suddenly the heaviness of her head is unavoidable.
Surely, if she can’t see her, then her imagination can’t run away with the image. If she can’t see her, then she can’t hurt her. (She can’t hurt herself.) She’s tired, weighingly so, but she won’t sleep, not yet, not until she’s alone and safe in her quarters. (Not until she can pretend Maria is there with her, an apparition that can’t run away.)
She’ll close her eyes, and she isn’t running – she isn’t. She’ll close her traitorous, roaming, hopeful eyes, for Maria’s sake as much as hers. (In this life, your claws grow long, and claws aren’t made to love. Claws are made for breaking.)
Maria swears she can feel it, her attention drawn with the disappearance of that sort of inexplicable heat Natasha’s gaze elicits under her skin. Her hands don’t stop this time, her eyes flicking up and back as if she isn’t supposed to look, like staring might make Natasha open her eyes and bolt.
She smiles, feels it tug at her cheeks and doesn’t bother to bury it in this new found privacy. She wonders just how tired she must be to willingly offer herself up, back turned, eyes closed, and let herself be tended to. Frankly, she wonders how she got into this situation in the first place, and the warmth in her fingertips seems to flare as her mind runs away with reasons. (It’s all self projection, she’s sure. The Black Widow doesn’t have crushes.) (Maria Hill wasn’t supposed to either.)
Self control may be her strong suit, and she’s proved that to herself more today than any other lately, but Maria doesn’t stop the accidental drag of her knuckles here and there. Careful enough not to hurt, calculated in where they brush so they only hit smooth, healthy skin, but irregular enough that maybe, if she’s lucky, Natasha won’t catch the indulgence behind each lingering stroke of disinfectant.
The lid is replaced on the bottle, screwed tight and double checked before it’s replaced in the magic box, and by the time the cloth is placed in the sink to be rinsed later, Natasha’s eyes are still resolutely closed. For a long moment, Maria waits, listens to her breathing in case she’s fallen asleep in the end despite the frost-and-fire sting of antiseptic. It’s much steadier than before, though there is still a slight wheeze, and Maria rules that Natasha is very much awake, even if she refuses to look at her. (One hand says, she trusts you enough to let you do all of this. The other says, she can’t even look at you. This is a coping mechanism.) (She doesn’t realise that both are correct.)
She must be a selfish woman, she thinks to herself. She must be the most selfish woman in the whole wide world, she tells herself, her hands itching in her lap as she continues to just stare like some love struck idiot. She wants to touch her again. She wants to press her hands to the cut planes of her back, carved in the hard-soft bathroom light.
Natasha can feel the tension in the air, a physical smog that settles into her lungs and threatens another coughing fit. She can’t bring herself to open her eyes, can’t bring herself to look at Maria again now that she’s clean and calm and cared for. She doesn’t know how to offer her gratitude, doesn’t know how to express anything as deeply as she feels. (She can offer herself, the only thing she has left that is hers. But Maria isn’t like that. She’s never going to be like that.)
She needs to say something, and she’s about to crack open an eye, make some snide remark about ‘falling asleep over here,’ but Maria’s hands reach out first.
She hides her shiver this time, some iron strength inside of her keeping her perfectly still, perfectly relaxed. Yet, somehow, Maria’s hands still hesitate, the earlier sense of purpose entirely washed out until they dance about her spine, feather light and ticklish. She twitches, an involuntary little movement, and Maria’s fingertips press a little more solidly as they drag over unmarred skin, their question has been answered and an apology in their movements even as the silence hangs heavy in the air.
They move lower along her spine, fan out along the grain of her muscles, and Natasha tries not to tremble. Her fingers are solvent-cold, her palms a little warmer when they finally splay out over the bottom of her ribs. It’s soothing, in an electrifying way. It sends shivers down her spine, the haziness in her skull growing heavier by the moment even as her heart beats so hard, so hummingbird fast, that she’s certain Maria can feel it.
She doesn’t open her eyes. She’ll be a coward. Just for today. Just right now.
