Daisy stared at the tattered mess that used to be her jacket. She'd already lost patience with it — the thing had been a cheap buy just to blend into the bar, so she tore it the rest of the way apart without ceremony. The blouse underneath was a different matter. That she couldn't destroy, since she hadn't packed a spare.
Shower first. Laundry after. She made up her mind.
Then the next problem presented itself. Hungary's economy was doing well enough, but the two of them had deliberately chosen a small hotel near the bar to stay under the radar. There was one bathroom — and two of them.
They were both women, so in theory there was no reason to be modest about it. If Daisy wanted the bathroom to herself, she'd have to knock Hill out cold first.
Before that thought could go anywhere, Hill had already stripped off her jacket and walked in.
Less than an hour after the wardrobe incident in the room, the two of them were back to square one — this time even more so.
The difference from before was the space. The room had been manageable. The bathroom was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. The seedy bar had already stirred something in the air between them, and the alcohol hadn't helped — the warmth of it still humming in their veins, the close quarters, the unavoidable brush of arm against arm, thigh against thigh. A slow, ambiguous tension was quietly building.
If I had the right opportunity, I'd absolutely make a move, Daisy thought darkly, then forced herself to redirect. She needed a distraction — something to cool her head.
Talk about Lady Gao? In the middle of this? That creeped her out.
Philosophy? Quantum physics? Who does that?
"Want me to get your back?" Hill said, out of nowhere.
Daisy turned and looked her in the eye. Hill's expression was clear — open, unassuming. It was a perfectly ordinary offer. Obviously. Totally ordinary.
She nodded.
Hill's fingers were something else entirely. From the nape of her neck down to the small of her back, every touch was steady and deliberate — and Daisy's pulse kept climbing no matter how hard she tried to mentally recite string theory and transverse wave equations. She managed, barely, to keep herself in check.
"You have an amazing body," Hill murmured, running her hand along the curve of Daisy's lower back, where two small dimples sat symmetrically on either side of her spine. "Like a model. Not a single scar."
And it was true. Daisy's waist was narrow, her spine flawless, her skin smooth and luminous — a quiet gift from her Eastern heritage. As a back, hers far outclassed Hill's.
"Did you grow up without ever getting hurt?" Hill finished rinsing the soap off and couldn't help looking closer. She reached out and touched the skin again, genuinely puzzled. Even someone like her — someone groomed for a support role, rarely deployed to the front lines — still carried marks. Training accidents. Combat souvenirs. Even with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s technology, the scars were there if you looked.
Daisy was different. Her muscles were clearly conditioned from hard training, yet her skin was unmarked. Not one trace.
Hill stepped around to face her, studying her up and down.
Daisy had no intention of mentioning the Terrigen crystals or the way her bloodline had been altered — the enhanced healing that, while nowhere near Captain America's level, handled most surface wounds cleanly. Any scarring that lingered, her vibrational ability could break down over time at the cellular level.
"Good genes, I guess." She quickly changed the subject. "Here, let me get yours."
Hill had a knife scar on her back — just below the left shoulder blade, faded enough to be easy to miss. On her left flank, lower, there was a bullet wound. That one was harder to ignore.
Daisy pressed closer to work on the area, skin inevitably meeting skin. Hill's body stiffened involuntarily.
"Here, let me try something," Daisy said, the words coming out before she'd fully thought them through. "An old Eastern technique. It's really effective for breaking down scar tissue."
Hill considered it for a moment, then gave a small nod.
Daisy held the showerhead over the scar site with one hand and gathered a thin current of her vibrational ability into her fingertips with the other.
"—Oh—"
Hill had barely begun wondering what this so-called "Eastern massage" would feel like when a sensation unlike anything she'd experienced radiated outward from the scar — deep and electric, resonating through every nerve, every vein, every inch of her body. Her skin showed nothing, but she felt herself vibrating — blood, lymph, and nervous system all moving in some incomprehensible new rhythm.
At the peak of it, something inside her seemed to snap — not painfully, but completely — and for one breathless moment her consciousness was somewhere impossibly high.
Daisy stood frozen.
Hand to heaven, I had no idea she was this sensitive. She hadn't even done anything, not really — the vibration had been the subtlest she could manage, buried under the cover of the hot water. And somehow it had still ended like this.
Hill, for her part, realized what had just happened. She grabbed her towel, dried off at impressive speed, and fled the bathroom.
What in the world. Daisy finished her own shower in silence, wrapped herself in her towel, rinsed out her bar-soaked blouse in the sink, and emerged to find Hill already in bed, eyes closed.
She was too tired to wonder whether it was real or an act. She climbed into her own bed and was out within minutes.
The night passed without incident. No drama, no complications — just sleep, and the slow arrival of morning light.
When Daisy woke, Hill was standing in front of the mirror, examining her back. The scar had vanished completely — no trace, no discoloration, nothing to suggest it had ever been there.
"So?" Daisy asked, raising an eyebrow. "Good technique?"
Hill had recovered her composure, though a faint awkwardness still clung to her expression. Something that private, witnessed by someone else — it was genuinely embarrassing. Her voice was quieter than usual. "I must have been more stressed than I realized. You understand how it is. And last night — please don't say anything."
Daisy had every reason to agree. The last thing she needed was someone looking too closely at her abilities either. She nodded.
They changed back into their regular clothes, checked out, and headed to the rendezvous with Black Widow. Sharon Carter had apparently already found a lead.
"What happened to you two last night?" Natasha asked the moment they arrived, tension audible beneath the question. "I was worried. Were you compromised?"
Daisy almost said it's a long story and incredibly embarrassing, but for the sake of protecting both their secrets, she improvised a cover story instead — bad intel, a wild goose chase across half the city, a whole wasted night.
Natasha's instincts told her immediately that not a single word of it was true. But Hill was letting it stand, and Natasha knew better than to push. Don't say what doesn't need saying. Don't ask what doesn't need asking. That was the rule.
She filed her private theory — that Fury had given them a separate off-books assignment — and let it go.
"Sharon found something on Dr. Pym," she said instead. "You should hear this."
The two of them snapped to attention.