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Natasha was good at rationalizing behavior.
She could identify the motivation behind almost any action, even the seemingly most uncontrolled. Everyone had a thought process, and almost everyone had a reason for why and how they did something. No matter how stupid the decision might have been in retrospect.
For instance, she had assumed the night before that she was useless. So she had latched onto Thor like a leech, attempting to suck every source of life he had out of him and feed her own insecurities. And her exhaustion and hormonal imbalance had only made the situation worse and made her more pathetic in her outreach.
Natasha wondered how to handle it with him; wondering if she should apologize for her behavior and attempt to explain it came from a place of emotion and desperation due to the pregnancy. That he shouldn't feel awkward about any of it. She could have done that with anyone who had been around at that moment, or so she believed. She had a moment of weakness, that was all.
...but that wasn't completely the truth either. Natasha did not open up easily, nor would she allow herself to have a moment of weakness around a stranger, someone she did not trust. She clearly felt comfortable enough around Thor that she could allow herself to even be a touch exposed.
And she had gone to him for comfort, a leisure she should have never attempted. It was how she had ended up pregnant in the first place.
Natasha needed to extra careful, especially what with her hormones hindering her ability to be logical. She would need to be more calculated, more meticulous in her actions.
For now, she could accept slipping up this once, as long as she refrained from allowing it to happen again.
Stupid decision, one that would likely incur multiple consequences, but it still had reasoning behind it. Natasha had been impulsive, but there was still a logical reasoning for why she had acted that way. She did not do it based on emotion, based on a personal liking of Thor.
Her actions had nothing to do with her personal relationship with the demigod, or so she concluded.
She laid in bed, mulling over the night before. She didn't even remember going to her room at all, let alone falling asleep. She could just remember the overwhelming fear that crept into her heart as she clutched onto his arm for dear life, for her life.
She had probably just passed out in her state of exhaustion, likely to have been carried to bed by Thor directly after.
Natasha wondered if he had checked on her, since she wouldn't snap at him for doing so this once.
Natasha found it interesting, and annoying, how he had taken such an interest in protecting her, and not only for the child's sake. Natasha, in all respects, seemed to have taken the place of Jane in his life. She was now the one he worried about, the one he could devote time and energy into.
She was the one he could over protect, as means to compensate for Loki, to ensure no one else ever would have to fall and hurt as long as Thor could protect them.
Though, Natasha was nothing like Jane. She was not one to swoon over Thor so easily, to giggle and revert to the age of twelve and blush every time he opened his mouth. And she was not one to flaunt her intelligence either, to chime in every time a conversation took place if only to have her piece.
On the other hand, Natasha was not nurturing like Jane. She wasn't designed to coddle Thor when he was down. She could empathize with him, she could express some mild understanding to his pain, but she could not promise him everything would be okay and hug him.
Natasha couldn't lie to him, to anyone like that.
She rolled onto her side, wondering how long the connection would last if Thor truly was just using her as a placeholder for Jane. Soon enough he would realize how calculated Natasha really was, how smart and efficient she was on her own.
Thor appreciated those things about her, but would that make him want to stay around her? She doubted it. Jane was the kind of woman he liked, the kind he wanted to build some type of relationship with.
Sooner or later, Natasha's connection with Thor would end. All they would share is a kid, nothing more. And Natasha could live with that; she was not meant for company after all.
She could live life on her own, it was what she had been programmed to do.
Despite this assertion, the dying humanity Natasha possessed felt uneasy about the whole thing, sad almost.
It didn't want Thor to go, to leave her despite the inevitable.
She gently stroked her stomach absent mindedly; it had now begin to push forward, the pregnancy finally starting to show the physical signs of its presence.
For the first time, it seemed, Natasha acknowledged the fact that there was a baby forming inside her.
She looked down at her stomach, running a hand lightly over her shirt. It scared her, to know something was living inside her. Natasha could handle almost anything life threw at her; she was trained to be the best, be emotionless, to be a machine programmed to kill.
How was she supposed to house a child for months, someone who couldn't even pinpoint a value on her own life? It was easy when she could call the pregnancy an inconvenience, a technical error that she could not even physically see. Then she could almost ignore it, deny it even.
She could focus on her work, her life, her only duty on the earth because she could pretend it did not even exist inside her.
And Natasha felt a little bad about that, but she had been made to fight, to work, to overcome any personal issue as it was trivial.
