Let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised;

[grimvisaged]

She's good.

This had been the sum total of his report on Natalia Romanova, teenage prodigy and assassin-in-training. From anyone else it was a scant accounting, but from him, notoriously skilled and still taciturn, those two words contained volumes.

In truth, Romanova was better than he'd anticipated. She was far from the first student he'd had, but she'd been the first to come close to holding her own. When playtime had finished and he'd stopped pulling punches, she'd refused to back down. He'd given her bruises for her trouble, but she'd earned his respect—Something none of the others had managed.

Also unlike all the others, he found himself actually looking forward to their sessions together.

Today, he was waiting for her in the rafters. Cloaked in shadow and perfectly still, he kept a sharp eye on the door and his muscles poised to spring.

Comments

[regimes_fall]

She doesn't know his name, but she carries his bruises. He isn't merciful or talkative or especially kind, but Natalia wouldn't know what to do with any of those things if they were offered to her. What he was was something she understood, something she aspired to be, something she would allow him to chisel out of her for the sake of knowing no greater want than that of being the very best. Of being like him.

He is silent, always. There are no lectures in her lesson, no allowance for questions. He shows her the way with his body, the leading of which is something she would have to assume would be close to dance, if she'd ever done anything such as that, except far more brutal. It hurts, but it never breaks her, and she knows instinctively that it is his choice not to do so. She can look down at her nude body and map where he's been in a kaleidoscope of purple and blue and sickly green, but she is getting better, and that is all she is truly concerned with.

Natalia Romanova is changing shape, from girl to agent to weapon, and he is the maestro of her change. She knows nothing of him, and as she steps into the shadowed room and immediately turns her eyes to the darkness to look for the glint of metal, she thinks of the little, shallow facts she has collected.

He is young, mid-late twenties at most, with a stern face and soft, ethereal blue eyes. 'Beauty' was a word she had a basic working knowledge of, but he was the first person she'd ever looked at and thought the word may very well apply. It was a stupid, weak thing, but the more she attempted to shove the thought from her mind, the more it took roots and grew. She'd began to notice that their bodies had fit together in surprising moments of clarity, become utterly aware of the moments when he offered her the warmth of his flesh and blood hand to help her up instead of the brutality and coldness of the metal. To show such things would mean her certain death, but her feelings, so surprising and genuine in nature, she could do no other than hoard like a chest of gold.

Even that much was stupid, and she realizes that she's entered the room unprepared, far more interested in thinking of or looking at him than bracing herself for what she knew had to come. There was a noise, but the acoustics of the room were tricky at best, and she braced herself for the attack, knowing it was to come, but unsure as to how he would spring it upon her.

[grimvisaged]

When he swings down, the motion is swift and silent and carrying instant retribution—She ought to have known better than to waltz in as she had, does know better. This he he's certain of because he's trained her with his own two hands: hot flesh and cold metal in turns, and neither knowing anything about tenderness.

If the scent of her shampoo lingers on his skin and clothes for hours after each session, he hasn't noticed. How could he? He's a machine, and not made for sentiment.

If he now wraps his right arm instead of his left across her unsuspecting throat from behind, if he hesitates in the moment he has her pulled flush against the muscled lines of his body, it's only to see what she'll do. Nothing more.

[regimes_fall]

There is a single, beautiful second of warmth and firm muscle against her back, and then she is twisting the lower half of her body to change her stance and using the natural give of flesh and her own speed to duck and drag her head from his hold. It would've been impossible had he used his other arm, but if his actions are a form of mercy, she does not think about it. In the moments of battle, she does not think of anything.

Had they met any other way she would not have known how to approach him and embrace him of her own volition, as she has not been taught physical intimacy that did not come with an ulterior motive. What she does know is how to fight and she throws herself into it, twisting behind him to lessen her vulnerability and seek to give herself the upper hand, if only momentarily.

