Along Came a Spider ...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Were Han another kind of man, he might be concerned that "the plaza" is not all that specific of a meet up point. The thing is, he has all types of rendezvous with people where he comes from that are planned only in light details. Sometimes on even less than what he and Nat agreed upon yesterday. At least he got a time in this case.

One of the few instances where the Captain puts faith in something beyond himself ... when two people are meant to find each other, they do. And when they aren't meant to, they won't. A lot of bitter pills of all kinds were swallowed in learning that particular lesson, but it's one he knows to be true.

She said she would be there. With the strange qualifier that she might be busy needing to 'save the world'. Something he didn't really know how to interpret truth be told - a joke maybe? Hard to tell when nearly all the things she says comes in that difficult to discern tone. Even then, she said she would find him later.

That makes him generally more optimistic that he'll see her here, then not.

Han is trying to look casual, while leaning on the outside of one of the shops in the plaza. His eyes weaving though the crowd looking for that person he found drifting in and out of his thoughts ... like wisps of smoke since he met her.

Comments

[red_room]

That's a honey coated voice that Natasha is sure has won over many a woman into the Captain's quarters for the night. It may not have that effect on her, but it doesn't mean she can't enjoy it for what it is. Her lips quirk upwards ever so slightly, and she angles her head so she's looking at Han through her eyelashes with a half lidded gaze. She can play this game. It's a fun game to play. A game of chess, with every move and glance and breath calculated.

Her smile isn't as genuine as it had been for that brief moment in the diner, but it's still there. Persistent and amused.

"Yeah. Don't mess with the battery if you can help it, just leave it in there. Opening the case is just inviting crud to get in. This cord has an adapter on one end that plugs into a wall socket, or into a computer or charge station by pulling out the USB plug from the adapter."

She points to each object as it gets named, so that Han can follow along with her explanation easier.

"Depending on the model, it takes a few hours to charge fully. It's pretty common for people to just plug their phones in when they go to sleep at night."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

There's a couple of things that she doesn't have right in her thought process. Firstly, there is no Captain's quarters, there's a cabin that's the size of a spacious walk in closet which he shares with Chewbacca, with a few other empty bunks pushed against each wall.

Secondly, for a number of different reasons, his sexual conquests rarely happen in the Falcon. Generally, the woman in question would need to be awfully special to him to make the exception.

Thirdly, he ain't playing a game with her. His actions might have him falling on his face with her, but they're real to him. He'd love to get through that tough shell of hers, so he could be a little more of himself around her too.

As it is, he doesn't know her reactions have that ... hollowness to them, because she's better at lying with her actions than he is at seeing through them. Something tells him he mistepped somewhere, though. He can feel it. But he can't read her thoughts and he can't control her actions either.

Jesus Nat, this guy with a computer?! Not anytime soon

"That seems straight forward enough." He says pursing his lips in thought. "Is it charged enough for us to turn it on now?"

[red_room]

It doesn't occur to Natasha that Han's words are genuine because who would be such around someone like her? He's like she is, a mystery wrapped in an enigma of lies. Made to manipulate and to swindle. He doesn't have the earnest obliviousness that the men she's let close to her have had in the past, which isn't a bad thing necessarily.

But it also means she doesn't realize it's not a game. Perhaps it's Natasha who missteps. When he doesn't call her out or step up his game, Natasha watches him for several long seconds before she nods and returns to the task at hand.

"Yeah. This button here is the master power button. You don't generally need to turn it on and off, they'll go into a standby mode automatically if left alone for a specified period of time. But if it dies or locks up and you need to reboot, here's where you do it."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

They are very much alike. If they can get out of their own way, who knows, they may just figure that out. As it is, he likes her too much to potentially double down on ... whatever he did. He'd rather fold and hope he gets to make a good play on another hand.

You can't just meet another girl like this one at a bar somewhere. She's a pure sabacc.

"Turn it off and turn it on." He says with a nod. "That's easy to remember, it's usually where you need to start to try and fix anything."

[red_room]

"Sure is. Technology, people."

Natasha shrugs and gives the phone to Han to allow him to start getting a feel for the device. Walking him through the various menus is pretty self explanatory. Most importantly the contacts, where she puts her own number in for him.

The names make the phone pretty user friendly in terms of 'what is this, what does it do', though she takes care to explain things like wifi to Han as succinctly as possible.

"...Any questions?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Yep. Technology, machines, vehicles ... wait? People? Is she flirting with him? He almost drops the phone because he got caught up looking for a confirmation in her eyes that he doesn't actually expect to find.

Whoops.

