This assignment was incredibly strange at first, playing at being married was⌠uncomfortable. It didnât feel like it fit her. But it wouldnât be the first time she felt out of her comfort zone, so she just swallowed it all down and dealt with it one day at a time.
One day turned into a week turned into months⌠and a rhythm was found in this neighborhood theyâd been dropped into. It was like something straight out of a movieâ rows of identical houses with impeccable lawns, pools in the back yard, and two cars in every driveway. If she had to pretend to be someoneâs wife⌠at least it was in a decent area.
They had wholly separate lives outside this perfect little picturesque play they put on for neighbors. Never shown as starkly contrasted as when Jon walks in the door that night in a state she has seen him in plenty of times by now. Her eyes sweep over him as he trudges inside, drops his bag on the floor and himself on the couch.
âArenât they all?â she quips back at him, as she reaches up and drags her fingers through his hair. Itâs one of those strange little things thatâs become habit over time, tiny affectionate touches that let other people read what they needed them to. Sometimes, she just did it out of habit now.
White picket fences, green backyards, American pie. (Everything sheâd thought sheâd wanted, once upon a time, but now twisted and gnarled and fake.)
When Mary reaches out and touches him, he jolts a little, just the smallest infinitesimal flinch which sheâll recognise because she knows him and his tics and movements; otherwise, heâs usually too still and quiet, too good at mastering his reactions.
A skittish wild animal, simultaneously spooked yet soothed by that touch.
âItâs taken care of,â Jon says, without elaborating on what it is. Mary already knows. The assignment theyâd received earlier via dead drop, taking out some physicist, a professional rival to Russiaâs own science programme. He wasnât entirely sure what had landed that quiet, inoffensive bespectacled man on the hitlist or what sort of work he did. He didnât ask questions. That wasnât part of the job.
âWeâll have to clean the car,â he says, still ticking through the to-do list as if on autopilot. âAnd I think I got nicked.â
Not a bad injury, not enough to lay him out, but heâs felt a twinge of pain and part of his shirt sticking uncomfortably warm and wet to his skin the whole drive back. On his shoulder, where he couldnât get to it easily.
She isnât offended when he flinches away from herâ she gets it. Touch is never exactly a whole net positive in their line of work. It get muddied between punishments and jobs where fist fights arenât uncommon.
âGood,â sometimes, they take the hits together, other times not. It all depends on their explicit instructions whenever they get new assignments. In some ways, receiving their newest set of instructions is a little like getting a gift. A new surprise in every box. âDid you get blood in the seats again?â A common occurrence in their line of work.
She hums a soft noise and sweeps her eyes over him, âWhere? Do you need stitches?â
Sometimes he drifts back into the curt monosyllabic sentences heâd used for most of their first year together, only communicating the bare minimum — his handlers hadnât built him to be a talker — but itâs never meant to be rude.
(Some details, though, make the picture of him strange, the puzzle pieces not quite fitting. Where sheâs had to work on her accent with careful training over the years, smoothing out the Russian syllables, the American accentâs always come easily to her husband. In its place is a lingering awkwardness in even his textbook-perfect Russian, the consonants ever so slightly off.)
He scoots a little forward, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it onto the coffee table. Rolls his shoulder, testing the range of motion. One of his arms is fake, a skin-coloured prosthetic to blend in and hopefully not stand out around the neighbourhood with it; but on the flesh-and-blood side, the shirt over his shoulder is damp with blood. âI canât tell,â Jon admits about the stitches, and thereâs the faintest flicker in his expression which— might be sheepishness?
âIâll get the peroxide and weâll get it cleaned in no time.â They always have an assortment of chemicals on hand, some basic things for first aid, some others more specifically tailored to some job or other. Car seats are pretty easy to clean, as bloodstains go.
