True to their word, the mercenaries let her decide when she would speak to them, communicating with her when spoken to or as necessary for the five days. The Soldier avoided her, turning and leaving rooms when she walked into them and sitting as far away from her as possible at the dinner table. The first few nights were simply quiet and let her try to learn again to relax into sleep, but by the fourth night, the dreams had started again, propelling her up out of bed sweating and shaking. On the fifth night, she gave up trying to fall asleep and simply waited for the base to quiet. When she could no longer hear doors opening and closing up and down the hall, she got up, clad in her pajamas, and walked to the living room, intending to watch television until she could stand to sleep.
When she opened the door, the television was already on, a dark cutout silhouetted against the tumbling images on the screen. The figure turned and spoke, shoulders sagging. "Oh, it's you. I'll go then."
She knew him by the sound of his voice. "No, it's okay Solly, I'll go."
He grunted, irritated, and stood up suddenly, the television haloing his bare chest in pale, flickering light. Without another word, he stalked toward her, remote in hand. Despite the fact that she knew he was Solly, she was struck by how much his body resembled the BLU Soldier's and bit the inside of her lip to prevent herself from flinching again. A surge of annoyance at the flinch opened her mouth.
"Stop," she said, voice harsh. "Just… stop."
He stood a step from her and sighed. In the spare light, his face looked exhausted, eyes and lips turned down. "It's fine," he said faintly. "Here's the remote, I'll just go."
She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm, as much to reassure herself which man he was as to stop him from leaving. Her dream still clung to her, making him seem unreal in the strange, tricky light of the television. His forearm flexed under her hand, but he stayed still as she squeezed it.
"Stop," she said more softly. "I hurt your feelings, I think, and I didn't mean to."
His forearm rippled under her hand again. "You've had some bad experiences. It's fine."
"No, it's not, is it? You've been avoiding me."
He looked down at her, his expression irritated again and beneath it, she thought, guardedly hopeful. "It's fine," he repeated, voice quieting as he spoke. "I don't want to make things worse. I can go and leave you alone."
"Can we just … I've been having bad dreams and I …" Her voice trailed off with her breath.
He smiled, his face echoing the worn expression on hers. "Don't want to be alone? My dreams have been pretty shitty, too."
She gently tugged him toward the couch. "Sit with me?"
He let her lead him back to the couch, sitting a few feet from her. After several tense minutes had gone by, she sighed and scooted toward him, picking up his arm and putting it around her. She could feel the muscles in the arm around her tight with tension under his skin, but he said nothing, merely let her tuck it around herself and squirm until she found a comfortable position against his side and shoulder. She didn't recognize the movie playing, and after a few minutes, realized that she didn't care. He sighed. She listened with her eyes closed to the creak of his tendons and the windy sound of his breath as his lungs inflated.
He tightened his arm, making the small adjustments necessary to cradle her to his body. When the first flow of tears, silent and painless, wetted his chest, he pulled her into his lap and sat there in the flickering half-light, holding her. She looked up and he looked down to meet her eyes, his own wet. They stared at each other, at the same the worries and frustration of the last few weeks on each other's faces. She reached up, pulling his face down, and kissed him.
Salt in their mouths, moving gently against each other, wet and slick. She broke the kiss to straddle his lap, holding his face gently in hers. He wrapped his arms around her, around her waist and back, supporting her, and returned the kiss with the same gentleness.
"I missed you," he said simply when the kiss broke. "I missed you and I wasn't sure you'd want to touch me again, or even to see me, or if you were angry and I had hurt you, or if you thought I would hurt you."
He watched her face fall and made a dry little sound like a sob, then pressed his lips to hers again, less gently, trying to distract her, to take the words back, pulling them from her mouth. After a frozen moment, she returned the kiss with a fevered desperation, seeking forgetfulness or even just relief at being close where there had been unaccustomed distance. When he reached for the hem of her shirt, she took it from him and shimmied out of it, tossing it to the side.
His skin was hot against hers, and she could feel him holding himself back, the tremor in his body sending tremors through hers.
"Stop," she said. "Please stop holding back."
The Soldier made a rumbling noise. "Please let me be gentle," he said softly, the growl hiding under his self-control. "Please. Relax."
She sighed, breath warm against his face, and went limp one muscle at a time. When she had finally managed to let herself sag against his hands, he stood and put her down on the couch, then knelt between her legs. Bracing his arms on the couch back, he framed her shoulders and leaned forward, breath caressing her as he gently touched his lips to her cheeks, to her lips and the line of her jaw, to the point of her chin as it rose and the column of her neck, lingering on the throbbing veins on either side of her neck. She shivered from the heat of his breath in the cool air of the room, and he chased that shiver, circling spots on her neck that pulled it from her again as her nerves sang. When she reached for him, he clicked his tongue with a look of mock annoyance, then froze, nervously checking her face. She smiled, small and encouraging.
He sighed, relieved, and returned to the tender skin of her neck, slowly working his way down and pulling from her small exhalations, little moans and guttural sounds, growing louder by increments and filling the room. When he reached a nipple and drew it into his mouth, she reached up, cupping his head, the wires of her nerves sparkling.
He smiled against her breast and reached up with a large hand, kneading as his lips and tongue moved, hooking and tugging the rings in her nipples. She made a musical noise, as much a note as a sigh, the beginning of a song and praise. His other hand rose, cupping both breasts to tease more of it from her with the wet pressure of his mouth and the calloused warmth of his hands.
