Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are four simultaneous facts about Wanda and her house, this house, this old house that is hers. 

Fact number one: the room on the top floor, the leftmost room in the entire house, was her old bedroom when she was a child. 

In truth, it’s still painted pink. Pink and yellow, shaky flowers around the edges, no need to remodel or adjust for unexpected company. The bed is old and rickety, unlaid on for over a decade at this point, the headboard made of thin brass-like material that squeaks at the joints where it was assembled. The rails of the headboard have those white baubles at the ends, an attempt at accessible royalty that just looks like some sort of… decorative egg nonsense. 

Fact number two: Wanda does not go into this room often. Or, ever. 

Why would she? A childhood bedroom in an empty house, still dressed and prepared for an eight-year-old. Wanda has a new room down the hall, all crisp off-whites and greys, a perfectly heavy and clean duvet. There’s no use for this room, really, other than mindless storage. And Wanda lives alone. So she doesn’t need to shift her things around too terribly often. 

Fact number three: she has never met her neighbor. 

She knows little about him. They’ve seen each other… what, two times? Odd mornings when they accidentally find themselves out on their front lawns at the same time, Wanda getting the mail while he pushes an old lawn mower in perfectly straight lines. 

She doesn’t know what he sounds like. She doesn’t know much more than what he looks like - what he looks like when he waves, one of those patient neighbor smiles, before focusing on the task at hand. She knows his name is Vision from the few times she’s gotten his mail by accident. She was never brave enough to run it over to his front door and introduce herself and always opted to push it into his mailbox instead. They’ve likely only interacted for… likely around thirty seconds, combined over two occurrences. No words shared.

Fact number four: Wanda’s childhood bedroom has a direct, unobstructed view into her neighbor’s bedroom. 

monday

Wanda came in here to look for… something. She knows that much. The room is pitch black and she was confident, dead confident, that she’d come in and scoop up some childhood memory and carry it to the living room. 

Of course, she cannot remember what it was she was searching for. 

Before she could even flip the light switch on, she saw a yellow square of light through the window. Perfectly framed in the glass. (The blinds are open as they always have been, no need for privacy in a room that no one occupies.) Her hand fell from the switch and she took hesitant steps forward. 

It’s another window. An unobstructed window. Of the house next door. Vision’s house, Vision’s window. 

The fence that divides their yards is several feet below. The room that Wanda stares into forewent blinds like an empty room would - and yet, the light is on. And it is very much occupied.

Her neighbor steps into view. Her neighbor that she has exclusively seen in a dark-blue t-shirt in overhead sunlight, lifted hand and a smile and a wave. Her neighbor that is noticeably exhausted, scrubbing his hands down his face, collapsing against the wall beside his door, the door that faces Wanda, he is facing Wanda. 

Wanda should probably close the blinds, now. 

“I’m…” Her nose is practically against the glass. She doesn’t know when that happened. “I’m… going to walk away.”

When someone says something out loud, it’s much more likely that it will happen. 

Vision huffs out a silent breath.  He crosses his arms over his stomach, takes the hem of his shirt in his hands, and tugs it over his head. 

The hand Wanda has placed on the ledge of the sill slips, displacing all of the weight she had placed on it, and she knocks her forehead against the glass. 

She hisses, pressing her fingers to her temple with a grimace. Her skin throbs and she knows she should leave but there is something about being in the dark that stops her from urging herself toward the door.

Maybe it is because she is in her childhood bedroom. Maybe it is a memory of hide and seek. She doesn’t know. All she knows is that she should close the blinds. She should close the blinds and her neighbor is facing her and he’s stretching his arms over his head and she knows that abs only look like abs when someone is flexing them and he’s not flexing them because he has no reason to but she can so clearly tell that they’re there and oh, God, she should close the blinds. 

She doesn’t know what his voice sounds like. His lips are moving, staring at the carpet, letting his shirt slip from his fingers. The window frames him perfectly, lit so brightly, cut off only at the knees. Everything else is fair game. 

No. Not fair game. There’s no game, here. God. She came in here for something. She can’t remember. Her mind is blank and it only gets blanker while his fingers drift down below his navel, grasping at the button of his jeans. 

Wanda gasps and spins around, hands on her head, eyes wide as she seeks to focus on something in the shadows. She can’t see anything, temporarily blinded by the square of yellow that lingers in her vision. It fades with time. She pants and she pulls her hair and she desperately tries to think of anything but the faint, dark-blond trail that disappeared beneath the waist of stiff jeans - 

“Walking away,” Wanda declares into an empty room. “I am walking away. Fuck.”

She does. And, to her credit, she does not look back.

tuesday

Wanda sits on the couch and she definitively does not think about the window. 

She doesn't think about her neighbor, so close and so far. She doesn’t think about the game that she’s not playing because a game implies a partner, a person to play with, and it’s impossible for him to be playing a game that he doesn’t know about. She doesn’t think about the hall, she doesn’t think about how much her legs are shaking, she doesn’t think about how the sun is going down, she doesn’t think about a dark room with a bed that would creak if she climbed onto it and waited for a yellow light to click on across the way. 

Wanda sits on the couch and she miraculously remembers what she needed from the room last night. 

A journal. 

Right, yes, she remembers. 

It was a journal, a diary from when she was a kid. She was thinking about childhood crushes and how humorously she must have talked about them. She was a romantic kid and she was always so devastated with love for every boy that sent her the smallest glance. 

Or… maybe it wasn’t the journal. 

Maybe it was her old teddy bear. 

Or maybe it was one of the pillows on her bed, likely covered in dust but perfectly heavy. 

Wanda’s on her feet in seconds. 

There’s a voice in the back of her head that tells her the plan for a second time - it shouldn’t take long, it says. In and out of the room, it’ll take two moments. She remembers where the journal is. Or the bear. Or the pillow. She knows where it all is, she knows the layout, she can picture it all. She enters the room with the sole intention to grab them and go. 

She tells herself that she is surprised to find Vision’s light on. She tells herself that she stops in her tracks, in the center of a room, because she is surprised. 

He’s already inside, leaning against the wall, tugging his sleeves down from his elbows. He isn’t exhausted like yesterday. Wanda is horrified that she can judge that already but she doesn’t move from her place. Because she… is surprised.

Wanda stands in the center of the floor, frozen as if he could see her if she moved. She does not waste her own time with the various possible appeals of this arrangement. It isn’t an arrangement. It isn’t a game. Two times isn’t a pattern, she knows this, and she knows she came in here to get something.

Vision drops his head back against the wall, baring his neck. 

Maybe two times is a pattern for some things. 

She came in here to get something but the something she planned to get was not a goddamn teddy bear and she is having to grapple with this fact as Vision peels his shirt from his body and tosses it to the side.

Her mind races with rationalizations but she wonders if rationalizations matter if she doesn’t plan on giving them to anyone.

You should give them to him, she thinks, an angel voice, the right voice, tell him he’s out in the open, it’s the kind thing to do. 

Wanda can’t move. She doesn’t know what he sounds like. She doesn’t know what he’d say or how he’d say it and she can’t focus on that right now. 

He walks out of view. Wanda opens and closes her hands at her sides. His bed must be there, just under the sill. There are a few grey blurs that she assumes to be clothes thrown from a closet or a dresser and she isn’t sure why it matters. 

Vision, her neighbor whom she has interacted with for all of thirty seconds, steps back into the square of light. He looks forward, looks down at the pile of clothes on a bed, and begins to work at his belt buckle. 

She lifts a hand and combs her fingers through her hair. 

He bends at the hip, lets his pants fall, his briefs tight and grey. She is given a perfect profile of him, lit and presented and unknowingly performed, and she does not stare at the clear shape under the fabric. It’s curved. It’s got a hell of a presence. She doesn’t stare.

Or, she doesn’t mean to stare.

Tell him he’s out in the open, it’s the kind thing to do. 

He reaches for grey sweatpants. The legs are inside-out and he takes his damn time fixing that. Wanda is very aware of a chair that sits across her room, under an old wooden desk. She doesn’t consider grabbing it. 

Muscles in his arms and his shoulders and his legs shift. Wanda should close the blinds. She does not. 

She wants to know what he does, where he works out, she wants to know who he works out for. She wants to know where he goes during the day, what keeps him until the sun goes down. 

He steps into the pants and tugs them up around his hips. His stomach flexes and she swallows heavily. Their houses are so close together she feels like she could reach out and touch. She wouldn’t. A lighter grey fabric over his head, tousling his hair, tight around his biceps. 

Wanda releases a shaky breath as he stretches. Yawns. Smooths his wild hair back with his palms before crawling onto the bed that’s out of view. 

There is a dresser by the door, the door that faces Wanda, the door that he enters and leans on for a few moments when he enters. She is horrified that she knows this. The dresser has a mirror atop it, a huge mirror angled with a perfect view.

Wanda steps forward.

She can see him lay down.

She can see the bed and the amount of pillows, she can see that there isn’t another body beside him, she can see him slide his legs beneath the comforter which is an even lighter grey, she can see him sweep out an arm to click the light off. 

The room she stands in is dark again. If it were a show, it would have just ended, but it was not a show.

Wanda reaches out blindly to grab a journal that she knows is there. She takes it with her as she leaves, likely a bit haunted behind the eyes, knowing what she has done and knowing what she will continue to do. 

She does not close the door behind her. 

wednesday

Vision is wearing a tanktop tonight. 

Wanda pulls up a chair. 