Anyway, Han is a patient listener and generally he picks up things very well if he has even a little bit of aptitude in the matter at hand. He's not ever going to be a gadget expert, but he understands a lot of tech, so ... the phone isn't so bad. Wifi and the idea of the internet is a little bit confusing. That he'll probably need to go over a few times, either with her or one of his 'little brothers', but those concepts are into more ancillary uses of the phone anyhow.

"No." He says, shaking his head. Solo wasn't shy about stopping her to ask for clarification when he needed to either. "I think I've got most of it."

Han goes into the contact list. Not a lot of scrolling to do because so far, it's just the one, and starts trying to text for the first time.

[Do you still want to shoot some stuff?]

[red_room]

He's a quick study and really a lot of this stuff is pretty basic. Once they can get over the jargon barrier Han will be connected like all the hip modern kids in no time. Plus his 'little brothers' are experts of the devices.

Especially Chris. Who has never not had his phone on him since the day he got it. Not once.

Natasha pulls out her own phone, a sleek black rectangle with a small red line accenting it and taps at the screen. Smiles. And then laughs.

"Sure, tiger. Follow me." This time Natasha doesn't just up and walk away, expecting Han to follow after. She waits and falls into step beside him, guiding the pilot out of the populated places in the Nexus. Through one of the trails in the parks on the edge of the Wilds and finally to an isolated spot with a small wooden shelter erected at one end of a clearing. On the other side several targets pockmarked with bullet holes and burns from other firearms stand. There's a little shelf with rolls of paper targets that can be placed overtop if people really want to compete over who's the better shot.

"I'm down here at least once a week with the kid." Natasha comments with a fond smile. She loves this place. The smell of it, the look.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

This is interesting, he thinks, as he puts the phone in one of his pockets and makes sure nothing like the box gets left behind. She's letting him walk with her. Not that he minds the view from behind at all, but it certainly has a way of making you feel more like an equal when you're stride for stride with someone. Or that you're being taken a little more seriously, perhaps.

Regardless, he likes the fact they're getting out to somewhere more private. He knows he's not likely to ever open up too much to someone while he's in a public place and he suspects she's the same way.

"This looks like something you've set up yourself." Han says, regarding the set-up. Which probably makes it somewhat personal to her. The smile confirms a fondness even if she didn't take the time to construct it.

[red_room]

"May as well be, with how often I'm here." Natasha pulls a couple of the papers out of the roll and grabs the roll of duct tape tucked nearby to go hike down range and set up some targets for them to shoot at.

She likes being here when no one else is.

For one, she doesn't have to worry about all that precaution and safety crap. It's important for a civilian but it really gets in her way. Nothing about a gun is safe. It's lethal. Dangerous. No matter how it tries to fit in to polite society.

Natasha understands the gun.

"These far enough back for you?!" She calls from down range, waving Han's way.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

You can't blame her for respecting the firearms. Something about the earth ones, though, ... with the bullets that rip and tear through flesh remind him of the more ugly weapons of his galaxy. A blaster death seems kinder. At least to Han anyway.

"Looks good to me." He says cupping his hands around his mouth and trying to project his voice far enough that she'll hear him.

It looks like a good medium distance. His favored weapon is only accurate to about a 150 yards or so before another weapon becomes better suited for the job.

[red_room]

Natasha would argue she isn't kind, either, but she has a rather harsh view of herself. Possibly because she knows what she's done. What she's seen.

She jogs back uprange at an easy pace, already pulling two pistols out and checking them over. Chris did a good job at cleaning them yesterday, but she likes to double check everyone's work unless it's her own. Even though she was just firing them three hours ago. Habit.

"I'll take the left then." She says easily, a confident smile on place.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"That makes me right." He says with a playful smile drifting over his lips. Only a tiny portion of that smile comes of his dumb joke, of course. Most of it is because he's getting to do something he loves with a very attractive woman whom he's awfully fond of.

Han adopts his stance. It's loose and seems almost carefree. It's easy to be that way at a shooting range, nothing is going to fire back at you after all, but you can help to get the feeling it wouldn't change him all that much if this was a firefight.

Rather than raise his blaster to shoot for accuracy, Han decides to shoot for speed. The movement of his hand is fast and precise - you can tell he's practiced his draw often because there's not a lot of wasted movement in it.

Raising only to the hip, he fires at the target. Four shots. The all group somewhere in the middle of the target. Not quite dead center, but not outer ring either.

[red_room]

Natasha is watching him carefully, even though it looks as though she's going over her own weapons. She watches every movement, every nuance to his stance.

Solo has seen combat, but isn't a fighter by nature. He favors the element of surprise to raw power or accuracy. She wonders briefly if he's as quick at running as he is at drawing his blaster.

