Tear into my heart, make me do it again;

[grimvisaged]

The rose itself surprised him less than the name on the note. Not hers, but his own, the one he's coming to share with Barnes a begrudging inch at a time, nudging into a neutral ground. She's the one who pins it upon him—Rogers remains too skittish, too fiercely optimistic to insist upon a name at all—and he accepts the compromise because she bestows it with such surety. He has to have a name, to her, because it's an anchor when her memories fail her as readily as his own. It puts them on equal footing.

The flower he dropped dutifully into a cup filled with water, but the note he neatly folded and slipped into his right pants pocket. Days now he's been carrying it, reaching down to feel the outline of the paper through the fabric. There's so much written between those two lines, so much he is incapable of deciphering. It tugs on him like leash. He thinks, dimly, that perhaps it always was that way with her.

And so he's waiting again, perched dutifully in the far-flung shadows of her room, the note an ember in his pocket as he watches the door.

Comments

[regimes_fall]

Natasha had never particularly associated the color orange with anything. She saw the world in shades of grey and her past in shades of black and white with red all over, but orange had become the color of ghosts as far as she was concerned. She had not looked into the color meaning behind the anonymous rose she’d received as her imagination filling in the blanks with probabilities and hopes and fears was more than enough energy to waste on a flower. What she did know was that it was a gesture greater than she’d known to expect, and that each night since placing it in a vase on the nightstand beside her bed, she’d had shadowed dreams of a chest covered in scar tissue beneath her cheek and the steadiness of a heartbeat beneath. Dreams of a low, scratchy voice speaking Russian into her ear, and the trailing of metal fingertips along her spine that brought her to wakefulness with her heart in her throat and a feeling that had nothing at all to do with fear. It was ridiculous, she told herself. She wasn't even positive the flower was from him, and still she couldn't stop herself from filling in the blanks.

Her own flower had been a gesture that she’d perhaps been too honest in, and as always she wondered if she should regret it. She’d had no idea how to convey to James what she thought or what she felt, how she’d known she’d loved him so much once upon a time and how she thought it might be so easy to fall into that again. What she had known was that she cared very much whether he lived or died and that was a sentiment she both wanted to express, and thought he needed to hear.

The rose had also been an invitation, and when she walked into her room, turned on the light and found he’d accepted, she could not help the flutter of pleasure that took hold of her stomach as she toed off her shoes and dropped her bag on the floor beside the door. “Hey you,” she said, smiling a bit as she padded toward him on bare feet. “I was wondering when I might see you again.”

[grimvisaged]

Within the space of a moment the scene shifts from something shadowy and uncertain to one which is, to him, almost startlingly domestic. The way she smiles and casually shucks off her shoes, the easy way she approaches him as if she weren't simply expecting him, but that this is commonplace. There's a hazy familiarity to it, but he can't be sure if that's coming from some buried part of himself, or simply from endless hours of surveillance.

Hey you, she says, and it sounds so damned normal.

“I got your note,” he says, for lack of anything more eloquent. He doesn't have her natural grace, still fumbles over nuance. It doesn't help that she has the power to disarm him simply by being in the same room.

[regimes_fall]

Her casual approach to finding him in her room for the second time was a conscious decision on her part, but it was in no way forced. It was a wish for the normalcy she portrayed, if anything, pressed into the universe on her smile and casual greeting and sealed with the dropping of her bag and the removal of her shoes. She weakened herself before his very eyes and attempted to tell him without words that she trusted him to do her no harm when she walked toward him on bare feet with her hands nowhere near the knife at the small of her back and her eyes firmly on his. How much she wished this sort of domesticity were the norm for the two of them, and how very aware she was of the fact that it wasn’t.

It didn’t stop her from wanting or wishing, as foolish and inevitable as both of those habits had proven to be where he was concerned.

His words were as succinct as she’d expected, and the sound of them brought her to a stop a few feet from where she sat. She couldn’t help but be aware of how attractive he was then in ways that had nothing to do with the twisting river of deep-seated emotion she felt where he was concerned, and she looked at him for only a second more before she nodded. “I’m glad you did,” she said, taking the remaining steps between them until she was less than a foot away from the jut of his knees. Almost close enough to feel the heat that radiated from him. “I’ve been thinking of you. Worrying about you. I trust you’ve been safe enough?”

[grimvisaged]

He sits forward, elbows bracing on his knees, and tips a glance up at her, his eyebrows skeptically arched. Yes, he’s been safe enough, probably safer than anytime he can remember, although that’s not saying much. He hasn’t been killing anyone lately, at least, and anyone who isn’t Rogers knows better than to try and look for him.