She doesnât mind the short answers, it cuts out the fluff and gets straight to the point and more often than not, thatâs the best case for them. Sheâs certainly the talker between the pair of them, but itâs all for show. Part of a Widowâs training is using words and physicality to advantage for information⌠the Winter boys were built for higher efficiency in assassinations. Two sides of a coin and all that.
With the jacket out of the way, the wound is already obvious even before she urges him to take his shirt off, too. Sheâd cut him out of it if she had to, and it wouldnât have been the first time. Time was, he wouldnât have even done this so easily for her. Theyâre deep in this cover now, though, and Mary⌠how foreign that name still feels aside⌠finds it harder to turn the play off even when itâs just the two of them alone the longer they linger here in assignment.
âIâll be right back,â she says softly, disappearing for long enough to grab supplies to clean and stitch his wound.
As she leaves the room, Jon reaches obediently for the hem of his shirt and carefully hauls it off so sheâll be able to reach it better, wincing slightly as it pulls at some of the dried blood, the scabs tugging. It rips some of the scabs open — heâs bleeding again — and he crumples the tattered fabric of the shirt in his human fist, now sitting patient.
He waits on the sofa, straight-backed and motionless while Maryâs gone, with barely a flicker or tic of muscle. It makes him look like a clockwork soldier whoâs run down, stationary and watchful with no one around to give him orders, content to sit and wait in silence for as long as it takes until she returns. He could sit there for hours.
Mary comes back with the supplies, unphased by the rigid way he sits and waits for her. "Dammit," she mumbles under her breath when she sees the new line of blood rolling slowly down from the wound. With the soft sigh of an exasperated wife, she swipes the fresh blood away with the cloth she'd grabbed. "You are so messy, Jon," she chides him lightly, but there's an amusement in her tone too.
She takes her time, because no ticking clock or imminent danger is pressing the matter, and she's as gentle as she can be as she cleans up the long-dried blood from his back. She knows he would never show it if any of it pains him anyway, but she still likes to afford him that much.
"Cold," she murmurs in soft warning as she pours a bit of liquid disinfectant along the wound, the cloth pressed just under it to catch the excess that rolls down his shoulder. The house is so quiet, she can hear the soft bubbling of the peroxide as it works against the gash that she's realized she will probably need to stitch, at least a bit, until his healing kicks in a bit more. It was deeper than he realized, probably.
She knows him well enough by now, after years on assignment, sleeping in the same bed, pulling each other out of the fire, that she can read his reactions:
itâs small, but Jon twitches, with the faint jolt of indrawn breath as the disinfectant sears into his skin. It burns, it cleans, it scours, and he bites down on the sensation. Anyone else would be screaming, howling, thrashing in pain.
But the Winter Soldier turns off those parts of himself. Like turning off taps, shutting doors, retreating to the safety of a small room in the back corner of his mind, far away from it all, dissociating. Heâs staring straight ahead and not quite registering much, just —
âYouâve had worse,â The flat, American voice she has been using is always at the tip of her tongue after all this time, but she finds that her natural accent slips through with those words, and she isnât even really sure why. She does miss it, though. Her real voice.
Sheâs grown used to how easily he can turn things off within himself. She can do it, too, but not in the same way, not to the same extent. He can compartmentalize to a degree she finds herself often wishing for. Sheâs never said so out loud, because she already knows he would tell her sheâs wrong. That she shouldnât wish for such a thing.
Once she has cleaned the wound, she readies the needle and smiles, itâs soft and itâs sad, and it doesnât reach her eyes. âStitching you up now,â she whispers, her accent still present. She can be a little more herself with him. Alone.
It should perhaps raise a small alarm for him, a chiding reminder in their handlerâs voice: Stay in-character. Stay in the voice until it becomes yours, until your accentâs perfect even when inebriated, until you dream in English. Donât risk breaking character.
But Jon finds that he likes the sound of the Widowâs real voice. Itâs warmer, a little deeper in a way which doesnât fit the high lilting accent of the American suburban housewife; like this, she always sounds a little looser, a bit less stilted and affected and practiced. Like him with his English in general.
