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“They way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”
— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Ava doesn’t want to need him, is the thing. She doesn’t want to need him to pin her down, doesn’t want to need his hands holding her fragments together. There’s something cosmically unfair in the fact it’s him—John Walker—who’s the only one that can anchor her, make her feel solid and real. There’s something that digs under her skin knowing that his hands, his weight on her are what are holding all her pieces together and keeping her from melting into thin air.
She isn’t sure why he’s the one to do it, supposes it might have something to do with his super-enhanced strength. Whatever the case may be, Walker’s hands are warm on her body, his solid bulk pinning her against a trembling support beam to keep her from splitting apart in the middle of a critical mission.
Ava curls gloved fingers in the thick sleeves of his suit. He lost his beret at some point earlier; his sandy blond hair is stained red with blood, though she doesn’t think it’s his. When she tastes copper on her tongue, she realizes it’s hers.
She lifts a hand and her damaged mask falls away from her face. The cool night air slaps against her cheeks, instantly drying the sweat and blood on her flushed skin. Walker’s eyes scan her face, pause to linger on her mouth for a moment before he lets go of her hip and reaches to thumb blood away from her cheek.
“No—” Ava lets out a pained gasp, gloved fingers scrabbling at his suit. She can feel her insides quaking now that he’s moved a hand from her body. “You. You have to hold me through it. I don’t know what’s happening to me but you have to—”
“Okay,” Walker breathes quietly in the scant space between them, his breath a warm contrast to the cool air that brushes her clammy skin.
Walker firms his grip on her and she can feel the coiled power in the way he holds onto her, strong enough to hold her together but still tightly reined in. Like he’s afraid if he holds her how he truly wants to, he might really hurt her.
Ava’s not been dosed with super-serum like he has, but she’s strong too.
“Harder,” she demands, tightening her grip, curling him closer, until his chest brushes against the front of her suit. “You won’t hurt me.”
“Ava,” he says, her name falling past his lips as easy as breathing. She doesn’t let the shock of it show on her face. “I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to—”
“I’m strong,” Ava retorts.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Walker says, palming at her waist. “But I—I’m stronger.”
“I know that,” she grits through a clenched jaw. “But I really need you to ground me right now. And you treating me like I’m fragile isn’t going to keep my molecules from scattering.”
“Oh,” Walker says, softly.
“Oh,” Ava replies, arching her eyebrow at him.
He presses her back into the beam, his big hands viselike on her waist. The shaking inside starts to subside.
“How’s that,” Walker asks, low and husky, right in her ear.
She tries not to think about their proximity or the heat and strength of him that she feels through the layers of their suits.
“Better,” Ava says. “It’s passing.”
“What is it anyway,” he asks.
“I have these episodes sometimes,” she says. “I can control them most of the time, and the suit helps. But sometimes, when I’ve been injured and the suit’s been damaged… Sometimes they sneak up on me.”
“You’re lucky I was with you then,” Walker says, turning his head slightly, lips grazing the shell of her ear.
Ava goes completely still against him. She swears she can feel his heart beating wildly against hers, through the thick, durable material of their suits even though she knows that’s impossible. But, then again, he’s got that super-serum running through his veins; maybe it made everything about his body stronger and harder and—
No, Ava tells herself, firmly. Not going there. Nope.
She quickly banishes the seedling of a thought to the recesses of her brain, imagines packing it up in a box and then burying it a hundred feet underground and then covering the gravesite over with concrete.
Walker tilts his head, a thin line forming between his blond brows. “Your energy just got weird for a second,” he says, slowly, as if the words are just popping out of his mouth without any prior thought behind them. “Like you just went all wobbly.”
Ava bites the inside of her cheek, quick and hard. “Went on the fritz for a second there, but I’m fine now,” she insists, patting Walker on the forearm. “I’m good. You can let go of me now.”
But Walker doesn’t let go of her, doesn’t pull away from her. He’s still way too close to her, chest still pushing against hers with every shallow breath he draws. He drops his head and she hears him take a couple sharp, deep inhales. Ava waits, wondering what he’s going to do next, and realizes she wants him to keep his hands around her waist. Realizes she wants him to lean closer until his nose brushes against her cheek just before she feels his fingers under her chin, tipping her mouth up into a searing, claiming kiss.
Ava blinks, shakes her head a little to dislodge the mental image of Walker’s mouth on hers.
He lifts his head, eyes searching her face for something—but what? Had he been able to sense the sudden left turn her thoughts had taken?
Walker finally leans back, sliding his hands away from her. Ava almost feels bereft without the weight of his body leaning onto hers or the grip of his hands on her hips. She reaches up and pushes a chunk of flyaway hair that had escaped from her sloppy bun behind her ear.
His pale eyes search her face, trace the movement of her hand as it drifts away from her ear. Ava watches his lips part, watches the tip of his tongue dart out and run against the swell of his bottom lip, shiny with spit. Her fingers itch to take him by the back of his neck and pull him into a kiss. Ava curls her hands into fists and presses them against her thighs to keep from reaching for him.
“Let’s regroup,” she says, after a few more minutes of loaded silence pass between them, as thick as molasses. “Rejoin the others. They must be wondering where we’ve gone.”
Walker nods, jerkily, eyes darting away. “Right. Of course.”
He moves away from the beam—away from Ava—and she pushes away from the beam too. She closes her eyes and rolls her neck, letting out a satisfied sigh as her joints crackle. When she opens her eyes, she finds John—Walker, Agent—staring at her fingers where they’ve come to rest at the base of her throat.
Ava lowers her hand and his eyes flicker away, as if he’s embarrassed to be caught staring at her. She tries not to let it sting; they’re teammates, first and foremost. Giving in to base, human impulses during a mission would be disastrous. But she understands the urge to look all too well.
Ava lets her mask slide back on, over her face. Walker’s disappeared into her blind spot, and she finds that she prefers it that way. She knows he’s there, by her side, but she can’t let herself be distracted by him any longer. They have work to do.
As Ava turns and heads for the doors they’d crashed through, she feels Walker’s hand curving over her shoulder. She pauses—a momentary hitch—and glances over her shoulder at him. His deep-set blue eyes are darkened with shadows—or maybe that’s just something she needs to tell herself, because the thought he might actually want her as badly as she wants him scares her a tiny bit.
“We should talk later,” he says, dragging his hand away from her reluctantly, as if it pains him to lose the contact between their bodies even through their suits.
Ava gives him a curt nod, turns back around, and then she’s off.
She doesn’t stop to see if he’s following her. She already knows he is.