When she wraps her arms around his neck, it is only to apply the appropriate pressure to his wind pipe and see him weakened. When she hooks her knees at his sides, it is only after she's paused in her climbing up his body to kick at the backs of his knees and take him halfway to the floor. She pulls her arms as tight as possible beneath his chin to limit the movement of his head and breathes in as his hair brushes her face, the scent of him earthy and clean and warm. He is all she can feel, all she can smell, and her body is warmed by the press of his. Combat and training are her regular forms of intimacy, but she becomes aware, and not for the first time, that the feel of him is something akin to pleasure.

[grimvisaged]

Had he a history that allowed for reflection, had he understood art or beauty beyond rudimentary, grudging appreciation, he might have fancied himself Pygmalion, might have seen her as the exquisite result of months crafting a vision from clay. The machine has no room for ego, however, and even less for admiration, and as she deftly uses his split second of reticence against him, beyond the first flash of self-condemnation he only recognizes her uncanny skill, bringing with it a quiet but undeniable sort of pride. She isn't perfect, but someday soon, she will be close.

He could continue this struggle favoring his right arm, but he has no sympathy for the statistics which say she'll likely never again encounter someone like himself. They are training to be unparalleled.

Mouth open, breath laboring past the crushing grip across his throat, he reaches his left hand over his shoulder, calmly grasps hold of the back of her shirt and throws her skidding across the polished hardwood floor. He coughs once and tilts his head to crack his neck as he watches her recover, but otherwise gives no indication that her attack had been well-placed.

He might have just as easily reached for her arm, might have broken it or dislocated her shoulder as a sharp lesson. But then the session would have been over.

Absently shaking the hair from blue eyes fixed upon her, he stalks forward.

[regimes_fall]

The word was a kaleidoscope of color as she spun through the air, tossed aside like a ragdoll at the force of that unforgiving, unearthly arm. She spun, attempted to land in such a way that would leave her in a defensive crouch, but he was too strong and had thrown her too far. She landed half on her ass mid-roll, the act of which would no doubt leave her with a bruised tail bone come the morning, but that was a thing she could recover from and she pushed the pain far to the back of her mind as she had been trained to do from an age so young she can hardly remember what the indulgence of pain-induced tears felt like. She finished her slide across the floor on one knee, one hand dropping to the ground to brace herself and her opposite foot kicking out to slow her skid before she slammed into the opposite wall. That he could’ve thrown her through said wall, had he chosen to, she had no doubt.

Her breath came faster as she watched him stride toward her, her muscles tensing in preparation to spring the moment he was in the position she wanted him. She would never be the brute instrument that he was, had been made too small and too soft to ever hope to overpower him or take him with her bare hands alone. She knew, because he had shown her over the course of several bruising, harrowing training sessions that her only hope was to be both smarter and faster than him. The problem being, of course, that she was neither of those things. Not yet.

She ran toward him to build momentum, anticipating a hand that lifted and gripping it by the wrist instead, using that single leverage point to project the lower half herself nimbly into the air and lock her legs around his neck. She flipped herself toward the ground, her legs still locked around his neck, in a move designed to take him to the floor with her. Had he been anyone else she might’ve hoped to choke him that way, but she knew that once on the ground she would have to get her legs swiftly out of the reach of his hands unless she wanted a repeat of being thrown across the room, or perhaps even something more brutal than that.

She hit the ground and attempted to roll, and while she had near mastered the move she’d just attempted on him, she was not yet perfect. Her legs tangled, twisted, and instead of leaping to her feet to attempt another attack in the split second she had him on the ground, she was left attempting to scramble away in a half crawl.

[grimvisaged]

The moment she angles him toward the ground, he becomes a creature built entirely of instinct. It is not thought which locks cold fingers over a straggling ankle, it is ruthless muscle memory. If he is perfectly calm as he pulls her struggling back across the floor, it is not sympathy which sets his pace but surety instead.

Reticent in general, he never speaks during these sessions, and does not now tell her where her attack had gone wrong. When he looms over her, pinning her neatly beneath him, the implication is clear enough: He's much heavier, much stronger, and her advantage is now entirely lost.