âAppreciate it,â he says after a moment, quiet, tilting his head to look back at her over his shoulder. He doesnât need to thank her — itâs her job — but he has noticed how sheâs moving slower, more careful to not jostle him, to not cause any extra undue pain in the treatment. Not all of the agents would have bothered. In the past, some of them hadnât.
She knows how it feels, stuck under someoneâs thumb, every move you make scrutinizes to the fullest extent possible. Their lives havenât been so different, and now they really were the same all the time.
Once sheâs done, she works at putting all the supplies away, throwing out the trash, collecting the tools into the kit, but she doesnât miss the look back at her over his shoulder. Her lips twitch in a smile, âJust doing my job,â she answers easily, but there is a hint of something brighter beneath those words shining in her eyes.
Now that the immediate problemâs been taken care of, shirtless but stitched-up, Jon disengages wordlessly into another part of the house. The way he often seems to vanish when she isnât looking, a cat disappearing and then reappearing underfoot,
(not a man but a ghost)
and after some time in their bedroom and bathroom, he re-emerges looking a little less frayed around the edges. Heâs washed off his hands, thrown some water in his face and hair. He tossed his ruined shirt into the laundry basket (a separate one they keep for their quote-unquote âwork clothesâ; often in need of more heavy-duty bleach or sometimes outright disposal), and then meandered back downstairs into the dim light, wearing a loose clean white undershirt and comfortable sweatpants, no longer reeking of gunpowder. Ready for bed, mostly, but:
âI have some notes on the operation, but Iâll transmit them to our handler tomorrow. Do you need anything?â
Maryâs not the tepid housewife wringing her apron and waiting for her man to come home â sheâll have her own lethal tasks, tomorrow and the day after and the day after, their work never ends â but some part of him still itches at having had an evening away from her. Not all of their jobs called for two people, but they did their work better when they were together, when he had someone to watch his back; this wound probably wouldnât have happened otherwise.
She's grown used to the way he just...melts out of view. He's arguably even better at it than she is, which is rather impressive. He has a tendency to materialize from nowhere just as easily.
While he gets a little cleaner, Yelena goes to the kitchen to pour them both a drink. It doesn't do much for him, of course, but it's the pretense of a nightcap at the end of their day. Pretending, even when seemingly no one but the two of them are around, because eyes and ears existed everywhere and they couldn't risk being found out.
She joins him back in the living room, holding a glass out to him before she takes a long sip from her own. Vodka. The good kind, it burns smooth down her throat.
"I don't think so. I haven't received any instructions in a few days," she says, sinking onto the couch. "It makes me uneasy." She does drastically better when she has work to do, being without it makes her restless.
If theyâd been hosting company with anyone else in the house, he might have played at being a good husband: an arm wrapped around her on the couch, a fond touch of her thigh, massaging her feet after a long day, all the little domestic rituals to keep up appearances. But as Mary takes the seat beside him, Jon reaches out and accepts the glass of vodka and heâs careful to not overstep, not crowd into her space, not demand too much.
His knee bumps against hers where sheâs settled. Thatâs all.
âUneasy. Why?â he asks, simply. Pressing for more information; he finds it easier to nudge others than to be talkative himself.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
One day turned into a week turned into months⌠and a rhythm was found in this neighborhood theyâd been dropped into. It was like something straight out of a movieâ rows of identical houses with impeccable lawns, pools in the back yard, and two cars in every driveway. If she had to pretend to be someoneâs wife⌠at least it was in a decent area.
They had wholly separate lives outside this perfect little picturesque play they put on for neighbors. Never shown as starkly contrasted as when Jon walks in the door that night in a state she has seen him in plenty of times by now. Her eyes sweep over him as he trudges inside, drops his bag on the floor and himself on the couch.
