thing one and thing two seem to be hotwired to a joint motherboard. they bum the cigarette of thinking turn off of each other and each other’s boulder pecs. (she thinks of you know who.) she watches them land on her name tag. it goes well with the wig.
it’s also a bit of a tongue-twister, she’ll give them that.
her conversational czech isn’t up for a spar without a general stretch in the slavic direction or a shot first. she hasn’t looked a ‘ř’ in the mouth in years, but she’s imagined it. instead she breaks a homely romanian poem up into inflectional crumbs—RISING falling SHARP—feeding the light bulb above their heads.
it blinks and it glitches to a crackle in the universal language of pleasemakeitstop.
natasha enters the hospital room alone.
the blinds are down on both sides. a heart beep… beep… beeps around the room. it’s intimate.
feeling her teeth, she takes the stricken relative side of the bed to stand at. a josh ayers is tubed-up on the flip-phone bed and he’s looking at her because that’s all his body permits him as of four days ago.
she didn’t use to let serial rapists live. she thinks of barton, who’d pull the plug by instinct just seeing the way natasha’s gun hand had gentled pre-emptively, because she knew herself. he can read her sometimes, when she lets him.
knowing it’s true disturbs her. she knows she’ll keep taking him places like this.
she rearranges herself around it and pulls out a locked phone.
