riverviewlogs | may catch-all

Entry tags:

may catch-all

who: Natasha Romanoff and your character
what: lots of walking, fair amount of drinking, little bit of rescuing
when: month of May
where: all around town, particularly bars or clubs
warnings:

1 dino-fight

There’s something about throwing herself into work. It’s not satisfying, that’s not the word she would use. It’s… well, it’s familiar. Leaving a whole lot of death in her wake, that’s what she was built for. Usually it’s very bad people, but she’s almost used to it being weird lizard monsters, freaky insects, giant crocodiles, various dinosaur like creatures. It’s almost becoming the norm. Even better when they turn out to taste good. Save some money on a food bill. Clint would probably find that morbidly funny.

The flying ones are the worst, not because of the difficulty, but because of familiarity. Fighting with her eyes on the sky, with a mind to vertical action, that’s a throw-back to something real.

Luckily, that train of thought is cut off by a surprised shriek and a call for help, and she has something else to focus on. That something being a pterodactyl monster with a person in its claws. Not ideal. Natasha turns her attention, assesses the way the creature is moving with the additional weight, and takes the last two shots in her clip. Both connect, neither take it down. So she ejects the empty clip, slams another one into her gun, flips herself up onto the awning of a building, and takes a slower and more careful shot. This one travels through the creature’s eye, and the heavy, meaty sound of it hitting the ground would be a lot more satisfying if not for the fact that it’s landed on the intended meal.

Natasha jumps down, and jogs over, bracing her shoulder underneath the hulking corpse and shoving it up and off of the person beneath. “You ok?”

2 getting as drunk as humanly possible

It’s not just the latest monster attack that’s got her drinking. It would be nice to pretend that’s the case. It would be slightly healthier. Sadly, it’s not true. She was drinking before the dinosaurs turned up, and she’ll be drinking after they’re gone. Some nights, she goes to clubs, gets lost in the loud music and the dark corners, lets other people buy her drinks. Most of the time, she just ends up in a bar that doesn’t look to her like it’s full of people who will want to talk, and stays until closing so that she can be alone without feeling completely alone.

Which does not mean she always stays alone. It’s impossible to get away from everyone. Occasionally she ends up seeing someone she knows from work, from her building or gym, and there’s no longer an easy way to tell them to get lost. Or maybe she’s just tired. Perhaps, deep down, she doesn’t really want to be alone.

3 walking after dark

Even after the bars close, or when Natasha realizes that if she keeps going, she’s going to end up falling asleep there, she doesn’t always want to go back to her apartment. It’s not home. It’s about as far from home as any place she’s ever lived.

So she walks, just to put it all off.

She walks through streets of closed up shops, lights off and shades drawn, and most of the time she’s thinking about the stillness of Manhattan after the alien attack. Occasionally a certain stretch of the road or cluster of stores will make her think of even earlier times, of dead drops and fleeting connections in deserted town centers, dancing through camera blind spots like it was effortless, like it wasn’t a heart-pounding jumble of precision and uncertainty, tempting fate with every step.

She walks along the perimeter, checking the guards, looking for faces she knows, ones she doesn’t, listening for movement beyond the fence. She tries to imagine what’s coming next. She’s rarely correct, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop wondering. This is not the kind of life she can predict. It’s not the kind of life she ever wanted to be living. Sometimes that circuit will carry her through until morning, and she can skip sleep entirely, grab a quick shower and head to the gym, pretend she’s fine.

wildcard!
Everybody knows how to do this one. Want to do something I haven’t talked about already? This is the option for you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's early morning, and Rodney has been in the Wall R&D office all night, poring over his tablet, over the maps of the terrain he's been getting back from the teams out scouting the wall, piecing them together and putting them on the big clearboard LED displays in the team's conference room.

There's no real reason, of course, that he should still be here, but he just keeps finding new things to keep him occupied here. Things that keep his mind busy and stop him from dwelling on all the things he's trying his hardest not to dwell on - the leftover traumas from home, mostly, exacerbated by both Carson and Elizabeth having arrived. It's always been easier for Rodney to withdraw when things are painful, inside his metaphorical shell, which in reality is mostly comprised of equations and logic and science, objective things that are powerful and interesting and complicated enough to overwhelm and block out the subjective.

