Immediately, Natalia knew this had been a mistake. She'd apparently forgotten just how broad the bastard was, since all of the air in the space evaporated the moment the shower door closed behind him, as well as every sliver of personal space.
But she kept her back to his damnable smirk, shying away when he reached around her for the soap. "No, thank you," she promptly snapped, stepping all the way to the shower wall to let him have the spray. "Your 'help' comes with all manner of complications, and I've had quite enough."
She did unbend enough to shoot him a dark look over one pale wet shoulder, adding, "--and don't pretend you care, Barnes. I'm just a fuck for you, remember? Nothing more. So just leave it."
It takes him aback a bit, the way she phrases it, and his normally-cocky facade drops for a moment in shock. He knows he's exposing himself with this but if there's something else there, he thinks they ought to have it out on the table.
He has the soap in his hand but he doesn't do anything with it, his eyes focused on her for a long moment. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.
"No," was her immediate comeback, and her backbone went even more rigid, if possible. "I don't." She was having a bit of trouble catching her breath, too. Indeed, it was hard to inhale enough to fill her lungs.
So she just kept her mouth shut, rather than literally waste her breath, but finally opted to grate out, "...are you done with the soap?" The sooner she could get out of his proximity, the quicker she could shove all of "this", whatever it was, under a bigger rock and pretend it didn't exist.
And then, tell her mentor that Barnes needed to be relocated to a different safehouse, because "this" was interfering with...well, everything.
"I could give you the soap," Bucky says, his fingers loose on it. "Or you could take it. I could wash you or you can take the hard way out and just wash yourself. However you want to do it."
Bucky makes sure to say it casually and easy like he might with a dame in a club back when. Some of those memories are coming back to him the longer he spends time as a human and he was a cad, maybe, but he wasn't cold. He wasn't cruel. There was a warmth to him then.
Natalia snorted. "No, you don't." And quick as a flash, she snatched the soap from his limp fingers, immediately giving him her back again. "You do whatever it is that you want to do. Live in the now, remember? With absolutely no regard to anyone else. That's the wolf way, isn't it?"
She tossed the soap back in the shower caddy, huffed to herself, both in frustration and in pique, then yanked open the shower's door and stepped out after snatching a towel. "Wash yourself," was her final directive before she wrapped the towel around her and stalked out of the bathroom.
Yep, she'd known that this had been such a bad idea.
Bucky arches an eyebrow at her when she flounces off at him but he's not looking to get drained dry so he lets her go, washing himself quickly before sliding out of the bathroom. He has the good judgment to pull on underwear and jeans before he goes to find her.
"You all right?" His wounds have healed to a shiny pink so he knows they're there and how they happened but they're soon going to be gone and there will be no memory of their little romp.
She was in the living room with her laptop, staunchily wrapped from neck to ankle in a large fluffy robe. A mug of blood-laced tea in her right hand, her left navigated her email, though her entire posture radiated cold aloofness. She didn't even look up when Barnes appeared in the doorway.
"I'm fine." Flat, uninviting, and precise. She'd already emailed Fury to ask - insist - that he relocate the wolf to another safehouse, and was smarting from the blatant negation. Barnes was her problem; she was going to have to deal with it. Wonderful.
"I have to leave for work in a few hours. So I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone so I can get a nap before I go." She still didn't lift her eyes. "It's..." and how her teeth grated, "...been a long day."
"You could be a little frostier about it," Bucky says. When he moves across the room, it's with the grace of the predator even if he isn't the same type of predator than she is. He rarely feels the need for clothes, even now, and sits next to her on the couch.
"Do you get cold?" he asks, genuinely curious. "I always run hot because of what I am so everyone feels cold to me. I didn't realize you'd actually feel the cold though. Or is it more of a comfort thing, the fuzzy robe and the socks and the blankets?"
He hasn't ever lived with a vampire before. Sue him.
"What difference does it make to you?" Natalia knew she was being a little unfair; she hadn't bothered to stop him earlier, and he didn't really deserve the brunt of her temper. And it was definitely unfair to expect anything other than the slaking of a physical need, wasn't it.