His hair hangs in a dark curtain around his face as he watches her: The defiant jut of her chin, the spark in her eyes that refuses to accept defeat. Shaken from his narrow focus, it occurs to him not for the first time how alike they are.

Without thinking, his gaze drops to the firm set of her mouth.

[regimes_fall]

She struggles as much as she can to get away once she feels the grip of his hand around her ankle, but knows it is useless even before she's dragged under the weight of his body and pinned. She waits for the reprimand for her error, the sort that will be wordless and admittedly deserved, but it does not come. Instead she finds him simply looking at her, and her stomach dips and warms in a way that is entirely foreign to her.

His distraction would prove the perfect opportunity to get away if she had even the slightest interest in doing so, and she realizes as she gazes back up into his face that she hasn't even a bit of an urge to do that. It is another one of those moments in which their bodies have fit together in a way she notices, but instead of being a split second that she pours over later when she's alone, it stretches out and takes on an almost surreal, dream-like quality.

It does not feel like her hand that reaches for him, that lifts until she can slip her fingers gently into the dark cloud of his hair and push it away from his face on one side to tuck behind his ear. His hair is soft and feels clean, his eyes wide set and blue, his bone structure immaculate. In that moment, his beauty feels singular to her young, foolish heart, and she believes she is never going to encounter anything quite like it again as she slips her hand from his hair to trail fingertips down the scruffy, square shape of his jaw towards his mouth.

Beneath him her legs shift in a way that is only instinct, bending at the knee and lifting on either side of his hips to cradle him there. She is aware on some level that this could also be an attack, but cares little to stop it.

[grimvisaged]

He does not remember the training that crafted him from man into finely-honed weapon, but the understanding has always been there. There are no details, but he is aware that it happened, foggy impressions which coalesce in the sharp confidence of his movements. The instinct which drives him now he has no memory of nor name for, singular in its strangeness, his head turning to press a kiss to the palm of her roaming hand with an ease which belies his certainty that he has never done anything like this before. He lets out a breath against her salty skin, his eyes falling closed, and hitches up her left leg so that he is notched more neatly between her warm thighs.

This could be a diversion, a ploy; she's had the training and it would make strategic sense. Could be, but when he turns his head back, he sees himself reflected in her bright and wondrous eyes and knows that it isn't. He moves without thought or even full cognizance of his actions, a weapon now turned on itself, and crushes a fierce kiss to her mouth, left hand splayed beside her head as the right lifts her by the back of the neck to meet him.

[regimes_fall]

The warm press of his mouth against her palm brings her back to sharp reality, and she becomes suddenly, achingly aware of how real it all is. There is a faint thought to the consequences, fleeting and easily dismissed despite how utterly aware she is that she is never allowed anything that feels this good, anything that feels as right as his mouth on her skin without paying for it in some way or another. It all matters so little next to the press of him between her thighs, the grip of his hand on her leg as he hitches it higher and presses tighter against her, an action that has her moaning softly and without artifice. He is not the first man to fit himself between her thighs, but he is surely the first she’s welcomed there of her own volition. Desire has never been anything more than a feigned tactic, but in that moment the overwhelming reality of what she wants from him is almost more than she can take.

She goes eagerly into the kiss, unable to help herself any more than he is, and moans yet again when his lips part and she is able to taste him. Her hands slip up to fist in his hair, her free leg lifts to wrap around the backs of his thighs and anchor herself as her hips roll up against his, and she shudders against him at even that much friction. She doesn’t know his true name, so she does not moan it against his lips. Instead she breaks the kiss just long enough to suck longingly at his bottom lip and whisper, “please.”

[grimvisaged]

It's only one world, and yet it shatters him utterly. Like an electric jolt, it sears its way beneath his skin, sharp and hot, and hitches his breath against the imploring press of her mouth. If there had been a moment when he might have stopped this, might have thought better of the impulse, it's far beyond him now. There is nothing but her, the world narrowed down to that softly whispered plea and the months of tension behind it.