But there comes a point when he can no longer keep it up, when even his brain gets too tired to carry on with computations and equations, and that's when it's time to go fall into bed at home, to let himself transition immediately from awake to asleep without that troublesome time in between where overthinking ruins any chance of sleep.

It's as he leaves the office, locking it behind himself, that he sees her coming in from a patrol. He's seen her before, a pretty redheaded woman with a serious expression, always at this time of day. For a moment, he considers passing her by again like he has so many times before, and continuing home.

Instead, he lifts a hand and waves, with a tired smile.

"Good morning. Or, should I say, good night? Another patrol?"

Natasha is coming off an overnight shift, trying to decide if she wants to shower and start her day and replace sleep with caffeine, or go find something to remove her from reality a little bit until she has a reasonably good chance of not dreaming, and roll the dice. She knows Rodney's face, vaguely. She's seen him around. He's not a surprise. The fact that he speaks to her is the surprise. Never seemed all that interested in talking to her before.

She nods her head a few times, slowly. Another thrilling night on the wall. As for morning... "I think it probably depends on whether you mean it conversationally or technically," she says, a quick glance at the phone she's just pulled out of a pouch on her belt confirming that it is, indeed, technically morning. "Good-- something, I guess. Hi."

He must be familiar with the layout of the structure, since he works in it. She's wearing her own uniform, the lines of charge that run along it dull, with no current running through them, but still probably not mistakable for anything but tactical gear. The Bites are still on her hands, though also powered down. Hell, she's still wearing a gun. She's not heading for the locker room, though. She's heading for the exit. Natasha doesn't leave her gear, and it's late enough that she's not too worried about blending in on the walk to... wherever she ends up.

Iona has settled into life in the Quarantine easily enough, now. She’s been there for long enough that she’s used to things. Even if it’s far too calm and far too uneventful in ways that make her itch with restless energy sometimes. She likes it, truth be told. Likes the fact that nothing is purposefully trying to kill her. Yet, anyway.

And despite the complications of… whatever it is with her and Cullen. But after the flowers, and the incident at the hot springs, she can no longer deny that there is something. (Nor can she maintain the paltry attempt at maintaining distance by thinking of him as Serah Rutherford.)

She’s restless, this evening, but she’s trying very hard to not worry either Dorian or Cullen (it won’t last, sooner or later she’s stealing outside the wall again because the Quarantine is too bloody calm, but for the moment she’s staying within its boundaries) so instead of exploring outside the Quarantine she slips off to a bar to drink. What she wouldn’t give for Bull and some of his Maraas-Lok right now.

But the strongest drink this bar has will do for the moment. She slides gracefully onto a barstool and orders, absently rubbing at her gloved left palm as she waits for the bartender to return with her drink.

Natasha did not have work today, does not have work tomorrow until the evening, so she is going for quantity. A very great quantity of mid-shelf vodka. She doesn't take much notice of Iona until the bartender passes her with the woman's drink, and the glass is... is it smoking faintly? That's got to be some trick of the light. Natasha reaches out her hand, catches the guy's arm. "Hang on a sec."

The pause and turn is enough for her to confirm that it's not actually producing smoke. Right. Good. It's also enough for her to catch a whiff of the contents, and fucking hell. It smells like it could dissolve a battery. "What is--" No, that's not a question she actually needs answered. "I want one of those." That's where the conversation will wind, no matter what the answer to any other question she could ask might be, so why not?

It takes less time for Natasha to get her drink than it did for Iona to get hers. She throws it back, even though it's probably not meant to be a large shot, but rather a small sipping glass, and she's surprised the force of the punch to her lungs doesn't knock her off her stool. It's only now that she really looks at the woman who first ordered it. She's even slimmer than Natasha is. That's surprising.

It's also enough to get Natasha to slide off of her stool and walk over, half finished vodka bottle hanging loosely from her hand. "Do you always drink like this?"