âArenât they all?â she quips back at him, as she reaches up and drags her fingers through his hair. Itâs one of those strange little things thatâs become habit over time, tiny affectionate touches that let other people read what they needed them to. Sometimes, she just did it out of habit now.
no subject
When Mary reaches out and touches him, he jolts a little, just the smallest infinitesimal flinch which sheâll recognise because she knows him and his tics and movements; otherwise, heâs usually too still and quiet, too good at mastering his reactions.
A skittish wild animal, simultaneously spooked yet soothed by that touch.
âItâs taken care of,â Jon says, without elaborating on what it is. Mary already knows. The assignment theyâd received earlier via dead drop, taking out some physicist, a professional rival to Russiaâs own science programme. He wasnât entirely sure what had landed that quiet, inoffensive bespectacled man on the hitlist or what sort of work he did. He didnât ask questions. That wasnât part of the job.
âWeâll have to clean the car,â he says, still ticking through the to-do list as if on autopilot. âAnd I think I got nicked.â
Not a bad injury, not enough to lay him out, but heâs felt a twinge of pain and part of his shirt sticking uncomfortably warm and wet to his skin the whole drive back. On his shoulder, where he couldnât get to it easily.
no subject
âGood,â sometimes, they take the hits together, other times not. It all depends on their explicit instructions whenever they get new assignments. In some ways, receiving their newest set of instructions is a little like getting a gift. A new surprise in every box. âDid you get blood in the seats again?â A common occurrence in their line of work.
She hums a soft noise and sweeps her eyes over him, âWhere? Do you need stitches?â
no subject
Sometimes he drifts back into the curt monosyllabic sentences heâd used for most of their first year together, only communicating the bare minimum — his handlers hadnât built him to be a talker — but itâs never meant to be rude.
(Some details, though, make the picture of him strange, the puzzle pieces not quite fitting. Where sheâs had to work on her accent with careful training over the years, smoothing out the Russian syllables, the American accentâs always come easily to her husband. In its place is a lingering awkwardness in even his textbook-perfect Russian, the consonants ever so slightly off.)
He scoots a little forward, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it onto the coffee table. Rolls his shoulder, testing the range of motion. One of his arms is fake, a skin-coloured prosthetic to blend in and hopefully not stand out around the neighbourhood with it; but on the flesh-and-blood side, the shirt over his shoulder is damp with blood. âI canât tell,â Jon admits about the stitches, and thereâs the faintest flicker in his expression which— might be sheepishness?
no subject
She doesnât mind the short answers, it cuts out the fluff and gets straight to the point and more often than not, thatâs the best case for them. Sheâs certainly the talker between the pair of them, but itâs all for show. Part of a Widowâs training is using words and physicality to advantage for information⌠the Winter boys were built for higher efficiency in assassinations. Two sides of a coin and all that.
With the jacket out of the way, the wound is already obvious even before she urges him to take his shirt off, too. Sheâd cut him out of it if she had to, and it wouldnât have been the first time. Time was, he wouldnât have even done this so easily for her. Theyâre deep in this cover now, though, and Mary⌠how foreign that name still feels aside⌠finds it harder to turn the play off even when itâs just the two of them alone the longer they linger here in assignment.
âIâll be right back,â she says softly, disappearing for long enough to grab supplies to clean and stitch his wound.
no subject
He waits on the sofa, straight-backed and motionless while Maryâs gone, with barely a flicker or tic of muscle. It makes him look like a clockwork soldier whoâs run down, stationary and watchful with no one around to give him orders, content to sit and wait in silence for as long as it takes until she returns. He could sit there for hours.
no subject
She takes her time, because no ticking clock or imminent danger is pressing the matter, and she's as gentle as she can be as she cleans up the long-dried blood from his back. She knows he would never show it if any of it pains him anyway, but she still likes to afford him that much.