Like this, the deja vu of their last meeting is palpable; he wants to reach out again, to touch her, but he’s too aware of himself this time, and only flexes his left hand where it dangles between his knees. The innate power dynamic, though, he’s happy enough to keep. He doesn’t mind looking up at her.

“You shouldn’t worry,” he says at last, although he gets the inkling that she will regardless. He finds himself worrying, too, now, about far too many things, not the least of all himself.

[regimes_fall]

That close she could measure the length of his lashes, the breadth of his shoulders. That close, she could take a few steps closer, nudge herself between his knees and perch on one of his thighs if she dared. She didn’t, but the instinct to move in close, to tuck herself tight against him and wind her arms around the whole of him was there and waiting to be acknowledged. She wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway.

He told her she shouldn’t worry, and she knew how strong he was, how capable, and yet she also knew that once upon a time someone had told her that he would die, that he would be tortured beyond her imaginings, and she’d believed them. The thought of a world emptied of him had been what they’d used to break her, once. Perhaps more than once. For all she feels those old lessons in the scars of her heart, she can’t stop herself from worrying over and wanting the same old things.

“I don’t think I can stop myself,” she said gently then, thinking on it for only a moment more, took another small step and bent, taking first his right hand in hers, then his left. The rough, warm texture of his right hand was in startling contrast to the smooth, cool metal that absorbed the warmth of her hand easily, but she found she didn’t mind it at all. She didn’t think she ever had. “Come sit with me on my couch,” she said, tugging gently at his hands. “Stay with me a while. Are you hungry?”

[grimvisaged]

Like so much else about this women, the moment had become completely surreal. When, he wonders, had been the last time anyone had been so at ease with him? So calmly confident? He knows, even without a clear memory of the fact, that even the highest-ranking of his handlers, even Pierce, had known better than to be so complacent. Had she been the last? Had she been the only?

She holds his leash with the same confidence she holds his hands; there's nothing for him to do but be led, dazed, to the cushions of her couch.

"No," he answers of being hungry as he sits again, watching her. "We don't have to do this if you need to go eat."

[regimes_fall]

She was aware of the tremulousness of the situation, and still she pressed forward with as much bravery as she could muster, the taste of optimism forever foreign on her tongue. Her fears were many, though none rested in the realm of her being physically harmed at his hands. If he'd wanted that, he could've done it long ago.

Now where they sat on her couch, her boldness tapering off to a drizzle and still leaving her holding both of his hands, her greatest fear was that he might pull away. That somehow, some way, all her tentative progress had been for naught. That as close as she had been, he might still slip through her fingers and into the shadows of her memory.

She liked the feel of his hands in hers. Liked the roughness in textures that indicated the capability that lay within them, to say nothing of his implied complacency in allowing her that small touch. It was too early to tell whether or not it was a victory, but she treasured it nonetheless. Like everything else about him, this proximity to his body felt disastrously, achingly familiar.

"I don't need to eat," she replied, shaking her head. "I just want to talk with you, if you feel like it. If not, I'd be fine just sitting here together if that's what you need." She squeezed both of his hands gently, working her thumb along his knuckles. It was a small touch, and still she felt it all the way to her bones. "I don't want to take too much," she said, quiet enough to be a whisper as her gaze fell to her thumb. "But it feels right, doesn't it?"

[grimvisaged]

What you need. Somehow, despite everything she's endured herself, still she keeps coming back around to what he needs. He wonders when the last time was she honestly considered what she needed.

But then her fingers begin their tender mapping of his hands and her voice goes breathy with everything that rests silent between them, and he realizes that maybe she's done exactly that, and that what she needs is him.

It's obvious enough that he needs her; he wouldn't be here if he didn't.

He wants to answer her, wants to say that taking too much is impossible when it all belongs to her already anyway, but his tongue is heavy and uncertain, and vulnerability is singing through him like electricity. This isn't like with Rogers, though; here, like this, they're both equally raw and equally unused to it.

This is but the tatters of the people they used to be to each other, and for a bright-hot moment he is filled with an unfathomable rage that jerks his gaze from their joined hands to the soft patience of her eyes. A breath huffs out of him as his anger bleeds into something else, and he surges forward to press his mouth hungrily against hers.

[regimes_fall]

She hadn't intended for the moment to become as visceral as it was, but to touch him as she was then, with no other motive or reasoning than she could not help herself, was to fall wholly into his orbit once more. She lifted her gaze to his, seeing the way his eyes, so wide and blue and beautiful she thought she could drown in them, stared stormily back at her. She had not expected that, had not intended it, and still she welcomed it gladly.

It had to be acknowledged at some point, she knew. They could not continue this careful, gentle dance forever, after all. Neither of them were built for it.