Iona doesn’t expect her drink choice to draw attention; it hasn’t before. Unless she drank it around Dorian, probably, in which case there would be fondly disparaging comments about her taste. So when she’s maybe a sip or two into her drink and there’s an unfamiliar woman (a red-head she’d noticed when she’d first entered, drinking vodka) heading over to where she’s seated, she tilts her head curiously.

“Not usually, no,” she tells her with a soft laugh. “But sometimes the occasion calls for it.” And she suspects there’s heavier drinking in her future, given how far she has to go yet before what Dorian has told her of the future will come to pass. And given Adamant… no, sometimes the occasion calls for a very strong drink indeed.

"That good, huh?" Natasha doesn't actually expect an answer as she slides onto the stool next to Iona, and it's probably clear from her tone and body language. The bartender brings her another empty glass for her vodka and sets it down in front of her before making himself scarce.

Nat pours herself another drink, because she's already paid for this, so she's not leaving it unfinished. "So, how many of those before you're passed out on the floor?" Because her assumption was spot on. This woman is a wisp compared to Nat. She hasn't missed the ears, and the odd shine to her eyes in the darkness, and it would be impossible to miss the huge tattoo spreading across her entire forehead and down half her nose. Not human, sure, and she wonders for a moment if she's got anything in common with those horrible creatures that Thor brought to Earth years ago - the same slight stature, the same delicately pointed ears.

Plenty of differences, too, of course.

Still, the universe is an unfathomably large place, as she's still discovering.

“Isn’t it always?” Iona has no intention of talking about Adamant or anything else with a woman she hardly knows (she hasn’t even talked to Dorian about Adamant, and she considers the man her bloody brother), but that short sentence says more than enough, she thinks.

She raises an eyebrow at her new drinking companion, smirking slightly before downing what remains of her drink. She makes a face at the way it hits her, the burn. But it doesn’t stop her from ordering a second. “So far I haven’t found that number.” Not that she’s set out to try, but she has consumed quite a lot of them on nights like this.

Natasha purses her lips as she stares at her glass. "I can't figure out if you mean that as a regret or a gauntlet." Not that it matters much, either way. Of course, things can always be both. Most of a person's life can be regret, mixed in with other emotions and motivations. It has a special way of leeching into things.

In the time it take for Iona to get her second drink, Natasha has slowly and evenly downed the contents of her glass, and filled it again. This time, Iona's doesn't look the slightest bit smoky. That one will have Nat puzzling for a while, she's sure. She's never been a big fan of things not making absolute sense. She has the skills, out of necessity, to move on even when they don't. Doesn't mean she likes it.

She holds up her rocks glass, four fifths full of vodka, and spares a moment to wonder if you still call it a rocks glass when you have no ice in it. Another moment for her to decide that it doesn't really matter, so she doesn't really care. Then she angles herself ever so slightly toward Iona. "To shitty days, and the survival of same."

“Something of both, I suppose,” Iona retorts with a laugh. Regret she’s drowning in, but she’s been throwing gauntlets in challenge in some fashion since the Conclave. Or, the gauntlets she’s thrown have had more importance since then, anyway. She’s never been one to sit idly by.

Which might be part of why the quiet of the Quarantine makes her so bloody restless. All there is, is idleness. Almost. (And too much to do back home.)

She holds up her glass, knocking it gently against Natasha’s. “To surviving shitty days."

"Shitty days," Natasha repeats, relaxing her throat as she brings the glass to her lips and tips her head back, letting the alcohol slide down without even tasting it. "And giant crocodiles. And toxic plants. And dinosaurs. And backfiring magic." And everything else this place has tried killing them with so far. It's a very long list.

Another glass of vodka, another chance for reflection. Those opportunities to do the smart thing, the responsible thing, and walk away from a destructive situation. Natasha has seen a lot of those moments in her rear-view mirror lately. "Have you ever heard of Earth?" There's the slightest moment of consideration, no more than the space of a breath. "Before you came here." Because everyone and their mother seems to be from some variation of home, though almost no one is actually from home. She highly suspects that not a single person here is someone she knows. Close, but not a match, not in any of the most important ways, the only things that count when everything else falls by the wayside.