He rips the band of her pants in his haste to drag them over her hips, not the first time he's damaged her clothing but the first time he's been so careless. He reaches between them with his left hand and then stops, cool metal fingertips skimming against the exposed skin of her abdomen as he drags his hand free again and then reaches between her thighs with the right.

This, he wants to feel. This, he wants to remember.

[regimes_fall]

The urgency in him is contagious, leaving her gasping for breath as she arches and shifts in a wild attempt to help him rid her of her pants. She cares nothing for the sound of ripping fabric, cares nothing for anything other than finally having his touch where she needs it most, where she is rapidly growing so wet she might've almost been embarrassed, had she the brain power to formulate any thoughts beyond how badly she wanted him just then.

She makes a low, keening noise against his mouth when he switches hands so that the soft, deft, heat of his fingers are what slips between her thighs instead of the cool metal of his his left hand. The contrast in his touch is incendiary, maddening, and she simultaneously longs for both of his hands everywhere, and thinks she may die if he were to ever stop what he was doing between her thighs.

She does not have his strength, so when she abandons his hair to slip her hands between them and to the fly of his pants, she makes quick work of the zipper, pushing at the fabric until it is down far enough that she can take him in her hand and stroke, biting at her bottom lip as he hardens further in her palm.

[grimvisaged]

The sound he makes is low but raw, and unnatural–The vulnerability that threads through it is in complete odds with everything he is, everything he ought to be in this situation. He's trembling, and it's for reasons far beyond the firm stroke of her fingers. He can't remember ever having trembled before, not even from the cold.

She's warm and wet where he parts her with his fingers, the scent of her like a drug. He cannot think for the sound of his heartbeat roaring in his ears. He cannot see anything but her face, tilted back as she writhes, her long, pale neck stretched out in such invitation that he finds himself kissing it, more tenderly than he might have imagined, his breath stuttering against her warm skin.

Distinctly, he's aware of the clamoring need to slink down between her spread thighs, to taste her and watch as she comes undone, but his body is too far ahead of him and too far gone. Before he's entirely aware of what he's doing he's already done it, pulling her fingers away so that he can slide neatly past her slick resistance to the hilt, the breath catching hard in his throat.

[regimes_fall]

She has been made witness to the power of him, the brutality. She has learned at his hands and through his silence what sort of creature he has been trained to be and has become the clay in which he can make a tribute of himself. She knew so little of him before then, knew so little of him still, and yet she knows when she feels him tremble above her as she strokes him with his own wetness as it eases from the tip that this is not his usual standard of training. Knows that what is happening between them is real and rare and all the more apocalyptic for that fact.

She knows that she could very well die for the honesty and intensity of what he makes her feel, and when he nudges her hand out of the way in order to be able to shift forward and sink inside her, she also knows would be more than happy to do so.

She gasps, her neck and back arching in tandem and her knees falling open in supplication in the moment it takes him to fill her, her hands gripping the material of his shirt as though she needs a point of gravity in which to keep herself tethered to the Earth. She turns her face into his hair where it has swept down over his face, mindlessly rooting through it until she finds the lobe of his ear and suck it between her lips.

[grimvisaged]

Memories of having done this before have all been stripped from him, but his body knows this business as well as the neat efficiency of killing. It carries him forward even as his mind stutters and shifts, hips finding a smooth rhythm, one broadly-splayed hand hitching her forward even as she rises breathlessly to meet him. She is so soft, so pliant, and so yet recklessly demanding, her fingers grasping hard against fabric and skin, her breath hissing hot and urgent into his ear as if he had any choice but to oblige her. He knows little of religion but thinks, wildly, that were she a temple he would worship within her everyday.

Skilled though his body may be, he recognizes quickly enough that it has been far too long since he has done this with anyone at all, much less someone so keenly attuned, so desperate and eager, and he gasps despite himself, a hard, strained sound into the tangle of her hair as he struggles to master his own control. He reaches between them again with his right hand, fingers gone graceless but finding their target easily enough, slipping hastily against slick flesh and then faltering as fingertips alight on the place where he's pushing inside of her, where they two are joined.