She abandoned his hands to twist her fingers in his hair when his lips came crashing down over hers, the first rough taste of him in years causing her to moan into his mouth in familiarity and want. She pushed back at him, not to push him away but instead to get closer, shoving her way into his lap until she sat astride his hips, her mouth still locked against his.

It was all the closeness she'd needed for perhaps longer than she could remember just then, and there fully against his body, with the warmth and the firmness of him pressed to the front of her and between her thighs, she shuddered helplessly. There, with their bodies pressed together and his tongue rich in her mouth, was the first place that truly felt like home to her in years.

[grimvisaged]

She is a storm crashing down upon him, the press of her body abruptly unmooring sensation and memory. Falling into the fray seems natural, predetermined lifetimes ago, and he seizes her as a man long starved, pulling her more tightly against the hard lines of his body as his hips instinctively lift, oblivious to wind's howl of his consciousness in his own ears.

Sharp, ragged pieces of his memory surface, cutting through the blind propulsion of his instinct, and he gasps hard against her lips, one hand twisting into the back of her shirt.

He can see the room. The empty expanse of the polished floor and the broad beams above. He can see her in it, lithe and marking his every move.

He can see her, unguarded and watching him over her bare shoulder.

He can see her, stiff and alert, through the sight of a rifle.

Pulling away, he gasps open-mouthed against the junction of her shoulder and neck, the sound which follows that of a wounded animal, agony and sorrow muffled by the warmth of her skin.

[regimes_fall]

There might've been some tickle of her conscience, some niggling of reason that told her this was too fast, that she should take a step back and breathe and really think about what they were doing there together, but old habits died hard and all the reasoning in the world could not keep her away from him.

The taste of him, the lift of his hips when she'd settled down against him that brought them grinding against each other, the very reality of him, after so long wondering if this chemistry might've been a dream, was too much. She rocked her hips mindlessly back down against his, keening against his lips at the resulting friction that was almost enough, but not quite.

She had no idea what she might've done next, no idea where her body and her instincts would've led her had he not chosen that moment to break the kiss and leave her dazed and gasping, her lips still tingling from the ferocity of his mouth against hers. She breathed fast and shallow, her hands instinctively shifting in his hair to hold his head against her when he pressed his face into the crook of her neck, but it was only at his soft, broken sound that she realized what was happening. What she had done.

She cradled him against her with her arms and her hands, pressing her body tight against his now in an effort to soothe. "Shh, James," she murmured against his ear as she pressed a kiss to the side of his head, one hand stroking over his hair while the other dropped to gently rub between his shoulders. Guilt was a hollow ache in her stomach, but she spoke no words of apology just yet as she held him. "It's all right."

[grimvisaged]

The name slips so easily from his lips, so naturally, that he isn't even aware of having said it. Natalia. Not a call but an echo, memory pushed past his lips and whispered against the soft warmth of her skin.

(He isn't supposed to call her by name. He isn't supposed to call her anything. But he does all the same.)

In his lap, she is memory spun into reality, the most tangible thing he can remember ever knowing. Rogers doesn't count; Rogers is still indistinct, more the wish for recollection than actual recognition. But she, she...

She is a lifeline, a tether. The knife that slices through the fog obscuring his past. She is not gentle, for all that she tries to be; she is the bullet in the gun he presses knowingly to his own forehead.

"Natalia," he says again, a rich but broken sound he presses to the delicate shell of her ear.

[regimes_fall]

Fire split open her insides as he spoke her name, her real name, first so softly she was sure she was mistaken, and then clearer as his lips brushed against her ear. It was a single word, one she’d heard often enough even if it was not the name she claimed for herself in this new, tarnished life, and somehow from his lips it was more than enough to have her crumbling before him - a confirmation where there had only been vague memories and hazy speculation before.

She sobbed out a breath against the side of his head, unaware that her cheeks were wet until she felt the resulting dampness of his hair where she wound it around her fingers in her feeble attempt at holding him against her. Unbidden, her heart began to pound, pushing her through sensory memories of what it had been to fall twisting and lightning quick into love with him, and the slow, years-long agony of his loss and their combined suffering. The fight or die instinct in the back of her skull, the same, red blaze that has kept her alive more times than she can count, told her to run. To leave him. That no matter how much she thinks she still needs him, he is as good as knife at her throat for all he will cost her in distraction and inevitable damage.

“Lyubov moya,” she whispered instead, forgoing his name for an endearment that rolled easy and familiar from her old tongue, sounding just right to her own ears, muffled as it was by the scratchy flesh of his jaw. “Stay. Right here. With me.”