His tactics are for intimidation factor as much as they are for speed. He carries himself with a confidence that no one will get the drop on him. It's an interesting technique. When he finishes Natasha clicks off the safety on her pistols.

She stares downrange with her hands at her sides for a good moment, taking in everything. Both hands snap up to the table and grab her guns simultaneously. Up to shoulder height. Her gaze flits between the two guns' sights as she unloads the entire clip pf each into her target.

Nothing about her stance is locked, her posture left fluid in case she needs to fire while on the move. Natasha's are headshots, though if Barton were here she's certain he'd have an infuriatingly small cluster compared to hers, it's pretty impressive all the same.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Most of Han's military experience was as a pilot. He's got basic training done at the academy like everyone did, but he didn't rely on those skills all that much. Even now, in the firefights and drunken brawls he approaches it more like the hooligan he was raised to be than as a soldier.

He's brash and cocky. Larger than life. Rarely afraid and not likely to show it when he is. More than anything, it's the unpredictability that he leans on to be his advantage in battles - the ones in the stars and the ones taking place on the ground.

Conversely, Natasha moves suggest that she is both well trained and completely fluid in her movements. She has a liquid grace about her and to be honest, the Captain finds watching her sort of hypnotic. He spends the whole time just taking it in.

When he finally glances down the field at that cluster of bullet holes in her target, it's clear to him that her accuracy is a deadly one. His admiration comes in the form of a long, shrill whistle.

"Wow." He says simply. "You've got quite an accurate shot."

[red_room]

"It's easier when the targets don't move." Natasha admits, but there's a trace of a smile on her face all the same. The pistols have both been placed on the table again, as she pulls a box of ammunition out to reload her gun. Since there's no hurry, she takes her time with the action.

Breathes in the smell of gunpowder and thinks faintly on whether or not she should feel disgusted at herself for relishing in its bouquet. Decides she doesn't really care, either.

"Though, if we're comparing styles, I'd say mine is closer to yours than to the guy I'm usually working with."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Think so?" He murmurs, watching her reload the weapons. "Gotta admit I like the idea we could be comparable."

That's Han's attempt to sneak in a subtle flirt. In a lot of respects he feels outclassed by her, though. He's ... trying to shake off that feeling. To lack confidence is one thing, even Han feels that sometimes, but he doesn't have to show it.

"I could watch you move for hours."

[red_room]

His remarks earn him a quirk of a perfectly shaped eyebrow and a twitch to her faint smile while she gives him the side eye. She holds up her pistol, now fully loaded.

"Trade with me? I want to see how your weapon handles."

The way she says it, she may just be flirting back and trying to sound like it's an innuendo. She may also be making fun of him why is it so hard to tell with her?

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I was hoping you'd ask for it."

Han makes the weapon switch between them as careful as he can manage. They're both experenced marksman, so they should be able to handle it safely, but they probably should have thumbed the safeties over before making the exchange. What can he say? He got a little excited when she wanted to handle his piece and maybe he rushed into it a little.

They'll no doubt feel a big difference as they trade. Han's blaster is extremely light. It has no bullets to weigh it down, for starters, and no sight. Some of the stock parts he switched out because the modified ones would make it lighter. The handle is rounded. Probably feels somewhat odd in her hand compared to what she's used to.

"It's a hair trigger." He murmurs, figuring he ought to warn her before she tries squeezing it for the first time.

Then Han's eyes narrow as he regards the Black Widow's weapon. It's heavier than he would have thought and more angular. As much as he wants to go through the motions of drawing it and shooting quickly, he resists the urge because he has no idea how an earth gun handles beyond previous casual observation.

He brings the weapon to bare, looks down the barrel, takes a breath and squeezes the trigger.

[red_room]

It feels like a toy in her hands. Natasha's pistols are both smaller than Han's blaster, but even they carry more weight. She's worried about the device breaking, more than anything.

His warning is heeded; her finger stays well away from the trigger as she raises the weapon and gets a feel for it in her hand. She doesn't have to pull the trigger so much as graze it--gently press it. With no blasting cap to discharge or gunpowder to ignite or lead to propel downrange the discharge is immediate and without kickback.

By comparison, Natasha's gun feels almost alive in Han's hand. The bullet explodes out of the barrel with that same deafening noise, butt of the gun kicking back into his hand with the recoil. She had emptied her entire clip into the target with each gun in both hands near simultaneously before, and now Han will begin to understand the minutia of such a feat. Recalibrating each shot in her dominant and off hand with every kickback.

