The alcohol burned down Sveta's throat. She did not plan on getting drunk tonight, but it sure as hell took the edge off, and replaced the adrenaline she had worked up while stopping the robbery. And Matt was right, there was something comfortingly familiar with the two of them drinking liquor in a dingy setting.

>>"I'm glad to hear that you're doing well. Did stopping those robbers scratch the itch, then, or do you need to punch something else tonight? I mean, you can take out your feelings on the couch over there if you need to."

Words.
Wording.

The scotch went straight up Sveta's nose as her train of thought went straight down the wrong lane. It sent her into a coughing fit she tried to suppress with her fist against her mouth.

Take it out on the couch, indeed. Hopefully he'd just think he said something incredibly funny.

>>"Okay, I provided alcohol, but are you sure you're not hungry?"

"No" Sveta responded a little hoarsely, and shook her head. She blinked, glancing around for some neutral topic of conversation. "Do you still play the guitar?... Is that even a thing in prison?"

So, okay, maybe a year of almost zero romantic contact had thrown Matt off his game a little bit. He hadn't caught the connotations of his words before they came out of his mouth, and even then it took Sveta nearly choking to death on her drink for him to get it. Yeah, okay, so his game was almost entirely gone. Fantastic.

It was better to not address it, he figured. It felt like he was going to walk out of the bodega all over again with how he tried to breeze past that awkward moment and not bring it up. Yikes.

She wasn't hungry, either, so it wasn't even like he could turn around and whip something up. Matt raised his glass to his lips and took an awkward sip, trying to focus on that instead.

"Guitar? Yeah, you can pay to play it for a bit in there. I kept up with it for a few months but after that... I dunno. Fell out of touch with it, I guess," he admitted. It was easier to let things slide in there. "I'm probably a bit rusty, but if you want to hear something I could probably make it work. Or teach you a chord or two?"

Matt looked a little sheepish about Sveta almost choking on his comment about the couch. Good, at least now he thought about what he said. It was probably a Freudian slip, anyway. It was not like neither of them were aware that the last time they met they made out in Sveta's office. Sveta cleared her thought at the memory. That had been one memorable kiss, not marred by the memory of him not showing up again.

>>"Guitar? Yeah, you can pay to play it for a bit in there. I kept up with it for a few months but after that... I dunno. Fell out of touch with it, I guess. I'm probably a bit rusty, but if you want to hear something I could probably make it work. Or teach you a chord or two?"

Sveta smiled, a little softer this time. "Sure, play something." She enjoyed listening to Matt play the guitar. Another favorite memory. It was a pity that he didn't have that all the way through prison, music was something that Sveta considered as much a part of Matt as his eyes or his voice.

She waked over to the couch, taking a seat. Mody walked over too, and she patted him on the head again, waiting for Matt to join them.

"Sure, play something."

"Okay, sure," Matt said with a quick nod of his head. He could pull something out of his back pocket, surely. Walking through the rows of boxes, Matt made his way to where his guitar was leaning up against a wall. He grabbed it and dusted off the top, noticing how well it fit into him; as though he was meant to always hold it.

Matt walked over to the couch, where Sveta and Moby were waiting patiently for him. "I'll just need a second to tune it. It's been a minute," he warned gently as he took a seat on the edge of the couch and began to tamper with the strings. It took longer than it usually would have for him to tune it since it was so disastrously out of sorts, but eventually, he was satisfied with the way the strings sat on the fretboard.

To begin, he ran his fingers through a scale in arpeggio before settling into an actual strum. It felt good to be sitting there like that again. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be back in control of the things that happened in his life and the way that things happened. He was back doing something that he had some sense of mastery over, in a situation that he could at least sort of make sense of. It was nice.

As he strummed gently, he fell into a soft song, letting it settle quietly in the little apartment.

Music. It was a good thing, and a topic that served as a good distraction from the awkwardness they had wandered into. Sveta kicked off her boots and tucked her feet under her on the couch; Moby lay down, content that he was around the humans.

