Things We Don't Say
It's almost three in the morning when he is shaken awake by Natasha's hand on his shoulder. He comes up fighting, hand closing around her wrist with bruising force, his other hand clenched into a fist and about to lash out at her before he realises where he is and who is waking him. As recognition takes hold, he loosens his hold on her. "Are you okay?" he asks, noticing how pale her face is and how wide her eyes seem in the dark. "What's wrong?"
She shivers, lips quivering in the cold and he reacts without hesitation, raising the covers so that she can slip into the bed beside him. Her body moulds around his own, icy feet pressing up against his legs as she curls up close. This isn't like her, Natasha isn't the kind of woman who needs to cuddle up to anyone in search of comfort; her behaviour troubles him more than he can fully comprehend in his weary condition. "Can't sleep," she explains quietly, "too much going on in my head."
"What can I do?" he asks, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her in closer still. He doesn't like how cold she is, begins to worry that he missed something earlier, that she is more injured than he noticed, that she might be going into shock. It's unusual for him to see her so exposed.
"I just wanted to feel you is all," she admits quietly, "If I can feel you then I know you're still here and we survived this." He doesn't admit to her that he feels the same. He knows his partner like he knows himself so he can appreciate all too easily her panic, knows the need to know that she is alive and well after a mission like their latest one. Her hand creeps up his bare chest until her palm rests lightly over the gauze that she strapped over the most recent wound and he knows the direction that her thoughts have taken, it's the direction that his own take whenever he sees her blood flowing.
They are closer than partners, closer than siblings, closer even than most lovers and it hurts him to see her in pain, whether that pain is emotional or physical is irrelevant. He traces the bruises and scrapes that mar her skin and he wants to protect her always, even though he knows that if she knew that she would kick his ass. Instead he will settle for always having her back, whether it be on the battle field or in the quiet moments afterwards when the world is still and the air thickens with everything they don't say to one another.
As she settles against him, sleep creeping up on her once more, he listens to her breathing, shivering slightly as it blows against his neck, at least until it evens out and he is sure that she's sleeping. He turns his head, careful not to wake her, plants a gentle kiss on the top of her head and then, surrounded by the scent of her, allows himself to fall asleep.