Iona smirks slightly. “It almost reminds me of home. Well, the backfiring magic bit, at least.” Practically mundane when compared to everything the Inquisition has been dealing with, but a certain similarity nonetheless. She takes deep swallow of her drink, and finds herself missing Bull, just a little at the burn of it.

She wonders if she could find Maraas-Lok, here...

She hums a laugh and shakes her head. “Unfortunately not. I’ve only heard of that world since being brought here.” She has noticed that a considerable number of people seem to be from some variation on this Earth. Fewer still are from worlds similar to her own, and there are only three that are from a version of Thedas, currently.

"Your home sounds interesting... and kind of awful. No offense. Unless backfiring magic is somehow fun there and not life threatening?" Natasha kind of doubts that. She pours another drink and starts sipping at it. No knowledge of Earth is a plus, as far as Natasha is concerned. There won't be any searching for commonalities, no comparison of their slightly differing worlds looking for ways to feel less alone. Which is ridiculous, because in the end it only makes people feel even more alone, in her experience.

"So... is it rude to ask about the tattoo?" Never mind that you can't ask that asking about asking about the tattoo is the same thing as asking about the tattoo. All right, her own thoughts are starting to make her slightly dizzy. Finally. It's not supposed to take so much of a bottle to do that. Next time, she's sticking with what-- the blonde is drinking. Probably about time to get a name. "I'm Nat, by the way. Hi."

[Eddie doesn't really go dancing alone that often - Cisco loves dancing just as much as he does, after all, and so why bother going alone when he can dance the night away with the guy he's going home with?

But tonight, Eddie'd really been craving some dancing, something to take the edge off, to exert himself after way too many weeks on desk detail, and Cisco had been too busy with work to go. So Eddie had suited up on his own, kissed Cisco, promised to text him, and headed out to the club for a bit.

It's been a good night so far, Eddie's danced with a few groups of people, guys and girls, but no one solo, not really. At least until he sees Natasha. Grinning a bit, he moves through the crowd of pressing bodies until he's right up in her dark corner.]

Hey!

[He has to raise his voice over the volume of the music, but he's grinning.]

What's a girl like you doing in a club like this?

Edited 2018-06-11 05:01 (UTC)

Natasha doesn't immediately recognize the voice. The line is cheesy, and she's mid-eye-roll when she turns her head and sees that the one delivering it is Eddie. She doesn't know him well, but she knows well enough to know that it's a joke. It's harmless, because he's one of those guys who seems to genuinely mean well. She hasn't yet figured out if it's naïvite, denial, or bullshit. Probably some combination of the three. That's the case with most people. He's a nice guy, she just hasn't figured out why yet. The motivation is often so much more important than the result.

Still, he's here, and somewhat familiar. He's also in a suit. Full blown suit, and if that isn't somehow the cutest and dorkiest thing ever, she's not sure what is. So she tosses him a smile, something shiny and all surface, but she's still putting effort into not dismissing him. It's something. "A girl like me is the reason people come to a place like this," she says, turning his line right back at him. The beat of the music turns her toward him, and she gestures down her body with one hand. "I am making full use of this dress and its ability to get me free alcohol while I blow off steam on the dance floor. What about you? Are you allowed to be exerting yourself like this yet?"

Eddie laughs the moment he sees her turn toward him, eyes already rolling half out of her head. His whole face is bright with amusement, his grin wide, every line of his body telegraphing his amusement. After all, it's not like he doesn't know it's a cheesy line. Thankfully, he's not trying to pick her up - honestly he probably wouldn't try to pick her up even if he was single. She's gorgeous, there's no denying that, but she's dangerous in a way that sets off that prickle at the back of his neck. She's funny and he can tell she's good, but maybe not a good person, and that's intriguing, it pings his interest, but it's not something he'd want to take home.

It is something he'd like to have in a friend, though, and when she says a girl like her is the reason people come to a place like this, he laughs again, the grin widening, "You've got that right."

In more ways than one. Danger. Beauty. Intrigue. Natasha has it all.