She doesn’t know why. She is too jittery to stand, it’s dark, it’s cold, Vision is wearing a tanktop until the precise moment that he is no longer wearing a tanktop. Whatever he was doing today was strenuous, a dark triangle down the fabric on his chest as he brings it over his head.

It’s odd, trying to fill in the gaps of his room. She knows only what lies inside a yellow square. The dresser and the mirror and the door, the bed. A closet, likely, to the left and out of view. 

Vision is in and out of his room. He must be organizing or cleaning. A man who cleans, that’s exciting. He’s in and out, he takes his shirt off, he’s in and out again. 

Wanda rests her elbow on the sill. She taps her fingers on her cheek. 

God, what is she doing?  

He’s just living. Her neighbor is living in his own home and his blinds are open. He’s probably… just carrying heavy boxes, somewhere else in the house, running back up the stairs to find something, right back down again. What is so exciting about that?

She knows what she’s doing but she isn’t sure what is keeping her from stopping. 

He’s wandering around, muttering to himself, hair getting damper and easier to slick back. And Wanda watches for no real reason. She isn’t bored. There are millions of movies and shows to watch and yet she watches this small yellow box like it’s a television. 

It’s almost enough of an epiphany to make her stand and walk to her living room, pick up her phone, do some other inane task tonight. A normal task. 

Of course, then, Vision is reentering. He closes the door with his hip. Wanda sits up straighter. 

He stops before he starts toward the closet or the bed. Just… freezes. Wanda holds her breath because, for a moment, she is terrified that he can see her. 

But he can’t. 

But he stops. 

His skin is smooth and warm in the lamplight that she can only see through the reflection of his mirror. He looks toward the bed, up toward the ceiling, anywhere but through the window. She is thankful. She isn’t sure what she’d do if he glanced in her direction. If they met eyes accidentally. 

After a long moment of contemplation, his fingers dip into the waistband of his pants. 

Wanda stares. 

His other hand hooks into the side, fully intending on pulling them down, fully intending on something. 

Wanda’s nose presses against the cold glass. 

“Please,” she whispers. 

Her plea goes unheard. He makes a face at himself and retreats, throwing himself onto the bed, bouncing on the mattress for a few seconds. 

The light clicks off. Wanda drops her head into her hands. 

How the hell is she supposed to watch anything else?

thursday

Wanda is tired. 

He’s late. 

She hates that she thinks that, that he’s late. They are not playing a game, they are not setting a time and place, he doesn’t have to be in his bedroom and he doesn’t have to take his shirt off and stretch his arms and touch his hair and cup himself through his pants but she would certainly like him to. 

The chair is not comfortable. It isn’t made for an adult. Wanda bends her knees, lifts her legs to rest her feet on the edge of the sill. She sits in the dark and stares at an equally dark square across the way. 

She thinks about Vision. It’s really all she can do, at this point, the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to her - and yet, it isn’t happening to her. She sits in a chair and stares outside with the expectation that something will happen and nothing is happening tonight.

It isn’t fair, truly. Of all the neighbors to have gotten a front-row seat to, it had to be the one she’d never want to break her eyes away from. No married couple, no old terror. It’s the man with abs, the man who wears tanktops and cleans his house and considers fucking his own hand but dismisses it in favor of getting a good night’s rest. 

Wanda can’t get a good night’s rest. 

She thinks about Vision. 

She sits in an uncomfortable chair, knees to her chest, remembering small portions of him in his absence. He’s probably out somewhere. Doing an activity that normal people do on normal nights. 

People go grocery shopping on Thursday nights. Wanda’s doing this. 

Frankly, this might be what she needed, a night without him. Wake her up a bit to the absurdity. It’s much more absurd to sit in an empty room staring at an empty room, left with her thoughts, left with the guilt and the worry and the knowledge that, inevitably, they’re going to be caught on their lawns again. And he’ll smile and he’ll wave. And Wanda will die. 

Just before she can give up for good, draw the blinds and lock the door and do what she was meant to do so long ago, Vision emerges. 

And Wanda is suddenly awake. 

He was taking a shower. The towel is wrapped around his waist. His hair is wet and his arms are wet and his chest is wet. He shines.

Wanda is slowly letting her feet settle back against the ground. She leans forward. 

Vision sighs, silent and yet Wanda can so easily sense the weight of it. Feels it on her face, across her cheek. He stops and stares somewhere else, so clearly wearing the posture and expression of someone who is making a decision but isn’t too happy about it. 

Then, as if unveiling himself to an audience he isn’t aware he has, he tugs the towel away and brings it up to dry his hair. 

The chair creaks. Her hands shift to the arms of the chair that she grips so hard that her fingers ache. Her eyes are so wide that they sting.

This is bad. This is bad and she needs to walk away. She needs to tuck the chair under its desk and she needs to start going to therapy. Thursdays are for grocery shopping.

This is bad. 

He could fucking knock someone out with that thing. 

It seems so heavy, curving up toward his stomach, and it’s almost as though she can feel the burn of it in her palm but that’s not a good thing to say. He’s too pretty for words and he’s bare, standing in the most convenient place he could possibly stand. Shining. Dripping. Revealing.

Private moment. This is a private moment. She understands this. 

A voice to the left: Oh, well. In for a penny, eh?

Then, to the right: No???? Hello??? God, no???

Wanda can’t hear them. She’s too busy focusing so hard that her head begins to ache.

He dries his hair. Wanda’s not looking at his hair. His eyes are closed as he drags the towel down his face, down his neck, his arms, looking almost mournful as he does so. 

He’s so hard that it looks genuinely uncomfortable. 

She crosses her legs. She uncrosses her legs. It does not help. She watches as he drops the towel onto the ground. She waits for him to walk out of frame, particularly excited to watch the creature between his legs bob as he does so, but he doesn’t. 

Instead, he takes his cock in hand. 

Wanda hiccups. She covers her mouth with her palm. There’s no need to. He doesn’t know what she sounds like. Oh, God. 

Accidentally, he gives her some time to breathe. He doesn’t know that the time is for her, time to prepare herself for what is about to happen. It appears that he’s allowing himself some time to prepare for what is about to happen.

Wanda has never known anyone to stand while getting themselves off. He’s a statue, standing tall and not-so-proud, offering himself without knowing, gripping and dragging but still exercising restraint. 

“Go,” she hears herself whisper. “Go.”

He can’t hear her. She knows this. 

And yet…

He goes.

His head falls back as he strokes himself, slow and unhurried, the stance of a man who desperately needed this. Wanda didn’t know how much she needed this. He’s dry and bare and glowing and Wanda is beginning to realize that this is certainly a game, now. She is playing a game. She is playing alone and it feels… it feels…

Vision stops. Wanda whines. He presses the palm of his free hand to his eye, definite regret, before clambering onto his bed. She worries for a moment that he’ll do it again, deny himself, deny Wanda, but she seems to be lucky tonight.

He rolls onto his back. He is continuing. 

Continuing with enthusiasm. 

A switch flips in his mind and Wanda watches it happen. She shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t know if she can stand to be anywhere else. 

Hesitance and restraint melts away, his muscles relax. He settles in the center of his bed. A hand drags down his chest, the chest that breathes and moves and lives, and wraps around his cock for a second and more intentional time. 

She scoots forward to see better, to catch the reflection, to marvel and slowly unravel her reluctance as was always going to happen. She was always going to give in. Something about the dark encourages it.

His thighs part as he strokes himself. Leisurely. His thumb traces an invisible seam over the tip, then dips into the divot. Purposeful circles. Purposeful pressure. (Her knees bump against the wall. She can’t go further but she wants to.) White teeth flash over a pink bottom lip, blurred through so many layers of old glass and limiting reflections and still so identifiable. (Wanda’s knees are already hurting. She leans into them anyway.) 

He teases himself. He loves on himself, hips stuttering up into his own attention. Free fingers trace the lines of his sternum and down to his left bud, pinching. He smiles.

Wanda has never been this patient with herself. It has always been a goddamn fight to the death, fast and urgent and hurry, hurry, things to do.  

Vision is touching himself like this is the main event of the day, every other responsibility marked off, reservations made, do not disturb. He parts his legs further, (Wanda presses her temple to the window with an appreciative hum), and scoots further down, almost completely flat. It’s like he’s bracing for something.

Oh, God, is he bracing for something?

She has to actively tell herself that this isn’t meant for her. It is difficult. He is not wrapping himself up for another pair of eyes. He is savoring himself, this is so clearly a rare occasion, and his eyes are trained on his body as if to say this is the last one for a while, make it count. 

Yes, please make it count, Wanda’s unhelpful voice thinks. 

Vision. Neighbor. Fresh out of the shower. Laying himself bare on his mattress, laying himself open. His most authentic self - the meant-to-be-unseen one. 

His left arm falls to rest on his thigh, fingers twitching. 

Wanda can’t lean forward anymore. She’s afraid she’s denting the wall. But that’s impossible. 

Finally, it seems that he snaps. Impatience gets the best of him. Wanda is thankful - and so very impatient. 

All at once, he drops his head onto the pillows, one hand working feverishly at his shaft while the other grasps firmly below, and he arches up as if trying to reach and fuck deeper into a body that isn’t actually hovering above him. 

Wanda hesitantly shifts, hooking her knee over the arm of the chair she sits in. It’s uncomfortable. There’s no time to focus on that. 

Vision rolls his hips up and into his hands. She can see his chest heave with heavy breaths, his mouth falling open. He’s so clearly chanting fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck - but she has no earthly idea what voice to use in her mind as she tries to listen. 

He borders just underneath desperation. Desperation is often somewhat pitiful - this, decidedly, is not. He knows what he’s doing, what he needs, how to get it.