She sighed, looking ahead again.
"Sorry," she mumbled halfheartedly to whatever was growing inside her.
Natasha looked towards her alarm clock, seeing it was approaching near one in the afternoon. Her chance at making it to work seemed futile, yet it was Natasha's lack of worry concerned her. No matter how much energy she attempted to force into worrying about her job, about being discarded as useless, she couldn't find much to worry about.
Natasha knew they would take her back once the kid was born, especially because she was sending it to Asgard. She would return to work as her old self, her normal and functioning self.
Perhaps her mental breakdown had been somewhat beneficial, she could put things in perspective now.
Or perhaps for the mean time, she had found a role as Thor's caretaker. She had found a purpose in his presence in her home, in her life. She was responsible for him, for taking care of making him food and waking him up.
Natasha was responsible for his well being. And it gave her something else to dwell on, something else to do until SHIELD would take her back again.
She looked back at the clock.
And, as if one of Pavlov's dogs, the second she read the time her stomach started growling and whining for food.
She pushed herself out of bed, one hand still on her stomach as she stroked it gently.
"There's no food," Natasha said, slamming the refrigerator door shut as she looked at Thor, sitting at the dining table. He was rubbing his eyes sleepily, her commotion in the kitchen apparently loud enough to wake him.
He glanced at her as if she were mad, one hand still wiping away the sleep from his left eye. "You are mistaken," he informed her slowly, groggily.
"Nothing I want to eat," she said.
She heard him sigh heavily, pushing himself up from the table and walking into the kitchen to aid her. He started pulling cabinets open, looking at what could sustenance could be inside that Natasha would find somewhat appealing.
"There has to be something," he said, pulling out a box of cereal and pushing it towards her slightly. "This looks...somewhat appetizing..."
Natasha looked at the box, then at him. "Try again."
He sighed and shoved the box back into the cabinet.
They spent a few moments in silence, tearing apart Natasha's kitchen in the hopes of finding something for her to eat.
"Why do you own so much tea?" she heard him ask after a moment. She turned towards him from her lower cabinets. He was looking at her skeptically, holding at least five containers of tea in each hand.
She shrugged, as if it were obvious. "Tea is good."
"No wonder you don't have any food in here," she heard him mumble to himself, throwing the boxes of tea back into the cabinet.
"No one asked for your two cents," she chimed in emotionlessly, sniffing a rather expired item she had discovered.
"No one asked you to buy so much tea..."
Natasha looked up at him and quirked a brow. "You're not a happy person in the morning, are you?" she asked, her voice sounded as if she was conducting an interview.
Thor seemed somewhat apologetic for his behavior, his shoulders fell and he sighed. "Sorry," he said quietly, turning back to the cabinet.
"It's fine," she said after a moment. "I think it's somewhat humorous."
She watched him smirk slightly, continuing to dig through her cabinets.
"Glad you're amused," he chuckled slightly. He paused, glancing at her momentarily. "Do you enjoy the morning, Natasha?"
"I don't mind it," she said, closing the cabinet and sitting back against her stove. "It doesn't make much difference to me what time of day it is."
He glanced at her, almost like he was interviewing her now. "You don't prefer night over day, or vice versa?"
She shrugged. "Nope. Time really means little to me."
He nodded.
"What about you?" she asked.
She could find no logical means behind asking such a question, but just tossed it up to her old habits, interrogating someone until they gave away everything.
Though what she was to do with this information, she wasn't sure.
"Night," Thor spoke, looking rather disgusted at something Natasha had in her cabinet. He sighed. "I suppose that...in the evening, I spent most nights up, talking with my brother."
He offered her a bag of chips he found in the next cabinet. She shook her head and remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
"During the day, when I was awake for it," he said, continuing to look through the cabinet. "I was busy with my friends, boasting and attacking other lands we deemed inferior. We were ferocious, bold...no one dared challenge a one of us."
There was something sad, yet wistful about his tone that Natasha found interesting, complex.
"Then there were my duties that kept me occupied during the remainder of the day," he continued, giving up his search and leaning back against the counter. "So nights were solely spent on speaking with Loki, catching up with him, listening to him and ensuring he was all right. Though, perhaps in retrospect it still wasn't enough time to show him I truly did care about him."
Natasha shrugged. "He should have seen the effort you made."