The sound he makes is primal, a roughly straining whimper that wrenches from his throat as he drives more deeply within her, rocking them both against the unforgiving floor. Left hand braced so that he can push up and look at her, he grasps desperately onto the final thread of his rapidly-fraying control and finds her mouth again with his own.

[regimes_fall]

Her teeth catch at his skin, her fingers curling at his back to graze him with her nails because not even then, not even when she was surrounded by more warmth and want than she’s ever known in the whole of her remembered life does she know how to be truly gentle. She wants to mark him with her teeth, wants to suck at his skin until the salt of it lingers inside her mouth, wants to feel his panted breaths and rough noises beneath her lips because they are hers to take, to love, and that seems very important.

She has been raised almost a wolf, and the little she knows of love narrows down to a wispy memory of a pretty woman with red hair that fed her warm milk and sang her songs at night and now this – this act of love, which seems to have so very little to do with the emotion itself. Love to Natalia has always been an exploitable point of weakness, a snug little underbelly in which her knife will always find its home. But now, now she understands, even if her understanding is only rudimentary at best. She is going half mad for this, for him. She will do it again and again and again if she can and will think nothing of the consequences as long as it meant she can have more of this. Death, in that moment, seems but a small price to pay.

When his fingers shifted down between them and over her, she jerks and shudders beneath him with no slow build up, no crescendo. She comes hard and takes his mouth as he covers hers, her tongue slipping along his teeth to mute her own cries as she shivers and clenches at him, her legs rising from the floor instinctively to lock around him and hold him deep inside her. When he comes, she wants to feel it inside her. That seems important, too.

[grimvisaged]

Her climax is as insistent as every other part of her; an unrelenting, chaotic wave of tightly gripped fingers and legs, commanding that he be pulled under with her. There is nothing for him to do but oblige: a supplicant falling to his knees in benediction, his muscles stiff and quaking, hips gone hopelessly erratic.

"Natalia," he says, the softest rasp against the pillow of her lips as he tumbles headlong into orgasm. It is the first time he has said her name aloud.

He collapses atop her a moment later, still held firm by the lock of her legs, aware only enough to keep himself from resting the full of his weight on her panting, shivering body.

He is still inside of her. He wants to stay there forever.

[regimes_fall]

She is caught in a net, twisting and tangling and catching fire for all that she is equally as undone. She clings to him instead of fighting for freedom or demanding space. Shudders against him when the first word she's ever heard him speak is the breathy murmur of her true name against his lips, her legs tightening around his thighs to hold that intimacy inside her, to relish the heat and wetness of the point where their bodies have fit together, even though she knows he will break from her all too soon.

She kisses his mouth far softer than any touch that's been exchanged between them up until that point, the kiss which should've been the first instead of the breathy aftermath if either of them had been the sort of people who had the heart for slow romancing. She moves her fingers to smooth his hair away from his face on both sides, wanting to drink in the features of his face, needing burn them into her brain so that she never forgets this moment and how he has made her feel.

"I don't want this to end," she says, giving him honesty when she cannot give him the intimacy of speaking his real name.

[grimvisaged]

He becomes cognizant of their surroundings in stages, the tangibility of her voice the first nudge into awareness. For a moment, however slim, he had fallen so recklessly into her that he'd failed to think of anything else. Now, the reality is creeping steadily back, bleeding into that brief, crystalline fantasy.

She knows as well as he does that this is an intolerable slip from their programming. He can hear the weight of it in her voice.

He looks at her, at the bright flush in her cheeks and the careless tangle of her hair, his own breath slowing where it pants against her lips. He looks at her and feels the new rift in himself widen, a hairline fracture pushed apart by the easy warmth of her body. Suddenly, he is at war with himself, and that alone is alarming for all that it implies.

He looks at her, and knows that they will not hesitate to kill her regardless of how good she is.

Wordless, he pulls away from her with gentle efficiency, tucking himself away and adjusting his clothing. He cannot look at her, his resolve already tenuous, and he is silent he strides to the door.