Desperation often comes in the form of a please. She wants his voice so badly. She wants to know if he’d substitute the fuck for a please, if he’d beg, what Wanda would have to do to make him beg, that’s not a good thing to say. 

Wanda’s hip begins to ache from the angle she sits at. Her hand strays between her legs, palm over the fabric of her thin shorts, her heart beating so intensely that she can feel it in her ears. 

It is one thing to watch. It is another thing to do whatever this is. 

She presses and moans, wet and hot through fabric, far too light to warrant such a response. It’s a horribly loud noise in such a silent house. 

Vision turns his head to the side, turns toward the mirror, lets her see his face as if reacting to the sound. His eyebrows are drawn together, his lips parted, so focused, fucking his fist so fast that the bed moves in time with his momentum. 

She worries that he’ll catch fire. She worries that she’ll catch fire. 

His mouth forms a thin line. His throat moves. She wonders what his moans sound like. She wonders, if she opened her window, if she could hear them. 

Before Wanda can further step into this tar trap she’s placed herself in front of, before she can inch the crotch of her shorts to the side and join him, Vision snaps his head back and his movements falter. 

(Is that a please she sees break from his lips?)

(No, certainly not. He has no one to beg to.)

He spills onto his stomach, the stomach that flexes and quivers as he cries out through clenched white teeth. His fingers grasp at his cock almost painfully as he pants his way through his release. He wrings himself, twists himself dry. (He seems to like the hurt.)

Wanda lets her arm fall to the side. She doesn’t want to come anymore, she just wants to witness this. 

The high falls, the wringing stops. His skin is probably hot and just beginning to cool. His cock pulses against his stomach, red and sated. 

Vision drapes his arm over his eyes and, after a moment, begins to laugh. 

The urge to open the window is stronger now than it was before. 

Based only on the movement, she knows what kind it is. It’s a God, I needed that laugh. It’s a well, that just happened laugh. 

He laughs until he’s exhausted, eyes closed and smile wide and breath calming, a private moment that she finally manages to break herself away from. It isn’t easy. He doesn’t reach to turn the light off. Vision lays in the center of his bed, stomach painted and glistening, hiding in the crook of his elbow. It’s a painting, really. Vibrant and lit up for viewing. 

Yes, that’s enough now, don’t you think? 

She slowly wobbles herself upright. She wanders out of the room, down the hall, tugging at her clothes because they feel very tight. 

The shower sputters and she gets in before it can fully get warm. 

Her teeth chatter as she sinks to her knees, rests her forehead against the cool wall, and presses her fingers inside with no prelude needed. 

She doesn’t know who she’s begging to.

friday 

Wanda paces in her kitchen for much of the day, hands in her hair, two voices competing for purchase over the conscience that she no longer truly has. 

I should tell him, Wanda thinks.  

Tell him what? Another Wanda voice. 

Tell him... that his blinds are open. 

Your blinds are open too.

Yes, but - 

Do you think it’s wise, bringing up that his blinds are open the precise morning after he’s had the most intense solo session you’ve ever seen in your life?

I… Hm.

And you could always close your blinds. 

I… don’t think I can.

It's a room you have no reason to go into. It's a room with blinds that you can close. It's a room with a lock on the outside, you can lock it from the outside. 

I know.

You could make the changes. 

I know, but I - 

You want to tell him what you’ve done? What you saw? That’s insane. Close the blinds and lock the room and you won’t have to do any of that. Close the blinds. Lock the door. Leave it be.

… No. 

Why not?

Because I don't want to.

Wanda stops mid-step. 

Her eyebrows draw together and she considers that idea. 

Right. 

She just... doesn’t want to. No further rhyme or reason. She is lonely and his blinds are open. Two people with their blinds open, that’s all. Two people that don’t know each other - of course, one of which now knowing their neighbor much better than she ever anticipated.

She enters the room, a personal theater, and it does not take much time at all to purge the guilt that was rather weak in the first place. 

Wanda sits in her reserved box seat and bites at her nails while she waits. 

Today has been uneventful. Today has been filled with the image of him, his eyes closed and his mouth smiling around curses and moans that she can’t possibly form with her own imagination. Today has been filled with an internal monologue-turned-argument, a yes-but-no-but-yes in circles that make her dizzy.

The guilt is weak, it isn’t real. 

Vision enters his bedroom. Jeans and t-shirt, clean and unstained, barely even wrinkled. He sighs and falls against the door as he always does. He presses his fingers into his eyes, reaches toward the dresser, takes a thick book between his fingers. 

(Wanda is horrified to realize that he has the kind of hands she loves so much. The kind of hands in oil paintings in her old social feeds, the kind she’d stare at for hours. Long and wide and almost squared in the palms. From what she can see, he’s well maintained. She wishes she knew what his nails looked like, if they are as clean and short and pink as she imagines. His knuckles seem sharp, the joints of his fingers are rounded. He picks up the book so easily. He’d pick her up so easily. She hadn’t focused on his hands before she saw him using them.)

Vision takes his place in the center of his bed. His legs are open, obscuring his face in the reflection, bent at the knees. He opens the book and begins to read. 

She watches for far too long. Not because she expects something like last night, no. It was never about last night. He is living and he is unaware and that is the most beautiful thing about it. 

Not beautiful. It’s hard to stop herself from thinking like that. 

Do I have to?

Vision brushes his thumb down the side of the pages. Wanda can only see if she focuses hard. He is as clear as she wants him to be, as she sees him to be. 

It is beautiful. 

She could end this so quickly, if she wanted. All it would take is the flip of the switch, flooding this room with light. Vision would probably lift his head, notice the new source of light, the new square of yellow in his mirror. He’d roll off the mattress, walk over to the window, tug the blinds down. 

… Hm. 

He flips a page. Wanda rests her elbow on the sill. The chair creaks underneath her. 

Would he draw the blinds immediately? Would he wait to see if anything happened? Would he see Wanda, find her pretty, watch for a few seconds more? Would he ignore it? Would he turn his own light off, crawl across the floor, peek over the ledge… watch forever?

Wanda wonders if she’d be interesting enough to be worth watching for a few seconds. 

Vision flips another page. He lets his legs fall, crosses his ankles, shifts his head. 

Wanda thinks she could be interesting enough. 

She sits and watches until he clicks the lamp off. 

She sits and watches a while longer.

Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck, chokes the memory of a silent film that was never meant to be seen. 

Yeah, Wanda thinks she could be interesting enough. 

saturday

A lot of the day is spent setting the stage. 

The voices of conscience are completely silent as she grasps the edges of the old, large vanity mirror, dragging it over by the door. Perhaps the voices of conscience have, instead, given up on her entirely. 

It takes a good bit of time to get everything right. In truth, she’s likely reconstructing Vision’s room in her own. In her childhood bedroom. Pink and yellow. She angles the heavy mirror so that she can see the window when she sprawls out on the bed. 

She angles the heavy mirror so that Vision has a view of the bed. 

The sheets are changed and Wanda chokes on dust for a few minutes as she carries the pile down to the laundry room, apologizing profusely to her past selves and hoping they’d forgive her for this terrible choice. 

Not just one choice, though, is it? 

It wasn’t a choice the first time. But, surely she has set and toppled many different very intentional dominos leading up to this - when she came back a second time, when she pushed the chair across the room, when she stayed and watched and did more than watch. 

Wanda is an insane person, she has decided. 

This plan she has developed, this stage that she sets, is very fragile. It is dependent on a precise order of events. And, even more difficult to predict, the handsome man next door would have to be just as insane. 

Of course, if he isn’t, that will be fine. If he’s sane, he’ll close the blinds. No harm done. 

Wanda is an insane person who cannot close her blinds. 

Well, she’s doing a considerable bit more than not closing the blinds. 

She’s planning on a performance, really. 

She puts on the costume of someone who is at all put-together. Matching lingerie set under her going-outside clothes. (She did not go outside today. But that is the purpose of a costume.) She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, checks her reflection, tries her best to calm down as the day wears on. 

Surely, if she’s having to convince herself so harshly that she’s not doing anything wrong… it means she’s definitely doing something wrong. 

Best to succumb to the wave, the excitement, the nervousness, the weak guilt. That’s the whole point of these things, she thinks. The embarrassment slots in beside the thrill. 

This is awful, she thinks.

This is so fucking bad, she thinks. 

I shouldn’t do this, she thinks.

I wish the sun would set faster, she thinks. 

What does she hope to gain from this? It’s a good question. She hasn’t a single idea. She doesn’t know if she’s testing the boundaries of this discovery, of this new part of herself. She doesn’t know if she wants Vision in particular, if it could have been anyone, (it definitely is Vision in particular), (if he slapped her in the face with that thing, she’d be unconscious for days), (she wonders what sort of dreams she’d have). 

If she looks at it like an experiment, it isn’t as sexy anymore. If she looks at it like sex, it’s incredibly lonely. 

So, she tries her best not to look at it at all.

The sun sets. 

Wanda takes her place in her chair in the dark of the room. She wears her outside clothes, tight jeans digging into her waist, sharp bra wire digging into her ribs. Her hands are restless and her body hums with anticipatory embarrassment/excitement/want. 

Part of her hopes that Vision doesn’t turn up. She’s spiralling, sure, but it’s a delicate thing. All it takes is a finger underneath the scale, an interruption in the clockwork, a pause in the heartbeat. If he doesn’t come tonight, she’ll be left with silence. Silence is persuasive, self-reflection is persuasive.

