Work Text:
She seeks you out after everything’s over.
You don’t even notice her, as engrossed as you are in your work, until she pokes you, hard, in the back.
“Brucel.”
“What do you want, Romnov?” You’re definitely exasperated, and it sets her on edge. (Perhaps you shouldn’t have scared her planetside, before everything.) But you’re determined to be civil, with her especially.
She brings you close to snapping far too often.
“You know, I really hate you,” she says, and well you didn’t see that coming.
“What?”
“I hate that you gave yourself something I could never have,” Nataya says slowly, like she’s working it out for herself. “I hate that you try to hide it, that you act so meek and unassuming. I hate that you could do almost anything with it--you could fight the empire, shape the empire, fuck the empire for all the say it has--and instead you hide in a rustblood colony and treat maroons stupid enough to get the plague.
“I hate that you could do even better than me and you you don’t even try. I hate that you couch it all in stupid language. I hate that nothing that’s gotten me as far as it has can do anything to ‘the other guy.’” She’s on a roll, sarcasm and anger flowing and it floors you. (You’re not sure whether you like it or not, not yet.)
“And you know what I hate the most, Brucel? I hate that I can’t have you.”
The last is almost a sob as she buries her face in your chest, fists hitting your side in weak punches.
You make a little confused noise and she mutters, “don’ want your pity.”
That’s the last straw. Hate crawls up out of your collapsing and expanding vascular system, caliginous and reckless and long-starved and overpowering.
“You know what?” your mouth is saying, before your think pan can get in control. “Fuck you, Nataya. Fuck you for assuming I would ever pity you.”
She looks at you now, pout turning into a scowl on a teal-tinted face. “Well you know what? Fuck you for assuming you couldn’t have a kismesis. You’re just not trying.”
“Not trying? I’d like to see you try.”
She smiles, predatory, like she’s just gotten exactly what she wants, and ooh, that really bothers you. She nips you on the nose, just enough to draw blood, and pulls you by the lapels into a deliciously torrid kiss.
Teeth may or may not have been involved.