Thor sat across from her on the floor. "It's not that simple, Natasha-you are sweet to say so, but it is not that simple. You see, if I had spent less time trying to capture everyone else's attention with my stupidity and brash actions, Loki would have been seen, noticed for his brilliance and-and his wit. He was more deserving of the attention than I was."
He sighed slightly, regret now overshadowing his face. "They only noticed me because I demanded attention. It was Loki who deserved the attention, and I took that away from him. And all I gave him in return was nights, when no one else would demand anything of me. It looks like, now that I'm speaking of it, I only appeared to give him attention when it was convenient for me-"
"You were both princes," she reminded him calmly. "He knew what your days were like. He should have understood you were just doing to best that you could. You can't keep blaming yourself."
"How can I not?" Thor asked gently, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "Natasha, my whole life, I have made stupid decision after decision, all the while my father forgave me, gave me more chances than the next. Loki, who only attempted to gain my father's attention by behaving like me, is now damned to remain a prisoner in his father's house!"
Thor tilted his head back, looking at her. "All Loki ever wanted was to be noticed. And I couldn't even truly give him that."
"You gave him what you could," Natasha justified. "He knew the difference between right and wrong, Thor, but he continued with his actions. You can't blame yourself for his choices. You can't hold yourself accountable for the behavior of others."
Natasha kept her stare on him steady, her words pouring out without filter, no restraint. His pain was hers, his burdens were ones she understood too well, ones she could not fix in herself. "And you cannot try and fix things for everyone else, because of what happened with him."
Her words struck him, she saw him flinch and turn his eyes away from hers.
She continued to press though, almost as if she was speaking to herself. "I know what that's like," she said. "I'm the same way."
He looked up at her again.
She tensed, but she couldn't stop-she was like a broken bottle, once she was cracked, nothing could stop everything from spilling out into the open. "I know what it's like to want to fix your past by hiding in a new future. You're trying to fix things that can never be fixed, Thor. No amount of gold stars can change how you feel..."
Natasha swallowed. "But you're a good person-"
Thor laughed slightly, shaking his head. "No, I'm not," he stated openly. "I have failed too many people too many times, Natasha."
She kept her eye contact with him. "You're a good person to me."
There was a long moment of silence between them, but their gaze never faltered.
"Thank you, Natasha," he said after a moment.
She shrugged. "We're each allowed one mental break down. It's nothing."
Thor smiled slightly, looking at her. "We never got you something to eat."
Natasha quirked a brow, almost having completely forgetting about her roaring stomach. Her mouth was watering for something specific, something she clearly didn't possess.
After a moment, she realized what it was. "I'm in the mood for a milkshake," she said simply.
"Do you have th-"
"No," she said, cutting him off as she pushed herself off the ground, heading towards her purse to see how much money she had. "I'd have to go out and buy one."
He followed her out of the kitchen. "I can go find you one," he offered; Jane had sent him out a few times to pick up random items as she needed them; he figured he could identify somewhere selling milkshakes rather quickly.
Especially if Natasha was not feeling like going out; she should rest and take care of herself.
She shrugged, smiling slightly. "I think I can handle it," she reminded him, pulling her purse over her shoulder.
"Do you want to come?" she asked, looking towards him.
There was a moment between them.
"If you would like me to come," he said, his voice quiet. "I do not wish to bother you-"
"I'm not..." she sighed, taking a slow breath as she tried to remain polite. "I'm asking if you want to go. This has nothing to do with me wanting you there or not."
He laughed slightly. "But if I'm just going to pester you, there would be no point in me going."
"Well, it's also not good to stay in this house all day either," she said matter of factly. "You should be out doing things. It's better to be out and about, it helps keep your thoughts clear and focused."
Thor smiled crookedly. "So you would like me to come, in fact, you just are refraining from verbalizing the thought."
Natasha nodded, still removed emotionally. "More or less."
"That's kind of you to invite me."
"Like I said," she stated. "It's the logical thing to do."
"Whatever the case, I appreciate the invitation out," Thor said.
"Sure," she said with a small smile and a shrug, heading back into her room to find a sensible pair of shoes to wear for the car ride.
"Where are you thinking about going to eat?" he called after her.
"Um, a diner would be the likely place," she said, sitting on her bed as she scanned the room for shoes with the comfort of slippers in a somewhat stylish fashion. "I'm not ingesting anything from a fast food place."
There was a moment of silence between them.