"Um, yeah I am. I'm on desk duty, not bedrest." he jokes, nudging his elbow against Natasha's shoulder and ducking his head toward the bar, "And speaking of free alcohol, I'll totally buy you a drink if you go a couple rounds on the floor with me afterward."

A finely tuned response to danger is pretty much the only thing that saves people from Natasha, because it's the only thing that could stop them from engaging in the first place. Eddie's got the right idea. She does good things, because she knows she's not good, that she can't ever truly make up for the things she's done with her life, under the influence of evil masquerading as national pride. She's put so much darkness into the universe. She'd always hoped that, if she was incredibly lucky, she'd be able to balance the scales before she died, to be the cause of more good than bad. Not that it would have erased the bad.

So much for that.

"Desk duty, bed rest, same thing." They've only worked together on a few instances, disasters when everyone whose job entailed looking after the city and its inhabitants in some way had banded together. Still, one time is enough to leave no doubt of just how incredibly physical (and often violent) Natasha's approach to the job is. Monsters tend to leave encounters with her resembling ground chuck. As far as she's concerned, desk duty is the beginning of the end.

Still, he has powers that he could learn to use to keep himself safe. If he's well enough to dance, he's probably well enough to start training. She'll be able to see his comfortable range of motion in a less clinical way. Plus, free drink. So she just smiles brighter. "Thank you, magic dress. Lead the way, you adorable invalid."

That kind of thing? Sounds really interesting to Eddie. Ever since he was little, he was a good boy, but when he'd been small, following the rules in his particular world hadn't always been right or fair. That's when he'd realized that he'd had some interest in the rules, but more interest in actual justice - probably one of the first steps to becoming a cop. Maybe it's part of what intrigues him about her, that sense that she also believes in justice and balance.

Or maybe she's just intriguing, as a person. Totally possible.

"Wow. Rude, much?" he says, but his voice is shaking with laughter as she accepts his offer, smiling at him and thanking her magic dress for the drink. Shaking his head a bit, he heads over to the bar, holding his hand out behind him so she can take it if she wants, to avoid getting separated. He might not be as physical as her, but he is, and he could probably keep track of her and she of him without the hand, but it's a habit of his, holding hands while he moves through a crowd with Cisco, or a friend.

"Anyway, I'm almost off desk duty, and not a minute too soon. It's driving me crazy. I just wish my shields had been strong enough to keep me out of this situation in the first place, you know?"

After all, who wants to be stuck at a desk when you could be out in the field doing real work?

When he asks her if she's rude, she just nods, and gives him a 'duh' kind of look, smile never entirely slipping. She is, and not only in the joking way he's asking about. The easiest way to keep people away is to just be someone they don't want to be around. It's pretty fool proof. Lonely as hell, but fool proof.

When he reaches back, offers his hand, she considers it. Years of practice means that she considers it very quickly, but a whole host of considerations still run through her mind. What's the motivator? Taking his hand won't really impede her movement. He's not strong enough to keep his grip on her if she wants to be free. There is more than enough charge in her lightest wearing version of the Bites, currently masquerading as a set of very thick cuff bracelets, to make him pull away from her. He's also recently been injured, and she knows the few places that are still tender by the way he carries himself. They are all easily exploitable. He's not making a move. The laughing acceptance of her calling him on his cheesy line didn't hold a shred of regret or shame.

So he just... wants to hold her hand?

Weird.

Still, she reaches out and takes it, because there is no compelling reason not to, and no cost to her. Her fingers are cool against his, even in the muggy atmosphere of the club.

"Well, it's like any other muscle. You just need to exercise it to make it stronger."

Eddie might not be the type to insinuate himself where he's not wanted, but rude or not, she's never really seemed to not want him around. At least not entirely. He figures, from what he knows of her, that she'd make it pretty obvious whether or not his company was wanted.

And when she takes his hand, holds onto it as they thread their way through the crowd. He tugs, just a little, but not because he doesn't think she knows her way to the bar, but to indicate that he's moving forward, so they can move in sync.

