riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: CARNIVALE

"Well then, probably more trouble than it's worth." She's still teasing him, it's just now she's teasing him by... not teasing him. Natasha's not entirely sure how to class it. She doesn't do this with many people. Friendship is not something she actively goes seeking out. It's found her in the past, of course, and like an idiot she let it-- not that it matters now. Can't change the past, just like she can't change the fact that Illya now knows her better than anyone in the city.

"And I like vanilla. It's sweet." She swipes the other side of the popsicle stick against his arm as soon as he reveals it, and then licks half the paint off of her own wrist. "Maybe a little too sweet. I don't know. Pretty shade of white, though. I like the shimmer."

Illya hums, because that’s fair. Personally he’d choose based on the flavor, and not the color but he’s a very tactile person. To him, the way the colors would look on his partner would be the least of his worries. He lets her paint his wrist with the popsicle and glances at it before licking it. It’s sweet, for sure.

“It’s a good flavor. But I’d probably look for some variety to go with it.”

He glances around, looking at the different colors they all come with an explanation of the flavor attached to them, as well so it doesn’t take long for Illya to choose one he may like.

“Maybe strawberry?”

"Strawberries are good," she agrees. While he reaches for a stick, she lightly takes hold of his arm, bringing it closer to her mouth so she can lick a bit of the remaining vanilla paint off of him.

When he looks back at her, she just smirks and shrugs one shoulder. "Perfume smells differently on different people, why wouldn't body paint taste different? Have to be thorough, you know. And it does. Taste different. It's sweeter on me."

And there’s Illya’s blush up to his ears, right on cue. Yes he should have seen it coming, no that doesn’t make the situation any less embarrassing for him. The saleswoman seems to find his reaction amusing, and she giggles at him- at least until Illya gives her a good old glare™ and she decides to go check what some other client wants. Smart woman.

His glare is all gone when he looks back at Natalia, instead just raising an eyebrow at her as he considers how to tease her back. But the answer seems pretty easy.

“Give me your arm, then. Only fair.”

"Only fair," she agrees, holding up her rm without the slightest sign of hesitation. If he's hoping for her to blush, he'll be disappointed. The reason she's so taken with his reaction is that it's not one she has. Natasha can't remember the last time she blushed, not like that. "So, go on. Lick and swipe me." They're just talking about paint, and sure, it's body paint at a kink festival, but the shopping for it is still perfectly innocent. It's not the words she says, but the way she says them. She wants to see if she can keep his ears red all afternoon.

He wasn’t expecting her to blush already, she seems pretty unashamed about the entire thing. And while he didn’t get specific details about her missions back in Russia, he had put two and two together. By the way she acted and the way she had talked about her training he could guess this kind of situation were commonplace for her, while Illya always takes a long while to find his footing.

But he had been expecting at least a small reaction. Oh, well. At least he gets to lick the stripe.

“...You’re right.” He says, with actual surprise in his tone. She’d assumed she was just teasing him- as she does, he can already tell that’s going to be how they interact. “It does taste sweeter on you.”

And then he’s reaching for the strawberry one.

“Here, try this one."

He's surprised. Which means he wasn't expecting the difference, but ran his tongue along the inside of her wrist all the same. That makes her want to laugh, but she doesn't. She doesn't want him to think she's laughing at him. Teasing is one thing, and mocking another. Whatever this careful balancing act they have comes to, she doesn't want it to fall apart just yet.

"By all means." She leaves her arm hovering in the air in front of him, waiting for him to apply the paint so that she can taste it. On the both of them. She can already see that the colour is rich and intense. It's far more intense than an actual strawberry, deep red and highly glossed. Someone who did not know might compare it to blood. Natasha, however, knows better. It's the shade a strawberry wishes it could attain.

Honestly, trying to justify not wanting to do it would have only given her more ammunition against him and he’s aware of that. {lus it’s not like the thought of licking her wrist was unpleasant to him, but it’s not like he’s made his attraction to her a secret.

He applies the strawberry one in his own wrist after he’s done with hers, and then reaches to lick it on his own skin. His tongue only peeks out, being careful with how he licks this edible paint like he is with everything else. Bright red, a color that he can appreciate even if the idea that it looks like blood doesn’t even cross his mind.

The fact that the taste is definitely pleasant also helps. He glances at her with a questioning look when he’s done.

“So?”

He's got a fair point. If there's a way for her to tease him, she will. It's just too easy, and far too fun. She misses having friends she can give shit to. Which is kind of weird, because she went without that entirely for the longest time. She should be better than this.

She licks her wrist, a far more indulgent lick that Illya's, dragging her bottom lip against the swath of paint. He's right. It's really good. Far better than she'd been expecting. "That's surprisingly good. Fruit flavoured things don't usually taste that great, all artificial." She scans the jars, then quickly grabs a stick, dips it, swipes her wrist, and then his. In both cases, it's right up against the strawberry that's still left on them.

Once she throws the stick away, she reaches out for Illya's arm, and licks him first. It's tentative at first, then she smiles and takes a much more enthusiastic taste. "Chocolate strawberry. That is good. I'd eat this on actual strawberries."

Illya blinks, blushes and then grins. In that order, and in a very quick succession. They could be here for hours and he’d still blush every time he licked something off her wrist. Instead of licking the new mix, though… he reaches for his wrist with two fingers and spreads the two colors together. The bright red and brown create a very pretty shade of maroon.

“I could get behind this mix. Very appropriate, yes? Strawberries are supposed to be aphrodisiac.”