She sits in her outside clothes that she only wears so that she can take them off again. The square across the way lies dark and empty and she begs it for two opposite things. Don’t show up, please, I should definitely stop. Please show up, let me show you what I can do. 

Vision enters. Bright yellow light clicked on, square reflections in Wanda’s eyes that no doubt turn to hearts. Her conscience wraps its fingers around its suitcase and begins dragging its belongings to the door. She doesn’t even bother waving to it, she doesn’t expect to see it again. 

He’s tired tonight. She knows his posture. The way he tugs his shirt and tosses it, changes into his pajamas, clambers into bed, picks up his book. 

Her fingers trace the inside seam of her jeans, up and down, a comfort and a provocation. She’s restless and nervous, stage fright in her old room, stage fright that she could potentially avoid altogether. 

She stands when Vision begins to tire. She walks backward as if on a tightrope a million miles above the ground. Her hand covers the lightswitch and she waits, waits, waits - 

The yellow light in Vision’s room clicks off. 

She waits a moment longer. 

(When she flips this switch, she cannot look at the window anymore.) 

(When she flips this switch, the show begins and she’ll have to hope for one of two things.)

(That he’s watching, that he likes it. Or that he’s asleep.)

She flips the switch. 

The yellow light from her room, her old room, her childhood bedroom, no doubt reaches into Vision’s pitch black one. The plan is thin. If he doesn’t see, it won’t work. If he doesn’t see, it won’t matter. 

It is very difficult to try to act the part of a sane person. 

Her heart is in her throat and she rests her hands on her hips. She surveys the area as though she has no idea what to do with it. She has spent a lot of time considering what she’s going to do here.

(Does she feel his eyes? Does she know what it feels like to be watched? Does she know what his eyes would even feel like?)

Wanda sighs and it doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t matter how it sounds. 

If he isn’t watching, it won’t matter. 

She presses her fingers into her eyes. 

“I’m really sorry,” she says into her palms, shaking her head, “You can’t hear me and you probably never will but… I’m… Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

Her hands drag down to the collar of her sweater and she pulls it up to her nose, up beyond her eyes, a moment of grace given to make a face at herself. 

The air in the room is cold. It always has been. She lets the heavy fabric slip from her fingertips to puddle on the floor. Then, she works at the button of her jeans. 

“It’s fine,” she says to herself, staring at the corner of her bed. “It’s fine. This is therapeutic. It’s fine and he isn’t watching and it doesn’t matter.”

But you want him to watch. 

Yes, but I can’t tell him that. 

… He can’t hear you.

She hisses as her jeans fall around her ankles. Her skin goes taut from the chill. She kicks them to the side and she reminds herself of a man she has never spoken to in her life, a man whose body she could draw with her eyes closed. 

Right, yes, closed eyes. Is he watching? 

If she acts too sexy, he’ll know. She doesn’t swing her hips and she doesn’t let her lips part or her eyelids flutter. She stands and looks somewhat inconvenienced as she reaches behind her to unclasp her bra. 

It’s a real art form, this. She would wonder why more people don’t try it if she didn’t know the precise reason why more people don’t try it. 

“It’s fine.” Wanda hears it thud on the ground and she knows that she threw it there but she’s too busy staring at the desk, staring at the bed, anywhere but the window. The mirror is behind her. She could check her reflection. Should she? Is that wise? Will the shame catch up? “It’s fine.”

Never once in her life has she had to give herself a pep talk before getting herself off. 

She climbs onto the bed before she can curl up into a ball. 

The sheets are new and clean and smell like lavender. Soft on her bare back as she spreads herself across them, her hairband digging into her skull as her legs hang over the right edge. She takes a breath, spreading her thighs for the mirror. She does not look at the reflection of a dark square. 

Her focus is on the ceiling. She reaches up, frees her hair, tosses the band to the side. Cold fingers down hot chest, tracing bone and goosebumps and flesh, hyper-aware of the body she inhabits, hyper-aware of how she touches it. 

She thinks about Vision. Savoring himself, caring for himself, knowing his limit. She thinks about Vision, voiceless yet vocal, swearing at himself as if wishing he’d go faster, not allowing himself to go faster, knowing what he wants, what he needs, when he’ll get it. 

The waistband rests low on her stomach. Low and tight. It catches on her fingernails. She presses, dips below, wonders what it’s like to savor herself. She doesn’t even know where to begin. 

Well, she knows where to begin. 

Her touch is cold from the air. Her hand is trapped between thin, expensive cloth and her body as she feels. She doesn’t know the tempo. 

It doesn’t matter if he’s not watching, she attempts to console herself. Even her inner thoughts hiccup at the feeling of a blunt nail across sensitive skin, the most sensitive skin. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. 

He’s watching if you want him to be. 

She thinks about Vision and she dips a finger inside. Her wrist hurts, restrained and pressed so tight by its lace bracelet. She hums quietly, tracing a line back up to her clit, dragging her lip between her teeth as she recedes completely. 

Is it a ridiculous thing, to lift her legs straight up into the air as she slides her final piece of clothing off? Is it ridiculous to lift her hips as well, her weight balanced on her shoulder blades for a fleeting moment as she tugs them down? 

Oh, yes, certainly. 

But he is watching if she wants him to be. 

She hangs the lace on her toes before lowering her legs slooowly back down. Her stomach burns, that was far more exercise than she was planning on doing today, and her breath is heavy.

Her legs part for her invisible company. 

“Vision,” she says. 

She touches herself. She doesn’t know how to savor but she tries. The air of the room is cold and her fingers are cold and she’s dripping down them. She presses her thumb to her clit like a button as she fucks herself. Press and then swipe and then moan. 

She thinks about Vision. (Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.) She thinks about how well she knows him, how well she knows his room. She thinks about the curve of his cock as she curls her fingers. 

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She thinks about how he used two hands. The thumb that presses idly is replaced by three fingers that rub with intention, left and right and up and down and he’s watching if she wants him to be, oh, she wants him to be, she wants him, she wants, she wants. 

“Vision,” she says. “Please. Please see. Please. Watch. Please.”

She begs. She wonders what she’d have to do to make him beg. He’s done nothing and she begs him anyway. 

(What do his eyes feel like? What do they look like? What color are they? They are light. She thinks they are blue, she can never tell, the light is too warm to be sure. He is too far away to be sure.)

Wanda closes her eyes. She spreads her legs until they strain at the joints, until her tendons threaten to snap. She fucks herself with two hands. She lifts her legs up, bends them, hoping for leverage. 

(She knows that, if she were to open her eyes, if she were to look at the mirror, she would not see herself. She would see the window. She knows that if he is there, at the window, he could see her. He can see her. He can, he can, he can.)

She thinks about Vision and the sharpness of his angles and she lifts her legs to wrap around him. She has only ever seen him at a distance, she doesn’t know how tall he is, how wide he is, how much space she needs to leave between her thighs. 

“Vision. Please. Oh, God.”

She braces her feet on the bed and rocks her hips up into her touch. She wonders what he sounds like. She rocks her hips up into him. The bed creaks. The more she moves, the more sound she makes, the more sound the bed makes, the more she thinks about him. 

She knows his name. He does not know hers. 

She comes on her fingers.

The bed goes quiet and her mind goes quiet and all that is left is her panting in a cold, empty room. 

She breathes, limp hands between her limp legs, feeling the buzz of her blood and the buzz of excitement. She forgets the word shame. She forgets the word wrong. She forgets the words close and the and blinds. 

She lies there until she is certain that, if he was watching, he has laid back down and gone to sleep. 

Wanda extracts herself from the bed. She leaves the pile of clothes where it is, flicking off the light, stumbling her way to her real bedroom where the windows are all covered. 

Tucked in by still-wet hands, she falls asleep almost immediately.

And she sleeps soundly. 

At first.

sunday

Wanda has been up for several hours. 

She took a shower and stared despondently at the wall. She got dressed in mismatched underwear and stared despondently at the floor. She made some coffee and stared despondently at the machine. 

This is probably the part where most people seek help, right?

What the fuck. Who was that? Who is she? Is she still the person that did that, last night, or has she metamorphosed back into a sane human being? Did she exorcise some sort of demon? 

What the fuck?? 

She’s so fucking hungry but she can barely even manage a bowl of cereal this morning.

Whatever words she forgot last night, she remembers today. She remembers them so well that her head hurts. She wobbles her way up the stairs, wobbles herself to the scene of the crime, scoops up all of the evidence, runs it down to the laundry room before she can make herself sick. 

She begins to rationalize. She begins to search for answers because there has to be one, somewhere in here. 

It’s been a while since she’s been laid. Maybe that’s why all of this happened in the first place, just a classic case of needed it bad, got something else. Maybe, if not a demon that possessed her, it’s just another bout of depression. Lost interest in her hobbies, picked up a new one?

No, baby, you picked up a crime. 

It’s not a crime. 

…

It’s… it’s not… it’s not a crime.

…

Guys?

… 

Wanda picks up her phone. She Googles it. She’s not happy with the lack of a concrete no and she falls against the kitchen counter, tossing it to the side. 

It’s weird to get post-coital clarity when it was barely even coital in the first place. Clarity returns all the same, a belated and unwelcome houseguest.

Wanda buries her head in her hands and groans. 

… Well, one of the voices says, she doesn’t know who, she doesn’t care, at least it’s over, now, yeah? Learned your lesson?

“Yes,” she mutters, “I learned my damn lesson.”

There’s a knock at the door at exactly ten in the morning. 

Her head snaps up. 