Natasha’s muscles are drawn tight, every coiled moment in the shadows settling in over the years until Maria wonders if she’s found someone whose shoulders would be as stiff as hers. She digs her thumbs into her lats, just gently at first, and she can almost pretend that this was always her intention. (It’s harder to pretend that this is still a simple favour from commander to agent.)
The pressure hitches in Natasha’s breath, held for a split second before it’s set free in a sigh so deep Maria feels it in her own chest. Her thumbs dig in harder, and she makes her way out from her spine, unravelling knots in steady little circles until her own hands hurt, never quite recovering after all of these years. She doesn’t stop, even when she’s sure she’ll regret it in the morning, not when Natasha’s breathing is deeper than it has been since Maria found her in that chair (since Natasha dragged herself, only half conscious, to the one place she knew she would be). (She knows she’d never regret it really, deep down, not if it’s Natasha.)
She works her way across, ignoring the dragging ache, until her fingertips brush the edge of Natasha’s stomach. A soft contrast to the set-hard muscles of her back – something so incredibly human that Maria is struck with just how intimately familiar they are with death. The Black Widow, as capable as she is feared, yet human. Human and small and scared of being close, yet brave enough to indulge Maria’s careful touches.
Brave enough, that her back is turned and her eyes are closed and her breathing is almost sleep-slow. Brave enough that Maria can almost convince herself that it isn’t bravery at all, that maybe, somehow, somewhere along the turmoil of their lives, Natasha wants this too. She can almost pretend that Natasha has been waiting for Maria to reach out for her for as long as Maria has been wanting to reach out. She’s sure she can feel it, something in the trembling of Natasha’s muscles that doesn’t scream fear in the visceral sense that it should right now, with Maria’s hands on her and the silence of the room. It lets her hands wander, lets her be stupid and rash. (And brave, brave, brave.)
Her hands come back around to lay wide over her back, pressing flat and soaking up the life running through her. The warmth of her skin, the movement of her breathing, definitive proof that Natasha is alive. (That Natasha came back for her.)
Her eyes screw tight, still a coward as Maria’s hands come to pause, and her throat ties itself up with all of the things she wants to say. (She should leave. She should run out of this room for both of their sakes.) (She wants to stay. She wants more.)
“Maria…” is all she manages, strangled and pathetic to her own ears.
Her eyes finally manage to prise themselves open, and she knows that they’ll shine like she’s crying (knows she’s only not by sheer will power) but she can’t bring herself to care when it’s Maria.
“Natasha,” Maria replies, half statement, half question. Her hands retreat but it isn’t jerky and panicked like before.
Her eyes stay on hers, searching in a gentle way, so different from the cool observation Natasha sees anywhere else. (Something just for her.) It feels far too intimate. It feels like Maria is looking directly into her soul, feels like she might see too deep, into the spaces Natasha herself refuses to acknowledge. She doesn’t close her eyes again. She doesn’t look away.
“Thank you,” she says eventually. And it could mean anything. Maria could take it any way. (It’s a cop out, really. She’s still a coward at heart.)
Maria’s lips quirk, just so. It’s not quite a smile, not like Natasha has seen on rare nights in her office, but it’s more than most see in their lifetime. “You were bleeding half to death, Natasha. What sort of Commander would I be?”
“No. For–” Her eyes dance around her features, oceans too great to bear in cool, understanding blue. They crash over her in solid waves, knocking her back until she’s too unsteady to remember why she ever put up walls in the first place, and she finds small solace in the familiarity of the details of her face, each little line and freckle.
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Their whole relationship has been a careful, painfully self-aware dance of avoidance and yearning, never quite certain if the other is aware of its presence in their own mind. It’s an admittance in its own right. One that fills in the silence of the room and screams things louder than Natasha ever could with her own words.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Maria says, simple and yet so, so much more.
Natasha’s eyes flit back to hers, shinier and glinting until she can feel her emotions brim to spilling. (Maria’s ocean a part of her, something deep and hidden and only hers.)