It's possibly the most ridiculous tell for a spy to have, and it's not going to stop fascinating her on some level. How has he survived this long being so fucking easy to read? It's not even that racy. She's licking his arm. The slightest hint of physical intimacy and he's lit up like a neon sign. Seriously. Worst tell ever. Of all time.

Still fascinating, though.

She watches him swirl his fingers through the paint on his skin, and she raises an eyebrow. "This is body painting, not finger painting. And for the record, most things that people say are an aphrodisiac don't do anything. They just act as placebos. People need an excuse to behave badly, and they'll blame it on anything that's not themselves." She is an expert here, mostly because some very unscrupulous people spent a long time training her to exploit those dark hedonistic desires that lurk in the hearts of all men.

"It really is good, though." Since Illya is plenty distracted by his own arm, she licks hers. Then she pouts a little. "This one tastes better on you." Like it's some sort of personal insult that the paint doesn't want to taste best on her. This entire afternoon has just become a protracted experiment to see just how much she can make this man squirm. She's decided. He's got some serious issues with his own comfort zone, and she wants to poke at them.

And yet he’s one of the best spies the KGB has, tells and all. And one of the most mysterious, as well- Natalia knows about his parents, she’s the one that knows the most about him in this place but he doesn’t even know their names, or where Illya was born. He’s survived this long because he knows people will see his tells and stay on the surface, and so far it’s worked just fine for him.

“It seems to be working just fine as finger paint, for me.” He reaches to poke her nose. Have a magenta spot on the tip, Nat.

He doesn’t comment on the placebo thing, because she’s probably right. Technology and science are pretty advanced in his country as far as he’s concerned, but he knows he’s literally decades behind everybody else’s so instead of arguing that kind of thing, he listens and learns.

He grabs her arm to lick her arm- she didn’t ask for permission, so he doesn’t either. But she doesn’t make a show of it, still just licking with the tip of his tongue. And then, he grins.

“I win this round.”

The Rudolph look is not great on her, but she doesn't move to wipe it off. No. There's a hint of admitted defeat in that. She won't. Instead, she just foregoes the offered wipes and cleans the remaining bits of paint off of her arm with her own tongue. "Which one next? Mint? Orange?" When someone else comes up beside them, she turns to look at him.

He's not bad looking. Shorter and Illya, taller than herself, and darker than th both of them. "Excuse me. Do I have something on my nose?" There's just enough of a hint of the flirtatious in her voice that he immediately realizes she already knows, and so he plays along, telling her he's not sure, reaching up to tip her head into the light.

"Oh, yeah, I see it now."

Natasha grins, glances back at Illya. "Imagine that. Maybe you could help me with it? I can't lick my own face." Implying that she is inviting this random stranger to lick paint off of her face, instead.

He’s pretty sure he would pay for it dearly if he ever called Natalia cute, but the spot on her nose is honestly making it hard for him not to. He allows himself a little grin her way as a compromise, since she of course must guess what she looks like.

The grin quickly melts away when she starts openly flirting. He’s a very jealous kind of guy, as Gabby will happily tell you so an eyebrow goes up at that .But he’s also rational, so even if he’s jealous he’s aware he has no reason to. He’s honestly not sure why he’s even jealous- Natalia is pretty, of course, and definitely his type just like she’s probably nearly everyone’s type.

But they just met. So he swallows the jealousy down, down, and inside himself until the only sign that something is upsetting him is the way he reaches to tap tap tap on the counter with two fingers.

“Should I leave you alone?”

The man she's been... propositioning? That doesn't seem like the right word. Natasha is usually so much more direct when she's going for what she wants. Whatever you want to call him, whoever he is, she turns away from him mid-sentence when Illya asks if she'd like privacy. The look of innocence and surprise in her eyes is belied by the grin curving her lips. "You're the one who painted me. Scarlet woman. I'm just trying to be responsible about it. I can't reach, and wasting edible body paint is kind of like wasting food. A little bit. It's a sin."

Which, all right, she doesn't believe in god and he knows that. So sins do not speak to anything religious in her mind. Still, they both know the Cold War intimately - different stretches of it, but the poverty left scars that ran deep, and ran through the whole painful affair. No one who didn't already know would ever suspect that Natasha's refusal to waste even a mouthful of food is the direct result of a childhood that involved intimate knowledge of what it feels like to starve. Illya might get it, though, might just be able to understand what she means when she says sin.

‘It’s a sin’, she says. And while Illya’s face doesn’t change and his body language doesn’t have any kind of tension in him other than the tap tap tapping that’s still going on, Natalia will probably be able to tell from his eyes that he definitely gets what she means by that. It’s not a religious thing- even though Illya was the one indoctrinated against religion Natalia also doesn’t seem to put much weight into it as far as he knows. So when she mentions a sin, it’s… another kind of sin.

Once again she’s teasing him, and once again he’s falling for it.

“You are here with me, though.” He doesn’t sound petulant. Promise. He really doesn’t.

… Maybe he does, a little bit.

"I am, but you don't seem that inclined to do anything about it. Unless I'm wrong? Am I wrong, Alexei?" The man she was talking to doesn't seem all that bothered to clearly be a prop for her conversation. Maybe he's just enjoying the little slice of theater playing out here. She grabs a stick, dips it in a random jar of paint, and swipes it on his nose. "You're telling me you're just going to leave that there?" It's a deep blue, and if she had to guess flavour, she'd probably say some kind of berry? Blackberry or blueberry, but looking at the jar to check will ruin the connection of her scrutiny.

introductory mingle: CARNIVALE

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