She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Sorry, that...that was bitchy, wasn't it." Picking up her coffee mug, she took a long swallow of blood-laced tea, and gently closed her computer. "Yes, I feel the cold. Not as intensely as a human would, but I do feel heat or cold, either way." Natalia tucked her feet up beneath her, cradling the warm mug in both hands.
"Heat is worse, for vampires, but intense cold can make us slow and lethargic, almost like a reptile." Her lip twitched. "We share a lot of similarities with them, I suppose."
"I don't feel anything, really. I like the cold better, though. That's why all that time up in Siberia wasn't such a big deal to me. The wolf part of me is happy to roll around in the snow all day but it's frowned upon when you're a human."
Bucky reaches out and touches her hand, hoping that her desire not to spill her tea or break the mug will keep her from recoiling or slapping him.
"Did I hurt you? Before? I'm an asshole but I'm not that kind of asshole."
To her credit, Natalia didn't flinch away from the touch, though her grip on the cup did tighten, just a fraction. She gave a soft snort before answering, though. "No, James. You didn't hurt me." She looked down at the coffee table as she continued, "...I begged you for it, remember?" And how she hated herself for that right about now.
"But...probably best if we don't do that sort of anything anymore, yes? It's hard on the furniture, if nothing else." Her bedroom door was going to have to be replaced, given its sad condition. "And all that rampant violence clouds the mind, shorts out any and all good sense." Which was a luxury she really couldn't afford.
...even if leaning over to kiss those soft, soft lips was so tempting right now.
"It doesn't always have to be hard," Bucky says softly. "It just happened that way because we have so much...tension in here. But I'm not the kind of guy who always needs it that way. It doesn't have to be violent."
He has a soft spot for her, jailor and vampire aside, and while he chafes at her rules a lot of the time it doesn't mean he doesn't care about her. On the contrary - he cares more than he thought he did.
"I'll fix the door though. I shouldn't have broke it like that, doll. Just needed a little more from you than that door could handle."
If she didn't look at him, then the temptation was far less. Good plan. Therefore, Natalia kept her gaze on the rest of the room as she sipped her tea, still warm but not as scaldingly hot as she'd prefer it, right about now.
"That's...thank you," she said, instead. "There's a hardware store right down the street. Take my credit card, get whatever you need." And then pray God she could lock it and keep him out of her bed, although keeping him out of her mind was going to be a harder challenge.
"Fury's supposed to call soon, he mentioned something about a high-priority assignment in the pipeline." Hopefully focusing on that would help alleviate all of this...tension between them.
"You gonna let me help or am I back in the kennel?" Bucky asks, tilting his head a little in curiosity. He wants to pursue sex a little more (a lot more) but the prospect of something productive to fill his time holds a lot of allure too. If she trusts him, maybe Fury will trust him too, and he'll be able to get out of this place once in a while.
"Because I can behave when I have the right...motivation." He looks her over slowly, tongue sweeping lightly over his lower lip, and peers at her from under dark lashes. He's not ignorant of his own appeal and since he's gotten her to admit she's at least attracted to him and that's a foot in the door.
Oh, no, she wasn't about to capitulate to this again. "Don't start, just--don't start," Natalia warned him, shooting him a glance from the corner of her eyes. "If you can be useful - and I mean professionally - then you can join me on my rounds tonight. There are a few places I need to scope out, make sure everyone's following the rules, but nothing really major."
Just being a continued presence for all the little fang-babies in London was enough, typically.
"Hopefully Fury will have some details on this hot assignment before too long," she added, once more refreshing her email. "And I need to go by the office and pick up another phone." Since she'd shattered hers against the wall earlier.
"What have you got so against having fun? It wasn't fun for you? You didn't like it? If it wasn't good, that's one thing and I'm sorry, but it felt like you were having a hell of a time."
Bucky looks her up and down, trying to gauge her response both as a human and a wolf; the furry side of him can pick up on things the human side can't sniff out.