Natasha takes several shots at the target, shifting her aim between head and chest shots between each blast as she gets a feel for the mobility offered by his weapon. It's an extension of her hand more than a gun. She sets it down once she's satisfied and watches Han.

"Different than I expected."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

The earth gun, as it compares to Han's weapon, has a certain ... he can't think of any word other than savagery to it. It just feels like violence in a way that his weapon, which is equally as lethal, doesn't. From how hard he needs to pull the trigger to how hard the small little handgun is kicking around on him, everything about this gun registers strangely to him.

There's a prolonged pause between Han's first shot and his second shot while he sorts out all of the things he's just learned about this weapon that he could only have speculated on before. Then he starts shooting them off rapidly. By the end of the clip, he's getting them well grouped just to the left of the bullseye. It ain't bad for a first timer.

When he's finished, Han places her pistol next to it's twin on the table by her.

"Yeah?" He says with a slightly inquisitive tilt to his head. "How so?"

[red_room]

Natasha puts the safety on both of her guns before she hops over the table and points to the targets. Follow me, her gaze says, even if she doesn't.

She waits for him to join her before walking downrange to where their targets are hanging.

"They're made to be fired on the move. There's no weight to them to help you steady your hand. It's not a weapon made for sniping. It's meant to be fired quickly and repeatedly. Designed to be in a firefight more than an execution."

Natasha stops in front of her target, with the small clusters at the head and chest of the sheet.

"I get the feeling I could land a lot of hits in a target while running with no real strain." A weapon that's easy to fire. That doesn't make a shooter think about shooting. It says a lot about Han's world, too. The weight of her own guns that asks if she's sure she wants to do this. That makes her keep count of each bullet, that makes her make every shot count.

She feels like people must be very dangerous in his galaxy, with access to weapons that make it so easy to become a killer.

"I feel like I got to know your fighting style better." She replies with a smile.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

There she goes again, slinking around that table with those movements that ooze sensuality and an almost inhuman grace. That one wasn't even particularly special compared to the way she held those guns, but still, it grabs Han's attention nearly as profoundly.

Don't worry, Natasha, he'll follow you. Wherever you want to go, sweetheart. Just lead the way.

"I think you're right." He says with a slight shrug and a nod. Generally speaking, he'd agree with all those sentiments in a blaster versus pistol assessment. "That's not exactly a stock piece, though. That one's been modified for the way I like my weapon to perform."

Still, it's the last bit, said with that smile that makes him regard her thoughtfully. "I find it flattering that you want to know more and if that's true, I gotta be honest, I feel the same."

[red_room]

"So you like to be exceptionally mobile and quick with the draw."

Natasha brushes the tips of her fingers against the first cluster of shots Han had made on his target with the blaster. She sees a lot of Barton in Han, in the way he sasses and presents himself. She wonders if the same kinds of insecurities linger in his mind. Decides its none of her business.

"Some things can only be learned through experience." And now she turns cheeky, raising her eyebrows and leaning forward slightly. "And what did you learn about me?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Quite probably, but he isn't going to admit that to you yet, Nat. He's still feeling like he's got to impress you. It's not like you're giving him a ton of indication one way or another that he's succeeding or failing in that regard.

Still, he thinks you're quite worth chasing and you haven't written him completely off, so ...

"I would add easy to use for a long period of time, but yeah. That about covers it."

To her question, he doesn't rush to an answer. He wants this one to be a good one. Also, completely unconsciously, he's leaning in closer to her. He's drawn to her like she was a black hole. "I learned that I better be careful if I want to handle you." He murmurs. "I learned that you can be devastating, but that having you close will make someone feel protected."

[red_room]

His actions are expected. Like a moth to a flame the spider sets her web. Her gaze is amused, but not surprised. Not until he speaks.

The first part of it isn't anything special. It's common sense after watching her for longer than a minute. It's the last bit that shakes her. That brings to mind a soft spoken man saying the same thing before slipping on headphones and drowning out the monster thrumming just beneath his skin.

Natasha blinks and the moment is gone, proud that her expression hardly shifted at all. Only her eyes had given away any sort of emotion shift. Should she be concerned that the two people she keeps comparing Han to are the two people that have gotten closest to the True Natasha?

It's a fluke. They hardly know each other, and Natasha is lonely. Has been ever since she made the mistake of opening up to someone. She needs to salvage this situation. Get control and know where she stands.

So she closes the distance and presses against Han's lips gently, carefully. And then pulls away.

"Someone protected, someone else dead." Natasha agrees, letting a bit of her Russian accent trickle into her voice. Wrapped around her finger. That's where Han is. Natasha can live with that. It's something she understands.