Wanda is wearing a sports t-shirt that doesn’t fit. She is not wearing a bra. She is wearing pajama pants that are so long that they nearly reach her toes. When she walks, it’s almost like she’s wearing scuba flippers. Her hair is tangled. No, her hair is a nest. A creature sits atop her head, right now. 

No one ever knocks at the door. 

Slowly, she creeps over to the window. She rocks up onto her toes to see. 

Oh. 

Oh, God. 

Oh.

Oh, God. 

There he is. He’s very tall. He’s very wide. 

He’s very here. 

There’s no time to change, is there. There’s no time to fix this. There’s no time to tie her hair back into a messy-but-in-the-model-way bun, put on makeup, put on a bra, make herself look like those girls in the movies who lounge and are depressed but are still sexy. 

Wanda bends at the waist, rolls up her pajama pants to her ankles, crosses an arm over her chest, and opens the door just enough to peek out. 

His eyes are blue. They drop to hers through the small crack. He smiles softly as she opens it all the way, too late to go back now, too late to go back in time. 

Wanda knows these clothes. His lounging clothes. The clothes he changes into when he comes back to the house. The grey and deeper grey, so much softer when she sees them up close. He’s put these on before. He’s taken these off before. 

She knows she should say something. All that comes to mind is: Hi, I’ve been watching you like you’re a late night TV program and I’m so sorry but not sorry enough to stop. 

So, she just stares.

“Hi,” Vision says after a moment. A voice is given to a face, a body, a cock. His eyes are trained to hers but there is the sour hope that perhaps, perhaps, it is hard to keep his eyes off of her chest. “Yes. Hello. I’m Vision, from next door?”

Wanda leans in the doorway, mostly to keep standing. “Oh. Hi. I’m… Wanda.”

She holds out a hand on instinct, the hand attached to the arm that doesn’t hold her breasts as if to protect them. First mistake. He takes it. Oh, fuck. A voice given to a warm hand. He is warm. It’s supposed to be a first meeting but she is only meeting his sound, right now. She’s met every other inch of him, as far as she’s concerned. 

Bad. Bad Wanda. Stop immediately. No more.

“Yes, I…” he shifts, looking over her shoulder as if searching for something inside her house, “This is quite awkward, my apologies.”

“Awkward?” she echoes, tilting her head. “Sorry?”

“Your, um…” Vision rests his hands on his hips, good hands, big hands, knobbly knuckles and square palms, “I was coming to tell you that your… your blinds are open.”

“My…” It’s difficult to act innocent. It’s really hard. Her face flushes but not because she is innocent. “My what?”

“In one of your upstairs rooms?” He points upward. Wanda glances up at the sky like an idiot. “I’m unsure if you were aware. Our houses have a similar floor plan. As do our windows.”

“... Oh,” she says. She brings her fingers up to her cheek, pressing. She digs her nails into her side.

Somehow, for the first time, she feels guilt. Real guilt. Oops. A bit late, now. 

He was quick to come over to tell her to stop. He was immediate. That’s pretty mortifying. She was almost sure she felt eyes on her but he probably spared a glance and immediately rolled over to go back to sleep. 

Maybe he didn’t see the end part. Maybe he only saw the start, the beginning part with the sweater and the jeans. The beginning part that could understandably be misconstrued as a real accident. He hasn’t mentioned anything else. If he did see, if he were really upset, he’d probably throw a fuss and - 

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says. 

Wanda blinks. He’s smiling somewhat idly at her and she’s beginning to think he saw nothing. That’s good news. She can pretend like it never happened.  

“... Yes. Yeah, y-yeah. Nice to meet you too. Sorry, um…“ Wanda looks down at herself, “Uh. I… I swear I didn’t crawl out from under a bridge.”

“Oh, I know,” he says. 

Wanda wants to curl up into a ball. She wants to crawl under a bridge.

Oh, I know is relatively innocent. He says it kindly. He says it in a neighborly way. He doesn’t say oh, I know, I saw you inside last night, probably close those blinds, huh?

She’s horrified either way. 

“Would, um…” She rests a hand on the back of her neck, making another bad decision, another heavy domino poised to topple from a table, “Would you like to come in?”

Vision lights up, “Really?”

No, God, no, I’m so ugly right now, I know what your dick looks like, there’s a hole in this shirt right over my nipple and I’m trying to keep the ladies contained but they’re very heavy. 

“... Sure!” She steps to the side, opening the door wider to welcome him in. He steps inside. He’s so tall. He’s so blond. He’s so pretty. This isn’t good. “Um… If you wouldn’t mind, I’m going to run and put some real-people clothes on, if that’s alright. Won’t take but a second.”

Vision nods, looking around, “It’s your home, Wanda, do what you must.”

Oh, he said my name. 

Yes, because you gave it to him. 

He said my name. My name. He said.

Go put a bra on. Jesus. 

Wanda slides down the hallway, stumbles into the laundry room, nudging the door closed with her toes before ripping at her shirt and pushing her pants down.

You had no issue with him seeing you naked last night.

Yes, but I didn’t know what his voice sounded like, then. 

She chooses whatever’s in reach. Normal people sweatpants and a normal people shirt that hugs her hips and chest the way she likes. She hopes he likes. 

She tucks the shirt in. She stares. She untucks it. She stares. Hm. She tucks it back in again before shouldering her way back into the hallway and speed-walking back to the front door. 

Vision hasn’t strayed far. His arms are behind him, hands clasped as he studies the framed pictures on the wall by the door. Wanda clears her throat and he perks up, looking over his shoulder but not turning completely. God. Everything he does is so fascinating to watch. He never moves quite like she expects him to. 

And now he has a voice. 

“Is this your husband?” he asks, lifting a hand to point to a picture. 

Wanda squints, shuffling closer to see. She squeaks when she sees who he’s pointing to, shaking her head so fast that her hair flies, “No, God, no. That’s my brother.”

“Hm,” he says thoughtfully. He doesn’t drop his hand as he looks closer at it. “You two look nothing alike.”

She laughs, embarrassing noise, “Would you believe me if I told you we’re twins?”

Vision raises his eyebrows. Light blond. Nearly invisible. Wanda wants to kiss them, feel them soft on her lips. “Are you?”

“Yeah, actually.” She smiles at the picture. “God. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Mm. He doesn’t live with you?”

“... No?”

“Really?” Vision looks around. He’s very good at looking. She wonders what else he’s looked at. “Does anyone?”

She scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest as she stares up at him. Bewildered that he’s inside. Bewildered that she came on her fingers to his face, his name, that he’s here, he’s here. He’s speaking. Bewildered that, within their first meeting, he’s asking about who she lives with. 

Vision seems to notice her expression because he smiles and clarifies, “Not to pry, of course. I simply thought I was the only one.”

“The only one?” She’s standing very close to him. 

“The only one who lives alone in a… frankly enormous house.” He pivots. “Have you met the other neighbors?”

She shakes her head. “Not a one. Am I missing out?”

“The smallest family on this street has four people,” he holds up his fingers and Wanda stares at them, trying not to drool, “And that’s the smallest.”

“Mm. Well, there’s me?” Wanda smiles shakily, “Have you met everyone else, then?”

“I’ve met many of them, yes.”

“You didn’t meet me.”

“Well, everyone else has a habit of coming up to the door with a different baked good,” Vision slips his hands into his pockets. “I hardly initiate.”

“No one brought me baked goods,” Wanda murmurs, only half put-out. 

Maybe you should have started mowing your lawn with your shirt off, an unhelpful voice offers, like he did. 

“I don’t bake,” he says, like an apology. 

“No, me neither.” Silence settles. She’s really standing very close, she’s practically gotten him cornered against the wall. Mm. Then, the conversation catches up with her and she stumbles back, “Oh! Oh! Right, sorry, do you - would you - would you like? Water? Some tea?”

Nailing this. 

Vision laughs at her. Oh, fuck, she’s in love. He brings his shoulders to his ears, “You know, tea sounds lovely, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

“I wouldn’t! God, can you tell that I never have anyone over?” She takes quick steps over to the kitchen, through the doorless opening in full view of Vision, full view of the door. “I’ve got… fuck, what do I even have?”

“I don’t have a preference,” he says, voice warm from a smile. 

“I’ve…” Wanda tries to run her fingers through her hair but, obviously, it’s tangled. She reaches up for the cupboard door, swinging it open, gesturing to it, “Here, is there anything you like? I’m awful at guessing. And choosing. And everything.”

Vision toes off his shoes by the door, a gentleman, before crossing to stand beside her as if he’s always lived here, as if they’re old friends, but they’re not, they’re not, Wanda, don’t do this. 

Similar floor plan, he said. That must be it. 

“Hmmmm…” He leans close, eye-level with the shelves that Wanda always has to strain to reach. He smells like cologne. A good kind. Not one of the ones that are sour. Mm. “And you have no recommendations?”

“No,” she says, much quieter now. It’s different to be close when he came here and placed himself at her side. She was always in control before, in her own way. There are no blinds to shut, here. He is warm up close. 

“Hm.” He brings a perfect hand up, taking a box between his fingers and plucking a tea bag from inside it. “I’ve never had tea with lavender before.”

“...” Wanda is distracted. He hasn’t shaved. The scruff isn’t super long but it’s apparent. The tiniest bluish dots down his jaw, his chin, over his upper lip. “... Good, um… that’s a good choice.”

“Would you have recommended it?” he asks. His teeth are clean and white and straight. His nails are clean and short and pink.

“A bit early for an herbal choice,” she manages to say, taking the corner of the bag that’s furthest from his hand as possible, “but I’ll allow it.”