She wasn't good with these sorts of things. She didn't do 'casual relationships'. And apparently that wasn't something this wolf could ever understand. Natalia sighed, wishing that incipient headache behind her temples was just her imagination.
"--I don't expect you to understand," she clipped out. "I just don't have any luck with 'casual flings', or whatever they're called. Did I enjoy what we did? Yes." And how she hated admitting that, but it was the truth. "But it's over and done with, I have more important things to focus on, we should just move on."
Even if she knew that that was going to be damn near an impossibility. Not with him in such close proximity, reminding her each and every time she looked at the bastard of what they'd done together. What she'd allowed herself to do.
"I'm a vampire," Natalia heard herself say, unbidden. "Vampires aren't supposed to enjoy themselves, remember?" That was her past talking. The realization that she hadn't been good enough.
Bucky frowns a little, trying to work that one out. Immortal but can't have any fun? Seems like a bum deal, to him, and he wonders who came up with that goddamn rule. Probably someone who was ancient and already done chasing thrills.
"You mean to tell me all vampires do is eat and hibernate? No fun at all? I gotta say, that's a pretty shitty existence, Natalia. Who told you that you had to follow those rules? The vampire congress? Do they show up at your door if you laugh or something? Because I'm not following."
She gave a soft snort. "Of course they don't. Vampires are the bane of the monster world, James. They look like humans, but they're monsters. They take what they want, use who they want do to it, and just make a goddamned mess all over the planet. Why do you think the Organization exists? To cut down those who don't give a shit about the rules."
Like her entire damned family.
"I'm a Romanova," she reminded him. "That vampire clan has ruled Russia for over five centuries. It rules through terror, fear, and panic. My mother is a tyrant who lives only for her whims and her empire, and she's so damned powerful that not even the entire Enforcer legion could take her on. That's how much fear that name commands."
Natalia sighed, leaning back on the couch and crossing her arms, staring unseeing at the floor.
"So you can imagine, when I was recruited to undergo Enforcer training, how much shit I had to deal with, just because of my surname. Everyone was afraid of me, because of my bloodline. I had to work three times as hard to get where I am now, and I was always cautioned to toe the line, simply because of my name. I can't do anything other than my job, because of the scrutiny I'm always under, even from those I've worked with for years, now." She bit her lower lip, a little crestfallen.
"I'm not talking about trust," Bucky says, looking at her quizzically. "I'm talking about what you do behind your own bedroom door. Nobody knows what we're up to in here. You think they're gonna haul me in to do some kind of vampire mind shit on me? Wouldn't work anyway. I'd just go wolf and they couldn't get human thoughts."
He takes a chance and reaches for her hand with one of his. "You can be a tough bitch out in the world and still have a little fun at home. Keeping up appearances everywhere is fucking exhausting. Why do you think I don't behave in here? I have nothing worth behaving for. Now you let me come out on jobs and I have incentive. People don't work without incentives, even great Romanova vampires. You're still a person. Just...a tightly wound fangy person."
She let him take her hand, though the gesture was a little surprising. Natalia glanced over at him, an eyebrow going up slightly. "...not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, James, but...since when do you care? Yesterday, you didn't give a damn. You were wolf through and through, and fuck the rest of the world and all of its problems. Now, you're trying to convince me to let down my hair a little and enjoy life more."
It made less than no sense, honestly. And he was assuming quite a bit, if he thought that convincing her to "have fun" meant he'd get laid every time he needed an itch scratched. Their previous trysts had been mistakes, each and every one of them. She didn't need any sort of relationship, with anyone, nor did she want the headache of dealing with one.
"...if all of this uplifting sentiment is about you...getting off, or whatever, I can always find you someone who doesn't mind being paid for it, James." Her lip twisted sourly. "It'll be added to the expense report, like the clothes and groceries." It was a disgusting thought, this dog rolling about with anyone else, but the options were rather limited.
"I ain't never had to pay for it in my life, doll, and I'm not starting now. I'm just saying...you should have a part of your life that you enjoy. Something that's just yours, you know? Everyone needs that. Even you. Especially you. Nobody needs to be wound up that tight."