"But, they're closer-"
"Nope," Natasha spat out automatically, going over the her closet.
"Fine, fine," he agreed. "I was only trying to tell you-"
"I am aware of what you were implying and I appreciate the concern," she said robotically, finding a pair of pale pink ballet slippers which she slid on her feet. "But I'd like to eat real food, if that's not a problem."
"It's not," he said, his voice getting louder as he walked towards her room. He stood in the doorway, watching her as she pulled her shoes on, wanting to say something but refraining from it. He looked bothered by his own thoughts, scared he would offend her in some way.
After waiting for a moment, and he still hadn't spoken, Natasha nodded in his direction. "You have something to say, spit it out."
Thor took a breath. "I believe perhaps...I should return to Asgard for a few days."
Natasha tensed, staring him down.
"Why now?" she asked urgently, though her urgency came from a place of selfishness.
He was leaving. Her distraction was leaving her, she tried to think as she watched him. But all she could call to her mind was that Thor was leaving her. He was moving away from Natasha.
She couldn't call him her distraction. She couldn't force the words to be spoken even in her mind.
It was Thor leaving. Nothing less.
Thor glanced at her, almost sheepishly. "Loki does need me, Natasha. No matter how much he may deny it-"
"Fine," Natasha cut him off robotically, keeping her eyes focused on him, the gaze steady. "That's fine."
"I'll be back soon," he promised quickly. "I'll leave in a few days, and will not be gone for more than-"
"Go now," she said with a forced, awkward shrug. "Then you can stay longer."
Thor knew he had offended her, despite his hopes that she would remain indifferent to his leaving. He had even thought she would prefer it. "Natasha, please; I do not wish to go for an ext-"
"It's nothing," she spat out emotionlessly. "I'm not going to be offended."
"Natasha, I don't want to go n-"
"What's keeping you here?" she spat at him. "What is the difference between leaving now or leaving in a few days?"
He watched her for a moment, his reason one he would not divulge to her. He seemed to distrust what her reaction would be.
She kept her face stern, set in stone. She didn't need him there, she didn't need anyone-yet Natasha couldn't let go of the fact that he was leaving.
Thor wanted to leave. He didn't need her, he couldn't be her focus.
And what really bothered Natasha was the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Thor not only did not need her, he didn't want her.
She hated herself for staring at him and feeling that sense of abandonment, looking him and realizing that she wanted him to need and want her.
Natasha wanted him to want to be around her.
Natasha wanted him to like her; she felt her stomach churn in discontent with her own weakness.
"Just get out," she spat at him automatically. No hurt, no pain, all of her own feelings masked behind her lips, set in a firm line.
Her unwavering gaze kept focused.
Thor didn't move.
"I do not want to leave, Natasha," he said gently, as if reading her mind as she stood there.
Natasha sighed.
She had seen him as a friend, an ally; he knew what pain she had been through, he'd held her at the weakest she had been in years.
Yet he could just up and leave. She didn't matter to him at all.
And Natasha knew she shouldn't have cared what he thought about her, if he ever thought about her at all. Their relationship was one that should have never existed, forged out of necessity and circumstance.
It shouldn't have meant anything to her. She was stupid to look at him as comfort, to find him as her temporary distraction, her new purpose. Humanity was not something she should have tampered in, dependence was never something she should have looked towards.
People only let her down.
She took a breath, about to tell him to leave for the millionth time.
"Jus-"
"I don't want to leave you," he said quickly, bluntly. It was like if he didn't say it now, he would have never admitted it to her.
Natasha ran her tongue over her upper lip, keeping her gaze focused on him in an attempt to ignore her racing, nagging thoughts at his words.
"Then don't," she said with a shrug.
She didn't want him to go. She hated herself, loathed herself for feeling anything towards him.
Natasha should have told him to fuck off, to get out. She didn't care about him, she wasn't supposed to feel anything towards him.
Yet all she wanted to do was grab onto him, to keep him with her like a child holding onto a balloon. The desperation, the need made her uncomfortable in her own skin.
Thor smirked somewhat. "Am I that good of a distraction for you?"
Natasha's expression softened somewhat at his words, how he saw himself through her eyes.
"Yes," she lied.
Whether the lie was more directed towards him, or herself, Natasha wasn't sure.
Thor was a good distraction, that was why she kept him around. That was what Natasha had to tell herself anyway, her own masochistic way of keeping him around without ever truly having to acknowledge her feelings.