Vision smiles as she shuffles around him toward the kettle. She wobbles it to make sure it still has water in it, to make sure she doesn’t have to go back over to the sink where Vision is standing, and she exhales almost obscenely when she hears the slosh in its belly. 

“Thanks for inviting me in,” he says behind her, almost shy, “Really. You have a lovely home.”

“Thank… thank you,” she sends a glance over her shoulder, “Glad to have you.”

Do you know how difficult it is to maintain eye contact with a stranger when you’ve already seen him naked? Probably not. That shouldn’t even be a scenario that exists. 

She does not spare a glance down to the front of his pants and she obviously doesn’t realize that he’s half-hard and obviously it doesn’t make her hold her breath and slowly turn back to the stovetop so that she can busy herself with messing with the knobs. 

And then, she’s done turning the knobs. And the kettle is silent. And everything is silent. 

And she slowly turns to face him again. 

He smiles. Oh, God.

“Feel free to, um…” she waves a hand, face burning, “make yourself at home. It always takes a moment for this old thing to heat up.”

Vision smiles. She wants to beg him to stop that. With another glance around, he nods, folds his hands behind his back, wanders out of the kitchen and out of sight. 

She slumps against the counter, hands covering her face, pressing her thighs tight together. 

This is bad. It was bad before but she was going to learn her lesson. It was bad before but he didn’t have her name. 

Do most people just let strangers roam freely in their house as they contemplate their actions? Almost definitely not.

Do strangers often accept the invitation?

That was quick, she thinks. Right? He was practically out the door before I even finished my sentence.

Probably just an awkward moment, a thought offers.

Yeah, that would make sense. 

It isn’t like he’s looking for anything.

The kettle rumbles but has nothing helpful to add. 

What’s going to happen when it boils? She’ll make him tea - then what? They’ll stay here? They’ll lean on the counters? Will they go to the living room, sit together? What will they talk about? God, Wanda’s not prepared for this. 

“Our floor plans are incredibly similar,” Vision calls from somewhere, “It’s almost as if I’m still home.”

“... Oh!” she calls back, wincing. 

That’s not what Wanda needed to hear. The last thing she needs is a better understanding of his house, his space, his life. The last thing she needs is to imagine him leaning against her furniture, sleepy or wide awake, exhausted or aroused - 

She hears the floor creak upstairs. 

Wanda has never felt such a dizzying level of panic in her life. 

The kettle is set off the burner, the stove clicked off, and she’s taking fast but quiet steps up the stairs to try and find him. 

She knows where he is. Of course she does. 

She didn’t close the door when she left last night. 

Vision stands in her childhood bedroom. 

The vanity mirror is still in its position, placed in such a clearly inconvenient and intentional angle. He stands where she used to stand, staring through the window to his own, his back to the door. His shirt is grey and it looks so soft and it’s clean and unstained and Wanda just wants to reach out and - 

“What’s this?” he asks. He does not face her. 

Wanda stills. She steps inside, just past the door frame. “Um… it’s my old room. From when I was a kid.” 

“Mm,” he says. 

“I, um…” Her heart is in her throat. She stares at Vision who stares at his own window. She still hasn’t stripped the bed from the night before. “I mostly use it for, uh… storage, now.”

“Storage.” 

“Yep. Mhm.”

Vision turns a bit to see her. His hands are limp in his pockets. “Then what were you undressing in here for?” 

There is a grating silence within her own mind followed by a grouping of hurried footsteps as her better parts all run for the door. 

Wanda stutters. His eyes are very blue and very close and she knows what he looks like when he comes and he knows what she looks like when she comes, oh, God. 

“… What,” she squeaks.

“Last night. You undressed. And then did a little more than undressing - why here?” He points to the floor. She’s thankful that he doesn’t point toward the bed. “In your childhood bedroom?”

Her voice is soft and strained as she whispers, “... Why were you watching?”

He smiles. She gets a chill down her spine that pools hot between her legs.

Slowly, surely, he takes a step back. He maintains eye contact. One step, two steps, then three. He reaches out a steady hand to rest on the back of the chair that sits right in front of the window. The chair that was placed so clearly to watch.

“Because you wanted me to,” he says.

Wanda might just die. This is where she dies. Her knees buckle a bit but she remains standing. 

The legs of the chair squeak against the hard floor as Vision drags it over to its real home, tucks it under the matching desk. He taps his fingers on the wood, contemplating, before steadily leaning on the table. His arms cross. He looks her up and down. Remembering.

He was watching the entire time, then. 

Does that make it better or worse?

Vision’s lips part after a long moment, meeting her eyes again, “How long?”

Her mouth is dry, “... Since Monday.”

“This last Monday?”

“Mmhm.” 

A bridge sounds really good, right about now. 

“Ah,” he nods casually. He glances over toward the window again, “Not too long, then. Less than a week.”

“I’m…” Wanda wants to run away. She wants to run away and she’s terrified by the simultaneous thrill of this moment. She doesn’t understand. She was safe when she was hiding but now it’s daytime and Vision’s here and he knows and he’s calm. And she’s still so hot for him. “Vision, I’m so… so sorry, I didn’t - ”

“Come here.”

Her mouth snaps closed. Vision uncrosses his ankles, making a space for her between his thighs. He uncrosses his arms, making a space for her against his chest. 

“W-what?” she whispers. 

“Come here,” he says again, pointing between his feet. “Is that not what you wanted?”

“I…” She can’t breathe. “I don’t… I don’t know… what is happening right now.”

“I didn’t come for tea, Wanda.” He sighs as if reminiscing. Wanda’s going to pass out. “Unless, of course, last night was not the invitation I thought it was. In which case, I’d love some tea.”

“You…” She’s dreaming, she has to be. A small pinch to the inside of her wrist. His eyes flicker down to the action and he grins and he can’t be real. “Were you… touching yourself? To me?”

“Were you, to me?”

“...Um.”

“If I had known, I’d have put on more of a show,” he stands and Wanda tilts her chin up almost reflexively. “Because you… were something else.”

“Thanks,” she mutters. She grimaces at this moment, at this conversation, covering her face, “Sorry - wait - sorry, I - I don’t - I don’t… ”

The floor groans as he takes slow steps to settle in front of her. She hesitantly peeks out from her fingers. 

Oh, hello, she thinks, swathed in his shadow, feeling both protected and hunted. 

… 

Right, I forgot, you guys left. 

…

She’s left with only Vision. No conscience. No redeeming. No closing of blinds or locking of doors. No voice of reason. 

His hands are huge up close, big and hot, they eclipse her jaw as he slides them to frame her face. She sighs, cautious at first before spilling, tipping into his touch like she belongs here. 

He ducks his head. Wanda parts her lips. Her eyelids flutter. He doesn’t kiss her, simply holds her, so close and so real. His breath is just as heavy as she imagined it to be. Their noses brush and he tilts his head like he might close the gap but there seem to be more words he wants to say. 

“Was it?” he murmurs, scanning over her face, lingering on her mouth, “An invitation?”

Wanda nods. Vehemently. She hiccups when his hands stop her, holding her tighter, keeping her still, “Yes.”

“Good,” he says, so gentle, so pleased, “That’s good.”

“Vision,” she croaks.

“What do you want me to do, Wanda?” His thumbs brush up and down her cheeks, brush across her bottom lip, then down her throat. The more he touches, the less she can breathe. “Hm? Do you want me to watch you, darling? Keep my hands to myself? Go home? Wait ‘til the sun sets, let you perform for me again?”

She makes a miserable noise, trying to shake her head, “N-no.”

“You want me to perform, then?” He sounds so soft, so hot, so heavy. “Move my bed to the window, Wanda, give you a real show?”

“Noooo,” she whines. She sounds so pitiful.

He smiles because he knows. “You want me to stay?”

Wanda groans. She rocks up into his palms, into his touch. “Please.”

“Tell me,” he murmurs.

No conscience. No voice of reason. 

“Fuck me,” she breathes. 

He smiles wider. (She’d worry that she has stepped into a trap but it feels more like he did. This is the scene of the crime.) Vision tilts her back, positions her like a vanity mirror, and slots his mouth over hers. 

She slumps forward into him, grasping at his shirt, and he chuckles. She’s too busy losing herself to be offended. Her body burns under her clothes, his body burns beneath his as she feels and grabs and pulls him closer.

The embarrassment slots in beside the thrill. It is much easier to feel that she has done a good thing when Vision maps her body with his palms, tastes her lips and tongue like a promise, like a congratulation, like a thank you, but that can’t be right. 

She is thrilled but she isn’t meant to be rewarded. 

Vision takes her hands and guides them around his back, stepping closer, leading the way. Orchestrating her reward. It feels like he needs her, the way he breathes and pushes in and crowds her like she so badly wants him to, but it… this isn’t… this…

“You’re not supposed to let me have this,” she rasps as he mouths down her neck, her hands coming up to rest on the nape of his neck, “You’re… you’re supposed to… to c-call me disgusting and… and say I’m… I’m a creep.”

“Yeah?” he laughs, rumbly against her throat, tangling his fingers in the fabric she wears, “I’m not supposed to fuck you?”

“No,” she squirms, holding her arms up and losing another life as he rips the thing over her head. She stumbles for a second from the motion, “You’re… supposed to denounce me.”

“Mm,” he rakes his eyes over her body, tossing her shirt to the side, “Would that have just turned you on more?”

“Probably,” she whines, grasping at his shoulders to pull him into another sloppy kiss. “I don’t know. Fuck. Fuck, Vision, this isn’t supposed to have worked.”

“Oh, you knew what you were doing, didn’t you?” Vision grins against her mouth. 

