Winter Phoenix: HYDRA Is Your Place (A 2008-2012 Marvel Fanfiction)

XV: Подготовка (Training)

Sorry, more innuendos

September 2010. Siberia, Russia.

Third Person POV 

The girl's elbow slammed into Winter's side. He hated it when she bested him, but was not one for complaints. Phoenix danced around him, keeping her hands up. The two of them had been going at it for hours, and they were alone in the training room. No audience, no other soldiers, not even the colonel. Just the two of them. He knew she was rather ginger on her feet, as she'd completed a mission a week or so ago and was still recovering from quite a few ahem! finger-shaped bruises to her legs. It wasn't like he didn't know what was going on, or what she'd been doing during her missions. The Red Room taught her to do it, he thought to himself. They taught her to seduce and kill. It's what she was good at. 

She'd exhibited some of that skill to some degree in their night in Milan, when she was going after her target, a twenty-something-year-old Italian man with a round stomach and a thick mustache who would only spill secrets if he'd had too much wine and a girl in his bed. That's exactly what she did, and now the sleazy bastard had a bullet in his head. All because he sold secrets directly to HYDRA's second favorite assassin in the strict confidence of the bedroom. Then the Soldier himself slept with her, and their love was the stronger for it. Two different situations - two different outcomes. One ended with blood and bullets, the other ended with love and lust. He much preferred it when she was with him anyways. He could protect her better then. The Soldier was brought out of his thoughts by a fist flying towards his face. He caught it, but not before it skimmed past his hand and hit his jaw. He stumbled back. 

'You seem uneasy, Soldier. Or more like distracted. What's got your hands tied behind your back?'

'Nu am fost distras (I wasn't distracted),' he grumbled in Romanian to his partner, but in his mind he knew he was. 

'Taie rahatul (Cut the bullshit),' she snapped back in Romanian. 'Știi la fel de bine ca mine că ai fost distras (You know as well as I that you were distracted).' He let a small smile slip past his lips. She certainly knew how to get to him. 'Haide, Winter (Come, Winter),' she said, beckoning him onto the mat again. 'Amândoi avem nevoie de practică (We both need practice).' 

'Should we take it elsewhere?' he replied in English. 

'Nicht das, was ich meinte, Dummkopf (Not what I meant, dumbass),' she snapped back, in German this time. He laughed. 'Don't let them hear you laugh,' she said with concern. She got into a fighting position. 'Come on, fight me.' He stormed forward and threw the first punch. She stepped aside, dancing around him again, and he threw another punch. Then he tried to leg-sweep her, and succeeded. Her back hit the mat with a loud thud. She groaned as he pinned her to the ground, holding her wrists above her head as she squirmed. The Soldier was trying to ignore the feeling in his body, the heat and tenseness that pooled just below his stomach. He was breathing hard, and so was she. She wriggled again. 'Soldier,' she rasped out. 'Soldier,' she repeated with a harder edge to her voice. He was still, distracted. Again. One of her knees launched up and bucked him off of her, then using her momentum, she flipped him over onto his back with a loud thud. Now she was on top. She smirked. 'You really are distracted, Soldat (Soldier),' she said in English, adding the last word in Russian. 

'I am not,' he grunted out, but truth be told, he was. Terribly distracted. 

'You are.' She smirked, something he rarely saw in her, and was suddenly captured by her dangerous beauty again. Soldiers couldn't fall in love, he knew that. They'd almost been tortured for their love when they tried to release Emiliya from the bonds of both HYDRA and the Red Room. That worked out swimmingly. They'd almost been separated, had it not been for Colonel Karpov stepping in and telling his superiors that they'd be better off keeping the Winter Soldier and the Winter Phoenix together. Said it was for their benefit, that they'd have two very angry, uncompliant soldiers on their hands. Said that they would cease to have usefulness if they were separated. So they kept them together, and the Soldier was grateful for that. Not that he'd show it, though. 

She rolled off of him, and he was instantly deprived of the good, yet strangely uncomfortable feeling that had been in him ever since she'd been under him. She stood and held out her hand to him. 'Care to call it? We've got more time to kill before they reset us again.' He grabbed her human hand with his metal one, and she pulled him up with ease. Then, they set out of the training room together. 

He wouldn't have satisfaction from Phoenix yet, or the settling of the ache in his body that longed for intimacy and passion, but one day, he would.