"Do you still wish to go out?" he asked after a moment of silence.
"No," Natasha said wistfully, confusion at her own mixture of feelings showing in her eyes.
He paused again. "Do you feel all right?"
"No," she admitted, but it wasn't with any ailment or problem Thor would understand, alleviate. She hated herself, she hated him for making her care about him. Yet all she could do was repeat, over and over in her mind, that he was just a distraction.
Just a distraction.
Nothing more to her.
It would become her mantra.
"What is it?"
She stared at him. "It's nothing," she said slowly, deliberately. What would she do if he left?
Natasha wondered if she would bounce back at all; she had somewhat crumbled at the mere idea of him leaving. What if she just woke up and he was gone one morning, back to Asgard for an uncertain amount of time.
Natasha could repress it-she knew what it was like to lose someone. She was good at masking her pain, playing it off as nothing.
But what would she do when she was alone, stuck in her apartment by herself for the first time in a few months? Could she deny herself memories and want in a building they had shared? Could she feign being all right with herself, look in the mirror and pretend that she was fine?
"You should go tonight," she said gently, looking up at him. "Loki needs you."
He seemed surprised by her rapid change in thought; Natasha couldn't blame him.
"Are...you sure?" he asked cautiously. "I do not have to-"
"You do," she reminded him, folding her arms protectively around her chest. "You go where you're needed. It's what good people do."
Natasha's words hurt them both, echoing through the silence between them.
"If that is what you wish," Thor said briskly before turning out of the room.
Natasha kept her arms crossed, her eyes downcast at her carpet.
Thor didn't need to be a part of her sick, twisted mind games. He already had his brother for that. He was better off without her.
Natasha should have expected this result.
"Natasha..."
Natasha, her eyes still closed in a state of being half asleep, barely responded to her name. She had taken something to help her sleep through the night; Thor had packed everything and was planning on leaving later that night. Natasha had watched him as she ate dinner.
And she remembered regretting telling him to go, but was unable to revoke her ever-changing-command of him.
She had turned in early, wary of staying awake and having to watch him walk through the door. If she awoke to find him completely gone, she hoped that perhaps she could pretend he had never been there at all.
The baby would be her constant company; she could forget about him, Loki, every trait he possessed that she found so compelling and interesting that made her grow a fondness for the demigod.
But even in her bed, in the darkness that consumed her room once she shut off her light, all she could do was lay awake and wait to hear the door open into her hallway, waiting for the night to swallow him up, take him away from her.
So she had taken something to help her sleep, to hide her from the heartache that was to inevitably follow the sound of the closing slab of wood in its little frame.
"Natasha," the voice was sharper, cutting, dragging her from her dreams into the blackness of reality.
Her wide eyes snapped open and she stared into the blackness of her room.
The door to her bedroom was open, the dimly lit hallway spilling it's somewhat orange glow into the room. Once her eyes had settled in the darkness, she could make out Thor, standing a little bit in her room.
"Shit," she said with a sigh, pushing herself into a sitting position.
"My apologies," he said gently, most of him still shielded in darkness. "I just-"
The good thing was, once Natasha was awake, she was wide awake.
"Good thing I realized it was you," she said, surprisingly emotionless for having just woken up. "I would have shot you otherwise."
"...that is good you realized it then," he said, a touch awkwardly.
"It wouldn't have been fatal," she informed him. "Just enough to buy me time to see whether you posed a threat or not."
"I thought you left," she said quickly, reaching clumsily for her alarm clock. "What time is it?"
"That was what I came to talk to you about," he said, walking over towards the bed and kneeling beside her. "I have been up, all night, thinking about what you said-"
"What time..." she repeated, looking at her alarm clock and seeing it was about four in the morning.
"After much thought, I have concluded that perhaps it is best if I remain here with you for a bit longer," he said, his tone somewhat excited to have drawn this conclusion. "Because..."
There was a pause in his words, and even in the dark, Natasha could see him trying to properly phrase what in truth, he was afraid to say.
"Because you think I need you?" she finished for him, waiting for his agreement.
"Yes," he confessed, as she had assumed. "But that is only part of it."
"What's the other part?" she asked with a quirked brow.
"It's nothing of importance now," he said gently.
"Did you get another human pregnant too?" she asked dryly, rolling onto her side to face him.
"No," he said with a small, somewhat insincere laugh. "It has nothing to do with any other woman."