Bucky keeps touching her hand, keeping it more gentle than he thinks he's ever been around her.
"Could be knitting or some shit for all I care, just needs to be something to blow off the steam. Of course, if you liked what we did, I'm definitely not saying no."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
But she kept her back to his damnable smirk, shying away when he reached around her for the soap. "No, thank you," she promptly snapped, stepping all the way to the shower wall to let him have the spray. "Your 'help' comes with all manner of complications, and I've had quite enough."
She did unbend enough to shoot him a dark look over one pale wet shoulder, adding, "--and don't pretend you care, Barnes. I'm just a fuck for you, remember? Nothing more. So just leave it."
no subject
It takes him aback a bit, the way she phrases it, and his normally-cocky facade drops for a moment in shock. He knows he's exposing himself with this but if there's something else there, he thinks they ought to have it out on the table.
He has the soap in his hand but he doesn't do anything with it, his eyes focused on her for a long moment. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.
no subject
So she just kept her mouth shut, rather than literally waste her breath, but finally opted to grate out, "...are you done with the soap?" The sooner she could get out of his proximity, the quicker she could shove all of "this", whatever it was, under a bigger rock and pretend it didn't exist.
And then, tell her mentor that Barnes needed to be relocated to a different safehouse, because "this" was interfering with...well, everything.
no subject
Bucky makes sure to say it casually and easy like he might with a dame in a club back when. Some of those memories are coming back to him the longer he spends time as a human and he was a cad, maybe, but he wasn't cold. He wasn't cruel. There was a warmth to him then.
"I like to do whatever a doll wants me to do."
no subject
She tossed the soap back in the shower caddy, huffed to herself, both in frustration and in pique, then yanked open the shower's door and stepped out after snatching a towel. "Wash yourself," was her final directive before she wrapped the towel around her and stalked out of the bathroom.
Yep, she'd known that this had been such a bad idea.
no subject
"You all right?" His wounds have healed to a shiny pink so he knows they're there and how they happened but they're soon going to be gone and there will be no memory of their little romp.
"Didn't mean to run you out."
no subject
"I'm fine." Flat, uninviting, and precise. She'd already emailed Fury to ask - insist - that he relocate the wolf to another safehouse, and was smarting from the blatant negation. Barnes was her problem; she was going to have to deal with it. Wonderful.
"I have to leave for work in a few hours. So I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone so I can get a nap before I go." She still didn't lift her eyes. "It's..." and how her teeth grated, "...been a long day."
no subject
"Do you get cold?" he asks, genuinely curious. "I always run hot because of what I am so everyone feels cold to me. I didn't realize you'd actually feel the cold though. Or is it more of a comfort thing, the fuzzy robe and the socks and the blankets?"
He hasn't ever lived with a vampire before. Sue him.
no subject
She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Sorry, that...that was bitchy, wasn't it." Picking up her coffee mug, she took a long swallow of blood-laced tea, and gently closed her computer. "Yes, I feel the cold. Not as intensely as a human would, but I do feel heat or cold, either way." Natalia tucked her feet up beneath her, cradling the warm mug in both hands.
"Heat is worse, for vampires, but intense cold can make us slow and lethargic, almost like a reptile." Her lip twitched. "We share a lot of similarities with them, I suppose."
no subject
Bucky reaches out and touches her hand, hoping that her desire not to spill her tea or break the mug will keep her from recoiling or slapping him.
"Did I hurt you? Before? I'm an asshole but I'm not that kind of asshole."
no subject
"But...probably best if we don't do that sort of anything anymore, yes? It's hard on the furniture, if nothing else." Her bedroom door was going to have to be replaced, given its sad condition. "And all that rampant violence clouds the mind, shorts out any and all good sense." Which was a luxury she really couldn't afford.
...even if leaning over to kiss those soft, soft lips was so tempting right now.
no subject
He has a soft spot for her, jailor and vampire aside, and while he chafes at her rules a lot of the time it doesn't mean he doesn't care about her. On the contrary - he cares more than he thought he did.