“No, obviously, I didn’t.” Wanda groans as he slides his hands into the back of her sweatpants, kneading her ass as if considering possibilities, reliving memories, rewriting them. She holds onto his hair a bit tighter than she intends and he makes a fantastic noise. She presses her cheek to his temple as he bites down her jaw. “We… oh, God, we should… probably… move. Someplace else.”

“Mm?” His hands come to her waistband. “Whatever for?”

“This… is my… This is a kid’s bedroom.”

He leans back to see her as if confused, “Yeah?” 

She holds his hips as though they’re not new to each other, “Probably not the best location for a first lay.”

“...” A glance over to the bed. The implication is clear. The memory remains. “Is it not?”

Wanda knows she’s desperate. She’s afraid that she’ll wake up. Vision, of course, is not so desperate because it seems that he always knows what to do. 

He walks a half-circle around her. Wanda wants to turn to face him, push him by the chest down the hall and onto her real bed that doesn’t creak, into her room that isn’t pink. 

Vision holds her by the shoulders, holds her still. He steps close, drags his touch down her arms until it rests on her waist. She’s just a ragdoll for a moment, the ultimate honor, as he pulls her back by the hips to feel him. Truly feel him. 

“Oh, God,” she whispers. 

His chin rests on her shoulder, his cheek scratchy against the side of her throat as he leads her to press back against him, subtle drives of the hips, slotted perfectly like puzzle pieces. He hugs her waist, then, caging her in. Wanda doesn’t think she ever wants to leave. 

“We can go,” he agrees gently. Wanda bites her breath between her teeth as he slips a hot hand under her waistband. Her head falls back against his collarbone. No, this can’t be real. This has to be a dream. “Before we do, though, I want you to look.”

“Look?” 

“That’s what you’re good at, aren’t you?”

She cries. His fingers reward idly, tiny circles, fostering a fire. He places a chaste kiss beneath her ear. 

Vision is, quite honestly, terrifying. There is more confidence in one of his hands than Wanda has in her entire body. He savors himself and she’s getting the feeling that she is living within the moments right before being savored as well. Oh, God, he’s going to swallow her whole, isn’t he. She’s not going to be able to survive. And that’s fucking amazing. 

“Look at it, Wanda,” he tells her, “Keep your eyes on it.”

His window. Lit up by the sun, it’s a fucking Sunday morning right now, the reflection of Wanda’s own frame so clearly placed within its panels. 

“I’m sorry,” she hears herself say. 

“I didn’t know how clearly you could see through a person’s window until last night.” It’s as if they’re having two different conversations. “I probably never would have known if you hadn’t shown me.”

“Oh, my God.”

“You could have watched for another week. Another month. Another year.” He kisses the point of her jaw, the very back of it, far more sensitive than she’d care to admit. She feels the weight of him against the seat of her pants. “And I never… would have known.”

“Vision,” she pleads. 

“You didn’t see me naked on that first night, did you?”

She shakes her head weakly, “No.”

“So why did you keep watching?”

She can’t blink. She stares at the window and feels his presence behind. “Mmmmmh.”

“Wanda.” He threatens to remove his hand and Wanda grasps at his arm with both of hers, keeping him in place. He snickers, “Why did you keep watching.”

“I don’t know,” her voice is hoarse. “I don’t… I don’t…”

“There must have been a reason,” he murmurs. He’s torturing her. It feels so good. 

“Because…” Wanda looks up to the ceiling. Not for an answer but for forgiveness, probably. “You… seemed… nice.”

He laughs, “You thought I was nice?”

“Nice and pretty and… normal and… and…” She rolls her hips back against him and he drops his head slightly, the softest moan in his chest. “You were living alone, I thought, and I… I didn’t know you but I… I knew something you didn’t know.”

“Which was?”

“That I could see you.”

Vision presses a finger inside. She squeals and throws an arm back to wrap around his neck, closing her eyes. 

“God, Wanda,” his voice is low and proud as he works her open, sickening sound that she tries to drown out by focusing on his voice, “You’re perfect.”

“My room,” she whispers, not wanting him to stop but needing to go somewhere else, anywhere else but here. “Please.”

He smiles. “And which one is your room?”

Wanda sighs. She laughs. She laughs like an insane person, taking his hand, interlocking their fingers, dragging him down the hall. 

Vision, she has decided, is an insane person. He follows close, holding on for dear life, tugging at the back of her bra with a stupid grin. 

“I never do anything like this, by the way,” she all but kicks her door open, “Any of this.”

Vision lingers by the door as Wanda lets him go. She crosses quickly to straighten out her bedsheets where she’d tossed her duvet off this morning. She glances over at the man in her room, then back to her bed, before hauling the blankets off of it and into a heap on the floor. 

“What, did you think I did?” he asks, looking excitedly at the pile at her feet. “Christ.”

“I don’t know, Vision.” Wanda pulls listlessly at her bra. “Why are you standing so far away?”

He shakes his head, baffled, and he’s hovering over her in seconds. Her effort is interrupted by his calm touch, “Here. Let me.”

Wanda lets her head fall back, staring at his face up close, feeling that nagging buzz of impatience. Now, now, now, before he changes his mind, before you wake up, hurry, hurry, things to do. 

“Vision,” she says. She says his name more than she needs to because she is finally allowed to. 

“Be patient,” he kisses the corner of her mouth and she exhales as her chest is freed. “You’re beautiful, darling. I want to take my time with you.”

“You can take your time later,” she says. It’s supposed to sound confident but she can’t sound confident. “Please. Please. Please.” She takes the waist of his sweatpants, “I can’t. I can’t.”

“I love it when you beg,” he says. 

Wanda fucking knew it. 

He rocks into her fingers, encouragement, and the dark grey pants fall as he jerks his shirt over his head. She can’t help herself, reaching out, trailing feather-light attention over the painfully stark outline between his legs. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, watching with interest. She wonders if he’s ever been desperate in his entire life. If he’s only ever inspired it in others. “All yours, mm?”

“I’ll… I…” She can barely speak. Her focus returns to his face. She knows she’s blushing and he looks like he always does. “I can’t wait. Please. I’ll suck you later, I just - I just - “

“Is that a promise?” Vision grins like a goddamn villain. “It’s alright, Wanda, I can speed it up for you. As long as I’ll get a next time.”

Wanda’s lifted up and tossed onto the mattress before she can even blink. 

“Fuck,” she gapes up at him, “You’re insane.”

“Yes. Do you have condoms?”

She points with her toes, “Top drawer.”

“Lovely,” he simpers, the bastard, reaching down to grab them. “Listen. I know you’re desperate for it - “

Yes. Yes, I am. Hurry. Hurry. Fuck. 

“ - but I may need to take some preventative measures before you get what you want.”

Wanda pushes herself up to rest on her palms. He plucks a wrapper from the box, bringing it up to rest loosely between his teeth. “Preventative measures? What? What are you preventing?”

Wordlessly, he reaches down and pushes his briefs down just enough to free himself. 

“... Oh,” she wavers. She clears her throat and wets her lips before attempting a weak, “Do you have a license for that thing?”

He lights up, dropping the condom into his palm before pointing at her with it, “I’ve never heard that one before. Well done.”

The distance didn’t do it justice. She knows how tall he is, now, she has perspective to work with. It’s a monster. It’s a weapon.

With trembling effort, Wanda grabs the backs of her thighs and folds herself in half. 

“Now,” she says certainly. Vision raises his eyebrows. “Please.”

He studies her before giving in to some inner voice that he still has. Wanda’s almost offended by how calm he is as he rolls the condom on but the offense melts as she stares and realizes that, yeah, that thing’s going in her today. 

This is the best day of her life. 

If this is how she dies, it’s fine. 

He kneels by the bed and takes her by the ankles, towing her to the edge, “I’m sorry, darling, I’d like to relax you a bit. I can’t break you in good conscience.”

“Fuck your good conscience,” Wanda cries as he pulls her final scrap of clothing down her legs, “Vision - “

“You said it yourself,” he murmurs as he brings her thighs up to rest against his ears, “I’m nice.”

She’d be afraid that she’s squeezing the life out of him if it weren’t for his hands actively encouraging and hugging her legs to do just that. She muffles her noise with the inside of her wrist. He strokes her stomach, from her navel down to the dip below the plush of her belly, dipping his tongue inside and grinning as she writhes around beneath him. 

“It’s alright,” he says, once again, a bastard. He kisses her clit, chaste and close-mouthed, and he laughs when her head shoots up in protest. “I’ll fuck you soon. You’ll thank me later.”

He takes her into his mouth. Wanda dies. Hot palms disappear from her stomach, from her ankle. Wanda chokes. Vision sucks pink/red marks in crooked lines across her skin as he works her open. Wanda is in heaven but it isn’t her time to go yet. 

“Vision,” she warns, his name all hers, her skin all his, “Vision, Vis, baby, baby.”

He laughs at the name, slowing but not receding. “You think you can take it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Wanda is pathetic and she feels so, so pretty when he looks at her like this. “Please. We can go slow later. We can do whatever you want later, whatever you want, but I - I can’t.”

A wet-suction kiss to one of many bruises. Wanda is emptied and he pushes her up to rest in the center of the bed. He knows what he wants. Wanda trusts him. 

She doesn’t know why. They don’t know each other. She knows what he looks like when he comes. She knows his address. She knows the layout of his room, the parts she can see. She knows his voice, his cock, his hands. She knows his name. She knows she wants him. 

Maybe that’s enough. 

