(A/N: Slightly smutty.)
The Red Room Academy, Moscow, 2004
Stella's fingers ghosted over the keys of the polished black piano stationed in the Red Room's ballet studio. There wasn't a single soul in sight, yet the dampened taps of pointe shoes and the relentless stomping of ballet master Sterelny's staff echoed in her head. Sitting down on the cold bench, her eyes swept over the sheet music left by the previous player, Sergei Lyapunov's 12 Études d'exécution transcendante, Op.11: Tempête. She didn't need to read the music; whatever they had, they memorized. They had to.
Her fingers produced the perfect amount of pressure on the keys. Following the composition with the utmost precision, anyone raised outside this environment would think Stella felt something. As the erratic melody perfumed her surroundings, she briefly closed her eyes, thirsting for the way the rumbling of the instrument cut under the floorboards and through her body, a distraction from the most recent memory that yearned to play out in her mind's eye.
This free time was a reward for a mission seamlessly accomplished. Three days ago she was sent to Ufa with HYDRA's top asset to locate a secret CIA base and lift their equipment and intel; they completed the mission in two and a half days. She spent her self-appointed free time that evening at the piano too, just as she did every mission, forever associating it as a prelude of what would come next.
"Beautiful," the Soldier drawled in his expected monotonous tone. He was sitting next to the unlit fireplace in their safe house, clutching a now empty glass tumbler. He watched Stella at the piano, her back rigid as she tapped out the final notes to a sonata. In her thick black sweater and matching combat trousers, inky hair cascading in wispy waves and tiny braids, she looked like a shadow divorced from the living being it was always meant to follow.
"Do you even know what beauty is? Did they teach you that, wherever you came from?" Stella retorted playfully–one of her many attempts to jest with her mission partner, seeking some form of vitality from him. He only let out a huff, which to her was always a victory.
She and the Soldier had been dancing around each other for months like predator stalking predator. After her and Natasha's graduation ceremony, he began training the two of them to be stronger, more agile, and more brutal. Better at playing characters and coercing targets for intelligence, Natasha was permitted to execute missions on her own. It was decided that Stella would be best put to use paired with HYDRA's most prized possession, acting as hunters to perform three functions: intimidate, gather intel, and kill–abilities that Stella would take to S.H.I.E.L.D. to be exploited by Director Fury after the Black Widow agreed to stay with the good side on the condition that her sestra be saved and granted asylum.
The tension that rose between the two was inexplicable, a part of life that Madame B and the ladies of the Red Room never trained Stella for. She thought she had numbed her capacity to feel; the months of her life bled together the more she drew the blood of others, time only marked by the next mission. The first time she felt the flutter in her chest, she thought she was on the cusp of a heart attack, until she reminded herself the serum made it impossible. When she was assigned the next mission with the Soldier, the stir in her chest returned at the prospect of his arrival, like a coil, tense and twisting. It was a sensation that she fought, but the coil sat heavily in her chest and wound each time he offered to equip her with an extra weapon, when he systematically checked over her locking harness at the start of each mission, everytime they perfectly synchronized a kill. The alien feeling in her heart became increasingly difficult to repress until it poured out in cascades of caresses and kisses and soft motions–all reciprocated with the fullest force.
"Mission report," the Soldier teased sarcastically, setting his glass down and stalking towards her.
Stella sat still, eyes resting on the keys of the piano, always allowing him the first serve in their never-ending game. Kneeling behind her, he trailed his right hand up her spine, grazing the pathways made by her bones–the dips and protrusions he had memorized in a short few months–and when his palm encased her collarbone, he softly stretched open the neckline of her sweater.
"Targets eliminated," she hummed, leaning her head to the left.
He brushed her hair off her shoulder, and wrapped his left arm around her torso. The first kiss landed in the crook of her neck, the second a few centimetres higher, the third on her jaw. His stubble felt like electrodes against her flesh. She could hear his arm whirr and with a jerk, he pulled her flush to him.
"How?" he growled in her ear.
She hissed, pounding the keys harder. The acts they shared in private, the ones that lay outside death and torture and theft and obedience, felt all consuming. The tune's staccato punctuated the racing in Stella's chest that she deeply desired to quell. She wanted to push away sensory memories of him: his teeth nipping at her thighs, his jagged exhalations on her shoulder, the coolness of his left palm gripping the nape of her sweaty neck, the weight of him, his restraint as they wrestled for dominance. She barked at her heart to stop its frantic beating.
"Do you want me to stop?" his voice took on a rare timidity. His right hand cupped her face and she grazed her swollen lips against his warm palm. He always asked; she always reminded him she was hard to break. The yellow light of the small lamp on the bedside table shone across his exposed back, permitting his metal arm to bear a false sun in its reflection.
"Don't stop," she exhaled, and he eclipsed her.
Their duo missions became more frequent since his training with the Widows ended. After being released from cryofreeze, he would receive orders from HYDRA before being escorted by jet from Siberia to Moscow to the remote Red Room, arriving in the middle of the night to step into Stella's private quarters while she was in bed, stationing himself on a chair positioned across from her lying form. Upon sitting down, he would whisper, "звезда"–a greeting that he didn't realize fell on her ears. Star. She would always hear him, but never visibly stirred, only acknowledging his presence when she woke to receive orders.
They would not sleep again until their mission was complete, until the safe house. Perhaps exhaustion brought a weakness their masters didn't yet know how to erase, a vulnerability, a nerve, that was always re-exposed just before permission to slumber.
A wash of sunlight pronounced by snow snuck through the curtains of the bedroom. Stella woke, her body knowing the day had hit 06:00. She slept on her back with an arm raised above her head – a muscle memory that seemed impossible to erase. She stilled for a few minutes before lowering her arm and rolling over. He was there on his side like he always was, the blankets pooling around his waist, eyes half open and locked onto her.
"They'll be here soon," his voice was rough. There would never be a time in their shared existence when 'good morning' rolled off their tongues.
He slid his left arm under the sheets, lightly gripping her torso and pulling her towards him. She waited a beat before leaning in, the collision of their kiss acting as their final wake up call.
"солдат," Soldier, she whispered, "Do you ever wish we could stay like this forever?"
A mistake. It was a horrible mistake. Increasing her speed on the piano's keys, tempo cutting through the air, she rendered the piece imperfect but she didn't care. She just wanted to forget. Why wasn't the music making her forget?
His brow creased, "wish?" He didn't understand the word. It was never used on missions, never spoken by victims in their final attempts at negotiating for their lives, "I–"
"We should get ready," Stella jolted out of his grasp and pushed the covers away, getting out of bed.
His eyes drank in her pear-shaped form, wandering to her thighs that no longer held traces of last night's physical confession.
"звезда," he called.
She threw him a tender look over her shoulder, "forget my words, солдат."
The final cord reverberated through the studio. Stella's cheeks burned with frustration, and her chest heaved as she gasped for air , like she had been choked to the edge of oblivion. She wanted to raise her fists and pound her temples. Had she changed? She didn't get a second more to think as her attention shot to the redhead stationed at the archway, whose neutral expression was betrayed by the minute widening of her jade eyes–something only Stella was attuned to. Before Natasha could open her mouth in concern, the brunette dropped her head towards her chest, squeezing her eyes shut.
"How do I know if I feel love, сестра?"
Whatever question Natasha had died on her lips.
"How do I kill it?"