>>"Okay, sure. I'll just need a second to tune it. It's been a minute,"

Everything had been a minute. Sveta leaned back, watching Matt tune the guitar. Even though he claimed he had not done this in months, his movements were just as practiced as she remembered; it showed that it was something he did a lot, and something he loved doing. It was like they had a year apart.

When Matt finally started to thing, Sveta's breath caught in her throat. It was something she thought she'd never hear again, and it was one of the moments she'd missed the most about him. Not because a ruggedly handsome guy with a guitar singing a melancholy song was an instant panty drop for most women, but because it was a private side of him that was... touching to witness. And yes, the song was good too. Sveta sat back and watched him through half-lidded eyes, caught between watching him play, and wanting to close her eyes to relax into the song.

"So" she noted with a soft smile when the song was over "That's you being rusty, huh."

The song wrapped up with a quiet chord, dissonant so it was left hanging. Matt looked up from the guitar to find Sveta clearly relaxed, and he knew immediately that she liked it.

"So, that's you being rusty, huh."

Matt couldn't help but blush a little when the song finished. It wasn't the easiest song he could have chosen to start with, and a trained ear would have caught his mistakes, but it really wasn't as bad as he had expected it to be. "I guess it's like riding a bike; once you start peddling it all comes back." His fingers knew where to sit, and his wrist knew how to move to make a propper strum along the strings. At that point, he felt like years away still wouldn't hold him back if he just kept pushing.

His fingers brushed the strings lightly, filling the apartment with a tiny bit of ambiance from deconstructed chords. "What was your life like in Russia? I feel like there's still a lot I don't know about you," Matt probed. He knew that she'd run away from home, and that she'd been a mail-order bride who never got married, but there was still a lot about Sveta that was shrouded in unanswered questions. He knew he didn't have the place to ask her, though, and he didn't want to push too far.

It was nice to see Matt in his element again. The song was kind of a feat, even Sveta could tell with her limited musical talent. And it seemed to make him happy, just singing like that.

>>"I guess it's like riding a bike; once you start peddling it all comes back."

Sveta chuckled. Or maybe he was just good, but didn't know how to take a compliment. It was not all that uncommon, she didn't know how to take one either. The room was filled with soft music, the familiar presence of the guitar filling the spaces in the conversation.

>>"What was your life like in Russia? I feel like there's still a lot I don't know about you,"

Sveta arched an eyebrow at the question, then got up from the couch and walked over to the counter where the drinks had been left. She grabbed the glasses, and the bottle, and returned to her seat.

"Full circle, huh" she smirked as she refilled the glasses, referring to the first time they'd met and traded sob stories. "Russia was okay. My life, not so much. Mom had a series of boyfriends she always traded for a worse model. Eventually one of them tried to put his hands on my little sister, so I pushed him out a window, and we ran away." she tried to keep it short, it already sounded cliché enough. "After that, I was a runaway for a couple of years, before the Matchmaker picked me up." she shrugged, drinking some of the scotch. "Do you want to talk about your past year?"

Life was a cyclical process; you were born, you lived, and then you died, and along the way, you would help others do the same. The cycle was ever-present and reflected through the little nuances of everyday life, like how Matt and Sveta were back talking about their pasts while drinking alcohol. There was a metaphor in that somewhere, Matt was sure.

"Thanks," Matt said as he took his glass from her and took a sip as he broke the chain of notes streaming from the guitar. The apartment felt much quieter when he wasn't playing, but if you listened closely enough, you could still hear the sirens from down the block.

She went over a little bit of her history again, though only very vaguely. He sensed that she didn't really want to go into it any more than that, and he understood - she had already told him a lot that first night they'd met, all that time ago. He nodded along silently, not wanting to push or jump in at all.