She shifted against him, lips sliding as she moved, and he made a musical sound of his own, a bass rumbling, pleasure in her response and his ability to provoke it. With a final kiss between her breasts, he slid his hands down her sides, kissing a line down the middle of her chest and headed slowly for the loose line of her pajama pants. She moved for him, letting him pull them from her while kissing the line across her stomach where they had been, leaving her cold and naked but for the hot line of contact along their bodies. With a mischievous smile, he circled around her, kissing down the line of her legs to her knees and back up.
The Cook made a greedy little grunt, an alto noise that shaded into a growl, and he laughed against the skin of her inner thigh. He laid a frustratingly gentle kiss against the seam of her lips, mouth still twitching with the urge to smile, then curved his hands around her ass, cradling her. A second kiss and she wriggled, giving him an accusatory, indignant look. At the broad, slow lick he plied across her lips, she curled her fingers in the material of the couch, satisfaction almost comic in its intensity on her face. He licked her again, teasing her lips open and patiently coaxing her lips until they were swollen for the pleasure of watching her growing tension wrinkle the skin between her eyebrows, her hips squirming in the bowl of his hands.
Her breasts quaked up the line of her body and he watched them jiggle as she moved, eyes rolled up to see the evidence he could feel with his mouth, her face softening, pleading, the sounds pouring guttural and sincere from her. He waited until the flavor of her changed, until she cried out, the muscle fluttering under his lips, and laid a last kiss against her, sliding his hands out from under her and running them up her body. She captured and kissed them, pulling him in so she could taste herself in his mouth.
His body was pressed against hers, hard against his own pajamas. She reached for him and he captured her wrist.
"You don't have to," he said softly. "I just wanted to be close to you for a moment, to do something you'd like."
Her eyes narrowed over her smile, a wickedly teasing smirk curving her lips, and she pushed him back to his knees, waiting. She sat up and ran her hands slowly down the plane of his body until they reached the edge of his pajamas, sliding them down. He sat up, then stood, allowing her to work his boxers and pajama pants down his body, stepping out of them.
"You sure, Rosie," he asked, breath short.
In response, she leaned in, feathering her breath down him to watch his cock twitch. With a pleased chuckle, she licked him, watching his face as he looked down at her, the hunger and fear in it, the grieving and the hope, his pupils wide and darkening his eyes. His whole body was a question, the same question written on hers, born of loneliness and worry, born of the desire for companionship and years passing without it, of hope slowly dying over time. And she answered it the only way it could be answered, one moment at a time and the choice to be near, reassuring him with her hands and mouth that she wanted to be there. He said nothing, but she realized when something warm hit her head that he was crying. He took a stuttering breath.
"Fuck," he said, voice thick, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get any on you." He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand and sniffed hard, blinking.
She sat back on the couch and drew him down to his knees and then into her, gasping from the blunt pressure as he slid in. He shivered and she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him down into her arms, kissing the wetness on his cheeks until he kissed her back, body moving small and gently inside hers. She encouraged him, her hips undulating until they broke the kiss. They stared at each other, the few inches between them full of what they could not say. She broke eye contact first, head tilting up as she fell back against the couch.
He sighed and reached for her hips, pulling her down slightly to get better leverage and watching as her eyes opened to slits, cheeks flushed and mouth open, lips red and slick, the wet sound of fucking growing louder.
"I want," he gasped, "together."
"Close," she gasped.
"Yes." A tremor ran up his arms.
She reached for herself, coming quickly with her eyes locked on his, lashes fluttering with effort. He joined her at the first hard spasm with a choked moan, and they rode out the aftershocks together. They stayed silent and looking at each other, for a few minutes before she spoke.
"Do you care," she said, voice still ragged as her heart slowed.
He inhaled sharply. "Yes," he said, worry flashing across his face.
She reached up for his neck, pulling him down until he was pressed against her body. "Me, too," she said. "I was hoping it wasn't stupid to care."
He kissed her cheeks before responding. "No. Not stupid." He kissed her again, softly, as much to touch his lips to hers as to slip between them.
"Thank you," she whispered against them. "Thank you."
There was a noise like someone clearing their throat and the Soldier looked up. The Spy was standing just inside the door, a mixture of embarrassment and surprise flushing his cheeks and making him cringe. "I wondered," he said apologetically, "who was up this late."
She tilted her head back until she could see the Spy, turned upside-down by the angle. "No stabbing," she said firmly. "This was my idea."
"Perhaps," the Spy said wryly. "I told them that to give you the room to recover. If you feel recovered and this is something you volunteered for, it is fine. If not, I will be quite aggrieved."
"I volunteered," she said, pulling herself slowly off the Soldier with a wet sound. She kissed his stiff face, then sat up and turned around, leaning back against the Soldier's chest. "And I regret nothing."
The Spy let his eyes wander down her—down the flush between her breasts, pausing on the bright circles of her nipple rings, down the bright red of her lips and the languidness of her body. "You certainly look happy."
The Soldier growled but she answered first. "I am. And I would appreciate the personal time to finish what I was doing."
The Spy's lips quirked, but he refused to smile. "Pardon, then," he said smoothly, and retreated out of the door.
The Soldier sighed heavily, his head dipping to rest his forehead on the top of her head. "It would have to be him," he murmured.
She looked around. "To be fair, we are in the living room with the door unlocked."
He grunted in acknowledgement. "We could take this somewhere else and do more of it, if you like."
"Maybe? I do want to take this somewhere else, but it may involve a naked nap."
"Fine with me," he said and kissed her head.
They slipped their pajamas back on and walked hand-in-hand to her room, where they took them off again and crawled into bed, eventually sleeping.