"Cold," she murmurs in soft warning as she pours a bit of liquid disinfectant along the wound, the cloth pressed just under it to catch the excess that rolls down his shoulder. The house is so quiet, she can hear the soft bubbling of the peroxide as it works against the gash that she's realized she will probably need to stitch, at least a bit, until his healing kicks in a bit more. It was deeper than he realized, probably.
no subject
itâs small, but Jon twitches, with the faint jolt of indrawn breath as the disinfectant sears into his skin. It burns, it cleans, it scours, and he bites down on the sensation. Anyone else would be screaming, howling, thrashing in pain.
But the Winter Soldier turns off those parts of himself. Like turning off taps, shutting doors, retreating to the safety of a small room in the back corner of his mind, far away from it all, dissociating. Heâs staring straight ahead and not quite registering much, just —
âHow bad is it?â he asks.
no subject
Sheâs grown used to how easily he can turn things off within himself. She can do it, too, but not in the same way, not to the same extent. He can compartmentalize to a degree she finds herself often wishing for. Sheâs never said so out loud, because she already knows he would tell her sheâs wrong. That she shouldnât wish for such a thing.
Once she has cleaned the wound, she readies the needle and smiles, itâs soft and itâs sad, and it doesnât reach her eyes. âStitching you up now,â she whispers, her accent still present. She can be a little more herself with him. Alone.
Right?
no subject
But Jon finds that he likes the sound of the Widowâs real voice. Itâs warmer, a little deeper in a way which doesnât fit the high lilting accent of the American suburban housewife; like this, she always sounds a little looser, a bit less stilted and affected and practiced. Like him with his English in general.
âAppreciate it,â he says after a moment, quiet, tilting his head to look back at her over his shoulder. He doesnât need to thank her — itâs her job — but he has noticed how sheâs moving slower, more careful to not jostle him, to not cause any extra undue pain in the treatment. Not all of the agents would have bothered. In the past, some of them hadnât.
no subject
Once sheâs done, she works at putting all the supplies away, throwing out the trash, collecting the tools into the kit, but she doesnât miss the look back at her over his shoulder. Her lips twitch in a smile, âJust doing my job,â she answers easily, but there is a hint of something brighter beneath those words shining in her eyes.
no subject
(not a man but a ghost)
and after some time in their bedroom and bathroom, he re-emerges looking a little less frayed around the edges. Heâs washed off his hands, thrown some water in his face and hair. He tossed his ruined shirt into the laundry basket (a separate one they keep for their quote-unquote âwork clothesâ; often in need of more heavy-duty bleach or sometimes outright disposal), and then meandered back downstairs into the dim light, wearing a loose clean white undershirt and comfortable sweatpants, no longer reeking of gunpowder. Ready for bed, mostly, but:
âI have some notes on the operation, but Iâll transmit them to our handler tomorrow. Do you need anything?â
Maryâs not the tepid housewife wringing her apron and waiting for her man to come home â sheâll have her own lethal tasks, tomorrow and the day after and the day after, their work never ends â but some part of him still itches at having had an evening away from her. Not all of their jobs called for two people, but they did their work better when they were together, when he had someone to watch his back; this wound probably wouldnât have happened otherwise.
no subject
While he gets a little cleaner, Yelena goes to the kitchen to pour them both a drink. It doesn't do much for him, of course, but it's the pretense of a nightcap at the end of their day. Pretending, even when seemingly no one but the two of them are around, because eyes and ears existed everywhere and they couldn't risk being found out.
She joins him back in the living room, holding a glass out to him before she takes a long sip from her own. Vodka. The good kind, it burns smooth down her throat.
"I don't think so. I haven't received any instructions in a few days," she says, sinking onto the couch. "It makes me uneasy." She does drastically better when she has work to do, being without it makes her restless.
no subject
His knee bumps against hers where sheâs settled. Thatâs all.
âUneasy. Why?â he asks, simply. Pressing for more information; he finds it easier to nudge others than to be talkative himself.