Glancing behind him, he blinks a bit as she says that it's like any other muscle, that he just has to exercise it to make it stronger. And okay, yeah, putting it that way, it makes a whole lot of sense. He's pretty familiar with working muscles, after all, it's how he'd lost weight in high school, it's how he'd become a police officer despite all the odds. Boxing. Working out. It makes sense that maybe this new power he has would get better with practice.

"Wow. I think you just blew my mind, Natasha."

He says it with obvious sincerity, his brows raising as he looks at her.

"Just a matter of figuring out how to exercise it, right? What's your poison?"

Because here they are. At the bar.

Natasha shrugs lightly and holds up her free hand, fingers splayed as though encompassing herself and all the imagined greatness. "It's what I do." Blow people's minds. Often literally. Very messily. Still, it sounds good when you don't know the specifics.

"Triple vodka, cold, no ice." The bartender knows at this point what she orders, what she wants to drink. She's been through this way many times tonight, after all, a new person in tow almost every time.

Then her attention is back on Eddie. The bartender moves in her peripherals, and it doesn't take much spare attention to watch the vodka poured through the ice tubing, into the glass, making no detours on its way to her. Safe. "It took you a while to learn to write, walk, dance, even to breathe properly. This won't be any different. If it takes a month of work just to teach a body to touch its toes, why would this come any faster? Maybe some part of it is automatic, but everything can always get stronger. If you work at it."

Eddie might not get the implications of that, not knowing the full extent of her history or that she can mean it literally, but he still snorts out a little laugh as she makes that comment. And maybe it's because he doesn't know the implications that he laughs, because...he might not, if he knew the literalness behind it.

But he doesn't.

He's not entirely surprised by her drink of choice, or the fact the bartender knows it, he just orders a local maple lager, and keeps as close an eye on her drink as she is. Instinct, after years of being a cop, of seeing things he wishes he hadn't had to see involving girls in clubs taking drinks from strangers. Not that he doubts Natasha could protect herself, but she is human, after all. Or at least he thinks she is.

"You've got a point there. I've done a bit of training with Cisco, but not anything really...you know, super challenging. Which is kinda the point of working out. You push yourself or you don't grow."

A little sigh, and he shakes his head.

"Guess I better get on that. And maybe some hand to hand training while I'm at it."

"And Cisco is... the boyfriend?" She asks as though she doesn't already know, as though she didn't dig into Eddie's background a little after their conversation on the network, after agreeing to possibly train with him, after getting involved. "The smiley guy with the second best hair in this place, right?" She grins and shakes her head, accepting the drink when it comes to her and throwing the whole thing back without the slightest grimace. As far as she's concerned, anything non-carbonated in a glass with no ice is a shot.

When she's finished, she clicks her tongue at him, head still shaking. "You can't train with him. It won't work. He doesn't want to hurt you." The natural continuation of that thought being that she does. Or, at the very least, that she's willing to. Which is true. She's willing to hurt him to make sure he doesn't end up dead.

"Yeah, that's the one."

He says it with a bright little smile, eyes lighting up at even the mention of Cisco. Eddie's emotions are always written clear as day on his face, and this is no exception - it's obvious how much he cares for Cisco, how much that relationship means to him.

"Wait, second best? If he's second best, who's best?" he asks, both brows raised, totally ready and willing to give her a good solid counter-argument. Personally, he thinks Cisco has the best everything in Riverview. But...well, he admits he may be biased as well.

When she comments that he can't train with Cisco because he doesn't want to hurt him, Eddie blinks a bit, eyes on her face, "What? I don't get it, why wouldn't that work?"

Pausing for a moment, Eddie turns and orders another of Natasha's drinks from the bartender, watches to make sure it's safe before he picks it up and hands it to her. Taking a swig of his beer, he raises his brows again, questioningly.

"He doesn't want to hurt you. He won't be able to attack full out. He'll pull his punches." She doesn't even have to know him to know that. She just knows.

Natasha takes the drink, and once she has it, she turns away from Eddie. Her free hand comes up to pull the hair sticks out of hair, and a sharp shake of her head sends deep red curls spilling down to just past her shoulder blades, sleek and shiny. She hasn't really cut it since arriving. When she turns back to Eddie, she does it quickly enough that her hair fans out behind her, follows the movement and comes spilling over her shoulder before bouncing back slightly. She points the surprisingly sharp ends of the hair sticks at the fall of deep red against her glittering dress and pale shoulder. "Best."