"My year... well, I dunno," he said with a sigh. Part of him thought he might be able to just leave it at 'prison' and move on forever, but he knew from when he returned from his deployments that burying things only meant that they would grow deeper roots. Pain had to be extracted and doused in a proper poison in order to be truly put to rest. "It wasn't great, honestly, but I suppose it could have been worse. I had good enough supports out here to make sure that I had something to come back to and that I wouldn't be screwed for the rest of my life.

"But I dunno. If I could take it back, I would. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Not every trauma that shapes a person needs to happen."

They knew each other well enough by now to know how to share. The alcohol helped, of course, but the entire time they had known each other both of them shared things that they did not usually tell to many other people. Matt asked about Sveta's childhood, and she asked about his year in prison. Fair trade.

>>"My year... well, I dunno. It wasn't great, honestly, but I suppose it could have been worse. I had good enough supports out here to make sure that I had something to come back to and that I wouldn't be screwed for the rest of my life."

Sveta smiled a little, but the statement still stung. She was not one of those people. She didn't even know if she could have been, but now they would never know. Unless he ended up in prison again.

>>"But I dunno. If I could take it back, I would. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Not every trauma that shapes a person needs to happen."

"You didn't enjoy prison? Shocker." she chuckled, shaking her head. He was entitled to his feelings. Sveta was looking at his hands again, now that he stopped strumming the guitar. He had been hurt in many ways over the years. Losing ten months for something so stupid must have been a different kind of pain. Sveta's smile softened.

"Are you okay, though?... I mean, really."

Prison wasn't everyone's cup of tea. Okay, well, it really wasn't anyone's cup of tea, but some people survived better than others. Matt had the chance to see both sides of that coin - those who crumbled under the pressure and those who were able to blossom in some new way. Matt had fallen somewhere in the middle: he wasn't debilitated by the incarceration by any means, but he also didn't find himself making many friends or finding ways to get what he wanted. Perhaps if he'd had a longer sentence he might've dug in longer.

Not that he ever wanted to think about having a longer sentence.

Never again.

"Are you okay, though?... I mean, really."

Sveta softened as she asked the question, which made Matt need to look away. He held the guitar by its neck and swung it around to rest it gently on the coffee table in front of them. He was well-practiced in the art of burying what he felt, but he was also tired, and the way that Sveta looked at him had caught him off guard. She'd been through so much in her life herself, and yet she had still come out so strong and so good. He silently wondered how someone like her even existed in when the rest of the world was such utter shit as he looked back up at her. She was something else entirely.

"I'm good," he said, taking her hand in his from the other side of the couch. "I'm a lot better now."

Matt reached out for her hand. She'd dragged him away from the robbery scene before, mostly by grabbing his sleeve, but this was the first time they actually touched again. She was still wearing her gloves. It had been a while since she'd been around someone she was safe with.

>>"I'm good. I'm a lot better now."

He lived out of boxes and fed his dog carrots, but at least he was working on getting his life together. Sveta had been there. She knew what that felt like. And she had less people looking out for her than Matt (probably because he was just a more likable person). She smiled a little, running her thumb over the back of his hand.

"That's good to hear. I... when you disappeared, I thought you just decided the danger was not worth it." she paused, then added "I didn't blame you. But I missed you." she looked up at him. The alcohol was probably making her say things easier than usual. "The danger is still there, though. You have to know that."

The gloves on her hands felt strange against his skin, as he hadn't really prepared himself for them. He had forgotten, partly, what it was like for Sveta to walk through the world, unable to experience the simplest touch when she wanted to. A movement like grabbing someone's hand would have been simple for him, but much less so for her. He felt bad for a second for being so cavalier, and reminded himself that he needed to be more mindful when he was around her.

"That's good to hear. I... when you disappeared, I thought you just decided the danger was not worth it."

