in the sun

[assistingconsultant]

It had been a long time since Joan had gone to the beach. She had worn her swimsuit through the door and brought with her as many of the essentials she thought she would need. The first of these – a towel – she unfolded on the hot, gleaming sand. The second was an umbrella that she had rented; it had the logo of some beer brand flashing across it. Wherever they were – she didn't ask too many questions, uncertain of how deep she should dig through each door – it was someplace with a thriving tourist industry, and they spoke Spanish.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she said again, making sure the umbrella was embedded deep into the turf. “I haven't been to the beach in so, so long.” She cast a grateful look at Natasha. The other woman had agreed to come out with her, though there had been some concern over sunburn. Which Joan heartily understood.

“I brought the stuff from Australia,” she added, pulling out the bottle. “You know, the stuff that no matter what is the highest SPF possible due to sun safety regulations, regardless of what it's labelled to be. Australia's figured it out.”

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[regimes_fall]

Natasha’s skin felt cool and pleasant despite the glare of the sun when the sunscreen had been applied and she set a mental timer for a reminder to reapply before what she had on could wear off. She had done beach work before but it required far too much diligence beyond the usual worries of food, shelter, and safety on her part for her to ever volunteer for it. The heat was foreign and strange, and had too great a capacity to unsettle her if she wasn’t attempting to enjoy herself, which she definitely was then. Joan was smart and made conversation interesting, and Natasha smiled her thanks at her friend over her shoulder for the helping hand as she listened to Joan’s explanation of her roommate.

Natasha knew intense people, had been accused of being one herself from time to time, but she knew she was nothing compared to Nick Fury or, in the most extreme example, Bruce Banner’s Hulk. Still, she sensed Joan’s roommate was different from all of that, and she turned over the idea of Joan doing private investigation work. She would be good at it, Natasha had no doubt. “Ah, I see,” she said with a nod. “Intense people are difficult sometimes. It’d be hard to live with from time to time, as I imagine anyone would be, even very close friends or lovers. Do you think you’ll stay, or are you determined to leave?”

The question as to who Joan might’ve seen her around the hotel with recently netted only a handful of answers, and Natasha smiled. “Old friends,” she said with a nod. “My best friends from home, and a few others that I also encountered at home, but I don’t suppose I could call them ‘friends’ exacly.” She had not spoken of Loki to Clint out of respect for his feelings on the matter, and she had yet to mention James to anyone at all. She considered speaking with Joan about it for a reason she didn’t understand, as she had long ago had the urge to confide beaten out of her, but the urge to discuss it with Joan, who was a smart and unbiased party, was tempting.

“I have royally shitty taste in men,” she said after a beat. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud, but the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?”

[assistingconsultant]

"I'm used to living with people who are tackling demons," Joan said. "But my friend... is almost a completely different matter entirely. He's very brilliant, but that's why he forgets himself. And he isn't good with change - when it comes to his personal life, anyway."

She began to apply sunscreen to her legs, taking the time to consider Natasha's question. "I don't think I'll stay for good," she said. "I'm prepared to make it a part of my life, though. I just have too much work to do in New York and my own career to think of. I guess I'm just not the type to run off forever into another dimension. What about you?"

The fact that Natasha met people she knew in the hotel was interesting. "Maybe your world has more doors to the Nexus than mine?" she mused. She smoothed her hands down her legs until the last of the white sunscreen had disappeared, outwardly completely unaware of the somewhat abrupt subject change, but she certainly caught it.

"That's how it goes," she agreed. "With everything in life, basically, bad taste in men included. Someone from home?" Natasha had brought it up directly following a question about people she knew, which probably wasn't a coincidence.

[regimes_fall]

Natasha listened as Joan spoke, attempting to weave some sort of picture of what her roommate and work partner must be like. Natasha could certainly understand brilliance and the various idiosyncrasies that went along with above genius-level intellect from her time spent with Tony Stark, but she thought there had to be something about Joan’s roommate beyond his obvious intelligence. Natasha had to think that it would take something special to hold a woman like Joan in orbit, even if only for a short time, and that Joan was planning on making this fellow part of her life for the foreseeable future certainly said something about them both.

“It sounds like he needs you very much,” Natasha said after a moment. “Which can be a complicated thing, I know that from experience, but I mean to say perhaps it’s more along the lines of the balance you provide. Two opposites with just enough in common to make life tolerable makes for the best sort of friendship. He’ll get over you moving out, I’m sure, as long as he feels like you aren’t leaving him entirely. Does he have anyone besides you? Other friends or a lady or boyfriend?”

Natasha was exactly the sort to run, though she could admit it wouldn’t be forever. She had Clint here with her, along with a few other friends and various other relationships that needed watching and that would keep it all for a while, but she knew herself well enough to know that all that she cared for so deeply would be enough to push her away, too. When she became too confused about how certain people at the Nexus made her feel, she would escape it. There was no avoiding that.

“I don’t know if I’m the sort to run away forever,” she said, “but I’m definitely the sort to get driven out by my own bullshit, at least for a while. I came here to avoid some trouble at home, but now things are getting complicated here, too. It’s the whole shitty taste in men thing, you know? I found someone here, an ex of sorts, that I thought was lost to me, and I also found someone else I thought I hated. Neither of those things are true anymore, but it’s complicated all the way around and I guess thinking about either of them is just a waste of time.” She leaned back on her palms and gave Joan a wry smile. “Which is, of course, why I think about them, I suppose. You know how it is.”

