She knows how it feels, stuck under someone’s thumb, every move you make scrutinizes to the fullest extent possible. Their lives haven’t been so different, and now they really were the same all the time.
Once she’s done, she works at putting all the supplies away, throwing out the trash, collecting the tools into the kit, but she doesn’t miss the look back at her over his shoulder. Her lips twitch in a smile, “Just doing my job,” she answers easily, but there is a hint of something brighter beneath those words shining in her eyes.
Now that the immediate problem’s 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 isn’t 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. He’s 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 ‘work clothes’; 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:
“I have some notes on the operation, but I’ll transmit them to our handler tomorrow. Do you need anything?”
Mary’s not the tepid housewife wringing her apron and waiting for her man to come home — she’ll have her own lethal tasks, tomorrow and the day after and the day after, their work never ends — 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 wouldn’t 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 they’d 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 he’s careful to not overstep, not crowd into her space, not demand too much.
His knee bumps against hers where she’s settled. That’s all.
“Uneasy. Why?” he asks, simply. Pressing for more information; he finds it easier to nudge others than to be talkative himself.
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no subject
Once she’s done, she works at putting all the supplies away, throwing out the trash, collecting the tools into the kit, but she doesn’t miss the look back at her over his shoulder. Her lips twitch in a smile, “Just doing my job,” 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. He’s 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 ‘work clothes’; 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:
“I have some notes on the operation, but I’ll transmit them to our handler tomorrow. Do you need anything?”
Mary’s not the tepid housewife wringing her apron and waiting for her man to come home — she’ll have her own lethal tasks, tomorrow and the day after and the day after, their work never ends — 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 wouldn’t 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 she’s settled. That’s all.
“Uneasy. Why?” he asks, simply. Pressing for more information; he finds it easier to nudge others than to be talkative himself.