"I don't mind you staying," she said, looking at where she thought he was in the darkness. For a moment, it felt as if Natasha was speaking to her imagination, a dream.
She had created Thor there in her room with her; he really wasn't staying at all. The real Thor had already gone for home, for his brother.
And in her state of drug induced exhaustion, she created a replacement.
Almost as if to test her theory, as if she believed she was right-he was no more than a figment of her imagination, she tentatively and slowly reached her hand outward, towards where she thought he was. Soon enough, her palm made contact with the rough stubble on his cheeks.
Natasha had been proven wrong; he had stayed with her. He was kneeling by her bedside. Though the intimate gesture bewildered her, fascinated her; it was one thing for her to have sex with him in the back of her car, it was another to just be touching his face, for no real reason than she wanted to.
It was a moment of intimacy Natasha had rarely experienced with anyone before, and it was something she could not easily pull away from. She stroked the skin on his cheek with her thumb, so lightly she wondered if Thor even felt it.
This was like an experiment for her. She just wondered what would happen with each new move, how long she could maintain the gesture.
"You're a good person," she said gently, her tone like she was speaking to a child, to a friend, so he would never know how important this gesture was to her, one that she would never allow herself in the light of day, when she could see his face.
Perhaps the darkness gave her the illusion it still was imaginary, despite her knowledge of the contrary. Natasha could mask the intimacy of her actions in night. She could be nothing more than the victim of the allure of the black night.
No one ever had to know why she acted this way. It was simple enough to blame it on the night.
She felt his cheek shift under her touch, her hand soon gently enclosed in his and returned to her bed. "I should not have woken you with the news, you would have found me on the sofa tomorrow when you woke. Do forgive me for this rude awakening. "
"But I likely would have shot you, since I thought you left," she replied stoically.
He chuckled slightly, resting his arms on the bed. "I suppose I would have deserved it. Technically, I would be a most unwelcome house guest after I promised to leave."
"Not most unwelcome," she said honestly. "That title belongs to Stark."
"Where does that leave me then?"
"You're welcome here," she said after a moment of thought.
There was a pause between them, a moment where saying nothing conveyed much more between them than they had hoped, and the darkness only made it worse.
"You should sleep," Thor forced from his lips awkwardly, beginning to push himself from the bed.
"Goodnight," she said stoically as he attempted to act as though he was straightening out the blankets; really, he was pulling them over her a bit more.
He sighed, staying by her bed and trying to say something to her. In the dim light from the hall, she saw him sit back slightly, running a hand through his hair anxiously, sighing, defeated yet again. She heard him begin to form sentences, but never get past the first syllable.
"What's wrong?" she asked, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She wondered if he had changed his mind, that he wanted to go back to Loki, and he only remained with her out of necessity.
"No, Natasha, sleep," he said gently, coming towards the bed again and trying to coax her into sleeping. "It is nothing but my own stupidity-"
"Tell me," she demanded, sitting up completely. She could tell he was close to her, even in the darkness. She could feel his breath gently hit her skin.
"I can't," Natasha heard him mutter, only to be followed by an attempt to pull away from her.
She felt his hand gently fall upon her side, an attempt she assumed was meant towards getting her to lay down again. But he never saw it through.
The darkness made for a timid boldness neither seemed able to shy away from.
Natasha leaned forward slightly until she felt his breath hit her cheek again. She could hide here, she could deny all she wanted to and repress everything in the light of day. But for now, in the safety of her friend the darkness, Natasha could give into her humanity, her overbearing sense of want and need that seemed to overshadow all her logical inclinations with Thor, without fear of judgment.
Without fear of rejection. Because in the darkness, what was real? If one couldn't see it, did it truly hold any value at all?
She lightly pressed her lips against his, holding them there until she felt him respond, kissing her back with a gentle tenderness; a bitter kiss that only seemed to get more passionate, harder, needier with each passing second until it was barely different from their first kiss that night in the bar.
Rough, sloppy, desperate; Natasha's fingers tangled in his hair, Thor's tightening grip on her side as they both desperately attempted to hold onto each other, to make the most of the blinding shield of blackest night that could allow them to be selfish, that could allow them to want without shame.
The emotional force behind their actions was the only difference from before; instead of pure need, there was a wanting as well that the darkness could let them ignore, deny for awhile.
Until the light of day would serve as a cruel and harsh reminder.