[assistingconsultant]

A lot of what Natasha was saying rang true. "I agree," she said, "that makes him sound a bit flaky, though, when really he's not. He's very exacting about his and our work, and part of that is us living together, so he doesn't like the idea of having to alter anything. He's brilliant, but also acts like a five-year-old. He didn't like it when I first moved in," she added, "but he eventually got over that, and now he can't deal with me moving out. But he'll get over that too."

The question over Sherlock having other friends or a romantic partner was a sticky one. It was not her place to mention Moriarty to Natasha, which had everything to do with her respecting privacy and boundaries and nothing to do with her high regard for Natasha. "He does have other friends, but his contact with them can be pretty sporadic unless work is involved," she said, dryly. When it came to forging personal connections she understood that Sherlock was an upstanding and honorable person, but he balked at overt and possibly needless gestures of friendship. "And romantically Sherlock doesn't believe in monoamory, let alone monogamy."

She smiled at Natasha. Joan had had her fair share of complicated relationships, and while she didn't know the details of the other woman's relationships she understood how difficult it was to sever ties, especially when everything was in flux. "It can be difficult to make decisions about anything when you can't be sure about the facts," she agreed. "One of my ex-boyfriends, he was an addict, and I was always trying to help him. I think the relationship lasted so long because I couldn't make up my mind whether he would ever stop or not. In the end, though, I made the right decision. For me, anyway. He came to me for help recently and after I did he swore he would check himself into rehab. He never showed up."

She tipped her head to the side, and raised an eyebrow. "It's only a waste of time if you can't do anything about it anyway," she said. "Can you?"

[regimes_fall]

“Ahhh,” Natasha said, nodding her understanding at Joan’s further description of her roommate. Natasha was guilty of acting like a five year old herself at times, though that tended to be more playfully petulant behavior with someone she knew would indulge her, like Clint. It was a side of herself she’d only recently tapped into, both the urge to be clingy with someone and the enjoyment of actually doing so, and she wondered how hard that habit would be to break when something inevitably lured herself and Clint back to the real world.

“Well,” she said, “on the romance front I think I can understand where your roommate is coming from. I think I kind of fall in that vacuum too, sometimes, with work. It becomes just easier to relate to those that are living the same things that you are, especially when you’re a person that has trouble relating emotionally anyway.” She smiled at Joan. “I guess I’m just saying, as a fellow emotional weirdo I can see why he’s so attached to you, but I’m also sure he’ll get over it because he loves and respects you so much. I mean, he doesn’t want to lose you entirely, right? And he’ll eventually realize that by being a clingy sort he’ll push you away, rather than draw you in closer. Hopefully, anyway.”

She listened as Joan described one of her exes, attempting to imagine a woman like Joan falling in love with an addict. It made little sense but was somehow easy to understand, she decided after a moment. Joan was a brilliant and loving woman, and it was obvious not only by her words then, but the sort of work she did overall that she had faith and optimism when it came to the human spirit. That was something Natasha had found lacking in herself on more than one occasion, and it was something that made Joan very attractive to her.

“One of them, the ex I spoke of, his issues aren’t anything he can help,” she said. “It’s complicated, but he’s been sort of a prisoner of war for a very long time. Lots of conditioning and brainwashing. He’s away from it all now and he’s finding himself, and I have to keep reminding myself that he doesn’t remember everything about what happened between us and that it isn’t fair to push feelings or needs or anything like that on him. It’s just a connection, you know? Whenever we’re around each other it’s like this draw, and it’s hard to not react to. The other one, well, he can help himself to a certain extent, and he has. He’s got a terrible history with me, but when I came here he’d come from a timeline before he’d done any of those awful things, and he’s changed himself. He’s just the sort of guy I usually fall for despite myself, and I’m stupidly attracted to him. It isn’t helpful.”

[assistingconsultant]

"I hope he does get over it. Sooner rather than later. He's not clingy, but I worry about his state sometimes. We do respect each other, enormously, but for a really smart man he can fool himself into some things." Sherlock claimed to her, once, that he was not a nice man, and that he made special considerations for her life because he held her in high esteem. In many ways, she did not believe him. She would be aware when he helped her with her coat, when he made her breakfast, when he asked her for permission rather than just doing something that would annoy her. But she also held faith in the fact he did it because he was also good. People like Sherlock, who walked so close to evil sometimes, couldn't truly hold enough faith in themselves to think they could ever be an opposite reflection to such things. She had a feeling Natasha might be cut from similar cloth. Joan had worked with addicts and people who needed to allow themselves to heal, though. She saw goodness in the smallest of actions, and she believed in how they added up.

Still, she didn't say that; that was neither here no there. Natasha's current issues definitely had to do with the fact she was peculiar taste in men - something Joan understood well. "It's starting to sound like we have more in common dating-wise than I thought," she said, dryly, with a bit of a smile. "Maybe with the one guy you know, you could communicate distantly - phone or text, maybe? It might help. Sometimes it's easier to organize than a face-to-face meeting. But the other one - when you say a terrible history, how terrible?" She was careful to keep her tone light on the last question - just in case.