“I didn’t–” she continues, filling in the silence for Natasha, just this once. “There was a moment, today–” and she can’t bring herself to say it, can’t bring herself to actualise the dangers of their job in spoken word, how Natasha can never truly be hers, even if the fates allow. “I’m glad you’re back,” she settles on again, and it means everything in the world.
Then, Natasha is turning in her seat, biting back a hiss at the tug on her ribs, the fire it raises in her lungs. She’s twisting and moving until she can reach out for Maria with her own hands, reaching out with pure intentions and soft hands for the first time since she was six and still innocent, innocent, innocent.
She’s reaching out and Maria’s hands meet her halfway when she half collapses into her, pathetic and emotional and weak. She buries her face into her neck, hiding like a child but unable to bear letting go for a moment longer, and her tears soak into Maria’s shirt until she’s sure she can feel it and she isn’t really hiding at all. (She’s pathetic, she thinks, but maybe, right here, she’s allowed to be.)
Her weight is in Maria’s arms suddenly, pitching forwards and her leg failing, and Maria’s chair is shunted to the side to let them slide down to the floor. Natasha’s hands fist in Maria’s uniform, thick and uncomfortable, but her face burrows in deeper and Maria’s heart breaks and skips at the same time. Her hands splay over her back again, but this time they hold her close, pull her in tight against her on the floor of her bathroom until she can bury her own face into hair that smells like smoke and gunpowder.
“It’s okay,” she says, pressed to her head in something that isn’t quite a kiss but they both wish was. “You’re here. We’re here.”
Natasha is sat in her lap, clinging onto her like a child woken from a nightmare, and Maria thinks she must be the most selfish person in the world for the warmth she feels from it, for the fire it sets in her chest. (A part of them in each other, she thinks.) Her hands trace soothing strokes, careful not to stray too high.
Natasha settles a little, takes her time to sort her breathing, pushes down the guilt that rises thick in her throat. Her ribs are fire bright and her thigh is probably seeping into Maria’s uniform from the movement but she can hardly bring herself to raise her head from her shoulder, the lights too bright and the fogginess too thick.
“I’m sorry.” She rubs her eyes, her shoulders still objecting. “You shouldn’t have to– I know you don’t–” She barely manages to stop her own hands from fluttering, a vague gesture towards Maria as a whole and her arms still burn with it.
Maria’s hands appear around hers, cool and grounding in their gentle certainty. “It’s okay. It’s… nice – when it’s you. I don’t mind.”
Her eyes are so big, so wide and disbelieving, and it hits Maria that Natasha has never caught on, that neither of them have ever had the gall to see past themselves.
“When it’s you,” Natasha echoes, her hands squeezing Maria’s just barely. (Even wolves have gentle teeth.)
Her eyes droop again, her head threatening to drop with each breath, and Maria’s mouth tugs into a lazy sort of smile. The same wonky little almost-smirk that Natasha thinks herself lucky to see every late night that she teases it out of her with stupid comments and awful jokes. The same handsome quirk of her lips that Natasha has played over and over and over in the lonely morning of a nightmare.
“Go to bed,” she says, and Natasha almost whines at the idea of finding her way back to her quarters. (She’s never getting mortally injured again, she tells herself.) Maria’s smirk only spreads, just for a flash, almost a laugh. The pity in her eyes is infinitely more like understanding. “My bed, if you like.”
Her eyes widen, the lights spinning bright, and her hands tighten in hers for balance. Her lips part but her words crowd on her tongue and catch on her teeth until all that comes out is a blink and Maria is blinking back in realisation.
“Oh, God, no. I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m not asking for that, Natasha.” And she can’t tell if she’s thankful or disappointed. A step too far and yet not far enough.
She nods instead. “Thank you.” It’s an admittance in itself, and the meaning isn’t lost on Maria.
She smiles, more genuine than she has all week. “Of course.”
She definitely can’t tell herself that this is simply a favour from a commander to her agent anymore, but she isn’t sure it has to be like that anymore either. It’s a step too far, something she’ll never be able to go back on, but it feels like a step in the right direction. It feels like the start of something much, much better.
She takes Natasha’s hands a little more firmly. “Come on then.”