Maybe he should have run screaming, but there was something in him that didn't want to. He had wanted to for a brief moment at the bodega, before he knew that she didn't want to slit his throat for leaving without warning, but when it came down to it, leaving wasn't something he was interested in. There had been danger in his life before, and that didn't scare him. What did scare him was spending the rest of his life standing still out of fear of ever going too far.

"I didn't blame you. But I missed you."

The corners of his mouth turned up a little and he tilted his head, but didn't dare interrupt. It felt like she was bound to have a but in there somewhere.

"The danger is still there, though. You have to know that."

There it was. The 'but' that had nearly stopped them before, and that had led her to believe that he wanted nothing to do with her. "Sveta, I'm a first-hand example that you can spend your whole life in danger and still be screwed over by something small," Matt reminded. He'd been deployed, he'd been hunted by a strange organization a la Sveta, and he'd seen people close to him die. Yet, there he was, coming back from a stint in prison from something devoid of violence or the impending sense of danger.

"I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend my life paralyzed because of what might happen."

There was a smile playing on Matt's lips, even though they were having a serious moment. The whole evening had been like a strange dream, a whirlwind of emotions, something unexpected and confusing and dangerous but also something she had been missing for... she didn't even know how long. A night of second chances.

>>"Sveta, I'm a first-hand example that you can spend your whole life in danger and still be screwed over by something small,"

"And I'm living example that danger will keep finding you even if you try to walk away." she sighed, but didn't pull her hand back. He had to know that being in Haven did not keep her from being both dangerous, and valuable to all the wrong people. And he had already been shot for it once.

>>"I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend my life paralyzed because of what might happen."

It would have been so nice to completely believe that. To believe that risks would be worth it, even with the threat of mortal danger. Sveta wished she could convince her to live like that. Maybe she could.

She looked up from their hands, searching Matt's eyes. She felt exposed without wearing her mask.

"So... what do you want?"

She looked concerned, and she looked apprehensive. She sounded apprehensive. Despite that, though, she didn't pull away or say that she had somewhere to be that needed her there immediately. He half expected her to pull out something concrete as a reason to walk away, but she didn't - she left it there, and she left her hand intertwined with his, her thumb rubbing the top of his ever so softly.

Matt was in a strange place between throwing caution to the wind and trying to get his life back on track. Part of him knew that he should be seeking out people that would make it less likely for him to ever have another run-in with the law, and part of him knew that he wouldn't be happy cutting out every part of his life that was even the least bit dangerous. It was a delicate balance that he was trying to decipher, but it was one he was willing to work at. He was a man with a history of stupid things, anyway, so why not add to the list just a little?

"So... what do you want?"

She searched his eyes, and he did the same. Hers were brilliant blue, with more depth than she probably realized.

What did he want? It had been a while since he'd stopped to truly consider that.

So why stop now?

Slowly, he leaned in closer, using his free hand to cup her jaw and bring her face level with his. He drew it, but stopped just before their lips might have touched - a moment's hesitation to give her a chance to pull away if she decided she needed it. "I want this."

They kept giving each other a way out. She'd done it the first time they met, and the first time he got caught in the crossfire in the fight with SUPER. Later on, when he came to her office to talk, he'd given her a way out too before he kissed her, and she didn't take it. She offered one for him to walk away, and spent a year thinking he'd finally found some common sense and taken it. And now here they were, the both of them, horribly stubborn, and with an unbroken record of not knowing when to quit.

Full circle, indeed. His hand was on her face, and she remember his touch, and also remembered what came after. She'd been holding on to that memory.

>>"I want this."

Sveta hated feeling desperate. It made one vulnerable. There had been so much time, so many hurt feelings. She caught her breath and pulled back, keeping her eyes on Matt. Was this a bad idea? It was probably a tremendously bad idea. Him just out of prison, and her never having been on the lucky side of a relationship. Both of them had so many issues to work on, if they were ever going to stop trying to chase the other away for their own safety.

She reflected on all that while she peeled off her gloves, then she leaned forward, buried her hands in Matt's hair, and kissed him.