It's warm in the room, the press of too many bodies in the space. Already her hair is blocking the minimal amount of breeze she was getting against the back of her neck as she moved through the crowd and occasionally stumbled into the path of one of the few air conditioning vents so high above them. She won't leave it down. She's just trying to make a cheeky point.

Okay, so she totally has a point about that. Eddie knows Cisco, and he knows himself, he knows their relationship. Cisco would make things challenging, certainly, he could even build a machine that could train with Eddie that would go hard enough to make it a real struggle. But he'd never actually be trying to push him past particular limits. Eddie wouldn't be able to do that for Cisco either.

"Huh. I get you. So you're saying you'd be a better trainer because you would want to hurt me?"

He says it with a hint of humor, but he means what he says, at the same time. And he thinks she would actually be a pretty good trainer. When she goes for her hair, though, and lets the mass of it fall over her shoulders, looks behind herself at him, he laughs.

"Nice try, but Cisco's is still the best. No offense."

A wink, and he takes another pull of his beer.

When Eddie asks if she'd want to hurt him, his only response is a raised eyebrow.

Natasha pulls a fake mew of pity onto her face when he concludes, though it does not reach her eyes. Those are still far too amused. "How sad. So the brain damage is permanent, is it? Well, at least you've still got your sparkling personality and your cute little butt." She downs her second drink because, once again, it's a shot. Then she quickly puts her very lethal hair sticks back into a hastily twisted messy bun on top of her head. "And the support of your boyfriend." She's smirking again now. "With his second best hair."

He's nursing that beer pretty slowly, but you can dance with a beer. "Now, I seem to recall a promise of a couple rounds out there," she hooks her thumb back over her shoulder at the press of frantically dancing bodies, "and not just rounds up here. You're not the type to disappoint a lady, are you?"

The raised eyebrow doesn't surprise him, and it's easy to read the response. It isn't that she wants to hurt him, he thinks, it's just that she wouldn't hesitate to do it. And she really does have a point when she says that it would make her a good trainer.

"Um, excuse me? Have you seen Cisco's hair?"

He raises an eyebrow in return, snorting when she comments on his personality and butt, "I've got a lot more going for me than that, Natasha."

When she asks him if he wants to take her on the promised couple rounds on the dance floor, he chugs down the last of his beer, sets it on the bar, and grins at her, "Now you're speaking my language."

Holding out his elbow to her, he raises a brow again, smirking a little.

"Let's go."

"I've seen it," she teases as she slips her arm through his. "He needs a better cut, make the most of that length and volume." The guy is all over the network. Nothing weird about having seen him, right? She hopes not. Not that there's anything to lose. Not yet. Not really.

There's the same awareness of the way he moves as they make their way through the crowd. This gives him a larger advantage than just having her hand, but she could still get away. Even with the vodka very quickly saturating her bloodstream. It would be more difficult if he were determined, it would cause more of a fuss, but she could do it.

Of course, she'd prefer the dance. Which is why there's a little bubble of almost relief when they make it back to the press of bodies and Eddie is still all guileless smiles and happy energy. Just a pleasant normal guy, having a night out, looking to enjoy himself. Sometimes Natasha has to marvel that people like that can even still exist. In any world.

"Well, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one."

Eddie says it fondly, his eyes crinkling a bit as he smiles at her, takes her arm and leads her out onto the floor, both of them moving gracefully as they dodge other people in the crowd, and anything beyond that, beyond dancing and relaxing and having fun, isn't even on his mind. It's never been on his mind, not with her, and not with anyone else.

And when they get out on the floor, he grins as he releases her arm but holds lightly to her hand so he doesn't lose her on the floor, swaying his hips and moving in time with the beat. The grin stays in place, because this is one of those things that makes him feel alive, present, that makes him feel like this is really a second chance. One of those things that makes him really feel joy in life.

Giving her hand a little tug, he raises his brows, lifting his hand in an offer to twirl her, silly and casual and fun.

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