"I'll fix the door though. I shouldn't have broke it like that, doll. Just needed a little more from you than that door could handle."
no subject
"That's...thank you," she said, instead. "There's a hardware store right down the street. Take my credit card, get whatever you need." And then pray God she could lock it and keep him out of her bed, although keeping him out of her mind was going to be a harder challenge.
"Fury's supposed to call soon, he mentioned something about a high-priority assignment in the pipeline." Hopefully focusing on that would help alleviate all of this...tension between them.
no subject
"Because I can behave when I have the right...motivation." He looks her over slowly, tongue sweeping lightly over his lower lip, and peers at her from under dark lashes. He's not ignorant of his own appeal and since he's gotten her to admit she's at least attracted to him and that's a foot in the door.
"Might get me to fix that door faster too."
no subject
Just being a continued presence for all the little fang-babies in London was enough, typically.
"Hopefully Fury will have some details on this hot assignment before too long," she added, once more refreshing her email. "And I need to go by the office and pick up another phone." Since she'd shattered hers against the wall earlier.
no subject
Bucky looks her up and down, trying to gauge her response both as a human and a wolf; the furry side of him can pick up on things the human side can't sniff out.
"What's wrong with enjoying yourself?"
no subject
"--I don't expect you to understand," she clipped out. "I just don't have any luck with 'casual flings', or whatever they're called. Did I enjoy what we did? Yes." And how she hated admitting that, but it was the truth. "But it's over and done with, I have more important things to focus on, we should just move on."
Even if she knew that that was going to be damn near an impossibility. Not with him in such close proximity, reminding her each and every time she looked at the bastard of what they'd done together. What she'd allowed herself to do.
"I'm a vampire," Natalia heard herself say, unbidden. "Vampires aren't supposed to enjoy themselves, remember?" That was her past talking. The realization that she hadn't been good enough.
no subject
"You mean to tell me all vampires do is eat and hibernate? No fun at all? I gotta say, that's a pretty shitty existence, Natalia. Who told you that you had to follow those rules? The vampire congress? Do they show up at your door if you laugh or something? Because I'm not following."
no subject
Like her entire damned family.
"I'm a Romanova," she reminded him. "That vampire clan has ruled Russia for over five centuries. It rules through terror, fear, and panic. My mother is a tyrant who lives only for her whims and her empire, and she's so damned powerful that not even the entire Enforcer legion could take her on. That's how much fear that name commands."
Natalia sighed, leaning back on the couch and crossing her arms, staring unseeing at the floor.
"So you can imagine, when I was recruited to undergo Enforcer training, how much shit I had to deal with, just because of my surname. Everyone was afraid of me, because of my bloodline. I had to work three times as hard to get where I am now, and I was always cautioned to toe the line, simply because of my name. I can't do anything other than my job, because of the scrutiny I'm always under, even from those I've worked with for years, now." She bit her lower lip, a little crestfallen.
"Even now, they still don't trust me."
no subject
He takes a chance and reaches for her hand with one of his. "You can be a tough bitch out in the world and still have a little fun at home. Keeping up appearances everywhere is fucking exhausting. Why do you think I don't behave in here? I have nothing worth behaving for. Now you let me come out on jobs and I have incentive. People don't work without incentives, even great Romanova vampires. You're still a person. Just...a tightly wound fangy person."
no subject
It made less than no sense, honestly. And he was assuming quite a bit, if he thought that convincing her to "have fun" meant he'd get laid every time he needed an itch scratched. Their previous trysts had been mistakes, each and every one of them. She didn't need any sort of relationship, with anyone, nor did she want the headache of dealing with one.
"...if all of this uplifting sentiment is about you...getting off, or whatever, I can always find you someone who doesn't mind being paid for it, James." Her lip twisted sourly. "It'll be added to the expense report, like the clothes and groceries." It was a disgusting thought, this dog rolling about with anyone else, but the options were rather limited.
no subject
Bucky keeps touching her hand, keeping it more gentle than he thinks he's ever been around her.
"Could be knitting or some shit for all I care, just needs to be something to blow off the steam. Of course, if you liked what we did, I'm definitely not saying no."