[It's strangely easy; this isn't a conversation she could have with anyone else. If this had happened back home she would have just bottled it down, hid it all behind a smile, because that was how she dealt with things.
But they're mirrored in so many broken ways that this is safe in a way it wouldn't be with anyone else. Not Clint, Steve, not Tony. None of them are quite broken in these ways that she and Wash are. She hadn't done it in a long time prior to Byerly, and the easy excuse is that with SHIELD and then the Avengers she hadn't had the time. The truth is a little more complicated, more about that unpleasant mix of how hard it was for her to trust and that she'd spent so long being careful about who she was at SHIELD it became habit. Easier to pretend to be who they wanted her to be than who she was.
But this side of her had always been there, a song in her veins, of a girl whose first kiss was in the middle of a fight, one she'd stolen and followed with violence. Hands at her throat weren't always a threat. Contrary to what Byerly might have assumed about her, she was just as capable of intermingling roughness and sweetness, it just took trust. And she didn't trust him. She could trust what he was, because she understood spies, thought she could see what kind of spy he was. And that was something, enough for her to take the control he offered even as it blurred the lines a little, evaporated her anger for the moment.
Wash steps in closer, and she watches him, meeting his eyes and there's a slight catch to her breath, something about the way that his finger traces over split skin, her slender fingers curling softly against his. She heals slower here, so the marks are still red and obvious. There's that question and she thinks he already knows the answer, but there are some things where hearing it is important, she knows. Her expression shifts to something halfway between playful and wicked because she is not chaste and she is not a good person. But neither is he, and that's comforting more than anything.] Yes, I did.
[There's a weight to admitting to it, looking into his eyes. It's about more than just Byerly, and there's a faint question to her eyes as she watches him.]
no subject
But they're mirrored in so many broken ways that this is safe in a way it wouldn't be with anyone else. Not Clint, Steve, not Tony. None of them are quite broken in these ways that she and Wash are. She hadn't done it in a long time prior to Byerly, and the easy excuse is that with SHIELD and then the Avengers she hadn't had the time. The truth is a little more complicated, more about that unpleasant mix of how hard it was for her to trust and that she'd spent so long being careful about who she was at SHIELD it became habit. Easier to pretend to be who they wanted her to be than who she was.
But this side of her had always been there, a song in her veins, of a girl whose first kiss was in the middle of a fight, one she'd stolen and followed with violence. Hands at her throat weren't always a threat. Contrary to what Byerly might have assumed about her, she was just as capable of intermingling roughness and sweetness, it just took trust. And she didn't trust him. She could trust what he was, because she understood spies, thought she could see what kind of spy he was. And that was something, enough for her to take the control he offered even as it blurred the lines a little, evaporated her anger for the moment.
Wash steps in closer, and she watches him, meeting his eyes and there's a slight catch to her breath, something about the way that his finger traces over split skin, her slender fingers curling softly against his. She heals slower here, so the marks are still red and obvious. There's that question and she thinks he already knows the answer, but there are some things where hearing it is important, she knows. Her expression shifts to something halfway between playful and wicked because she is not chaste and she is not a good person. But neither is he, and that's comforting more than anything.] Yes, I did.
[There's a weight to admitting to it, looking into his eyes. It's about more than just Byerly, and there's a faint question to her eyes as she watches him.]