He crawls over her. Wanda immediately reaches out, traces the light hair down his stomach, braving the heat of his cock with a single finger, soft where there’s skin and smooth where the latex begins. He cages her in but it isn’t enough. 

“Wanda,” he says. 

She stares at his chest, his stomach, his arms, his legs. Larger than life - because, of course, his life was always at a distance. 

“Hey.” He balances himself on an arm, brushing a thumb down her cheek, tucking her wild hair behind her ear. Even that is almost too much to bear. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

Wanda glares up at him. He laughs and drops down to his elbows, kissing her. Sweet, this time. Like he loves her. But he can’t. 

“I want.”

“Mm. But you’ll want tomorrow too, won’t you?” Vision glances down between them. She recognizes that face, the face of considered denial and the face of consequent denied denial. He leans down, taking the sensitive skin of her chest between his teeth. She arches into him. There’s a body above her. It’s his body. Oh, God. “After you think it through?”

“I never think anything through. I don’t want to.” She reaches out to touch his stomach again, his pretty abs, and he flexes them involuntarily. She prods them thoughtfully, “I saw you and I want you and I have you.”

“You don’t know who I am,” he says, pleased with that idea, sparkling and handsome. 

“I will,” she lifts her legs, her stomach beginning to ache from all of this fucking exercise, “Later. I wanna feel you now.”

“Getting bold, darling, that’s the way.” 

Vision reaches down between them, takes his cock in hand, looks up at her through his eyelashes. Wanda shuffles down a bit, too enthusiastic to wait any longer, until he brushes her entrance. The latex is cool but steadily warming. She’ll take him raw when she knows who the fuck he is. 

“You know, in case I don’t fit,” he begins, conversational as he traces her idly, thoughtfully, there’s no time for thoughtfulness, Wanda’s a dead woman, “do you happen to have any coconut oil? Works wonders.”

“You’ll fit,” she spreads herself wide, interlocking her fingers on the back of his neck. Her hips creak. “Thank you for being careful. But please stop being careful.”

Vision scans her face. 

He pushes in. 

Wanda may need to prepare to eat her words. 

“Oh,” she wheezes.

“Mhm.” 

“Oh.”

“Mhm.” Vision’s calm demeanor fades and he closes his eyes, “Fuck, you’re tight.”

“Any… anything would… be… t-tight… for you,” she pushes her fingers into his hair, bringing him closer. He smiles and she hates him and she wants to know him well enough to hate him for more than the size of his stupid cock. “Oh, God. Baby.”

“I’ve got you,” he promises, whispers, moans. Beautiful. She’s thankful that he’s even more perfect than she thought. She’s thankful that he isn’t a complete douche - she isn’t sure what she would have done. He’s flush against her before she knows it and he buries his nose into her neck, “All the way. Well done.”

“Don’t stop,” she whispers as if he’s even started.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No,” she urges, hugging him, chest to chest, holding him like a goddamn teddy bear. He laughs, shifts his hips, making her cry out, “Fuck!”

“Wanda - “

“Doesn’t hurt. Feels so good. So good, baby, so big.” Wanda holds him, feels his shoulder blades, the rigid muscle and sharp bone, “Want you fast, want you now. I don’t care, I don’t care.”

Vision smiles. Damn, that smile. Damn his laugh and his hands that slip behind her spine, pushing her to arch up and into his body, arch down onto his cock. She yelps. She laughs at herself. 

“Christ, woman, where did you come from?” he whispers. 

Wanda parts her lips to answer his rhetorical question, emboldened by the self-assuredness that comes with being stuffed full, but he’s pulling out and taking her entire soul with him. 

“Oh.” 

He drives forward. 

“Oh!!!!” She hangs onto his neck and he sucks another mark. She steals his words, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Vision muffles a miserable noise against the thin skin that stretches over her collarbone. She feels his teeth and lips. She feels his breath, his hands, the sweat on his palms as he pushes her to slide, to roll, to rock. 

“Perfect, Wanda, perfect,” he says. His praise weighs so much and she can’t for the life of her figure out why. She only heard his voice for the first time less than an hour ago. “All mine, aren’t you? Before I even knew it.”

“Yours,” she repeats, eyes wide as she stares at the ceiling over his shoulder. He bucks. She shrieks. He laughs and does it again. “God. You. Yours. I’m.”

Wanda grabs, gropes, memorizes, maps, feels, cries, fucks. She scratches hard, red, deep marks down his back and up his hips. She knows he likes the pain. He realizes that she knows he likes the pain. 

She thinks about Vision. She thinks about his clothes on the floor. She thinks about the silent mattress beneath them and the feeling, the sound, the timbre, the flavor of his breath, his voice, his mouth. She thinks about the romanticism of the dark, the safety of it, she thinks about how fucking bright the room is. 

She thinks about last night. She thinks about the last six nights. 

“Vision,” she whimpers.

He kisses her again. He kisses her like he knows her. He doesn’t. Wanda takes his bottom lip between her teeth and his eyes, half-lidded, sex-drunk excitement, begin to gleam. He dares her to bite. She does. 

This may be her new favorite hobby. 

This may be her new only hobby. 

“I can’t let you go,” she confesses, moans, cries, signs her name on his back with her nails, signs her name in his mouth with her tongue. 

Vision’s pace stutters. His voice is strained and beautiful. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

He tenses beneath her fingers. She closes her eyes and waits for him to finish, waits for the moment to pass and the wave to overcome, waits for him to clamber off of her and bid her adieu because, of course, this is too good to be true - 

His lips are parted as they fit against hers. It doesn’t feel like a goodbye. He pants, his eyes closed and his soft eyebrows drawn upward.

He slides a hand between them. Wanda hates the sob that’s torn from her body as he strokes her, fast and stammered and hurried and desperate. 

“C’mon,” he murmurs, “C’mon, Wanda. With me.”

She nods. She thinks she nods. He’s fucking her so fast that any movement is a hit or a miss, a guessing game. She holds his head, frames his face, kisses him until at least one of them is pathetic. 

She feels pathetic. 

She feels perfect. 

She doesn’t deserve it but she gets it, she wins it, she’s rewarded, she’s full. 

Vision dislodges something inside. He turns her inside-out like a pair of sweatpants. She can’t let him go. She won’t. 

He says her name when he comes because he knows it now. Wanda follows as if replying. 

monday

She wakes up with a man draped across her chest. 

Yesterday… was something.

Vision didn’t leave. 

Wanda ordered lunch and they ate on the couch, sweaty and half-clothed. They talked about hometowns. They had a good connective moment. Then, of course, Wanda said something that reminded him about the whole window thing and he was pushing her empty plate to the side, pulling her onto his lap. 

That was the majority of yesterday, yeah. Fuck and then eat and then breathe and then remind each other how they know each other. Rinse and repeat. 

And now there is a man in her bed. And he is naked. And he is hers. 

It feels a bit like a scene in a movie. Maybe that’s on purpose. Maybe Wanda’s directing this. She directed him when she didn’t know him and she can direct him now. 

She lifts a sore arm from the bed. It’s half asleep as she rests it on the back of his head. She stares down at him as he uses her chest like a pillow, so very considerate not to rest his heavy head on the parts that hurt. 

His hair is in his eyes. She watches him for a second. Dim bedroom, same bed, same sun. She can hear his breaths, feel them, cherish them. 

She brushes her thumb over his eyebrow. Yeah, just as soft as she wanted. She pushes up, carding through his hair, soft and light and cool. He hums. 

“Hi,” she says. Her voice cracks. (He warned her not to take him down her throat so fast but she was too focused on the task at hand to hear him.) 

His lips curl up at the side. His cheek is all smushed to her sternum. It’s hard to call him adorable when she knows the filth that lies within. 

“Hi,” he opens an eye. “Morning?”

“Mm.” She pets his hair. “Sleep well?”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Vision mutters, a warm hand sliding up her side until it reaches his face, fingers pressing the sleep away. 

“Like what?” she smiles. 

“Like we’re in a movie.”

Wanda raises her eyebrows at him. He always knows. He's so strange. He shifts to lay fully on top of her, chin sharp on her chest. She groans at the weight. “Maybe I want to talk to you like we’re in a movie.”

“Talk to me like it’s a fun movie, then.” He shoves his arms under her back, hugging her like a pillow. “Sleep well? is only in boring ones. I fucked you last night, I deserve a better greeting than that.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno.” He grins, wobbly, soft, beautiful. She met him yesterday. “People in the movies know each other.”

“So, introduce yourself so I can be sweet to you.”

Vision scratches her bare back with dull fingernails. “What if you figure out that I’m dreadfully boring?”

“Oh, I already think that,” she drops her head forward, kissing his nose, not sure why, not sure if it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. 

“I can always…” he hikes a thumb over his shoulder, the exact wrong direction that his house is in, “... go home. Fuck off forever, if you’d like.”

“Vision,” she stares at him, “You have to stay.”

“Oh?” He’s such a good actor. So good at acting like he doesn’t want to. “I have to?”

“You have to stay,” she repeats, nodding firmly, “We have to date.”

“Okay.” He mimics her nod. His eyes are gleaming. He shuffles up until they’re eye-level, nuzzling, being suspiciously cute, “Unless you’d prefer I date someone else while you watch through the window.”

Wanda squints. He winks. She kisses him because she hates him. He opens his mouth and she moans because she can’t resist. 

She kisses him, lazy and warm and fuzzy. His hands roam and feel her. Familiar with her floor plan, familiar with her anatomy, she met him yesterday. She’s going to keep him forever. 

Wait. 

Wanda pushes at his chest and he hums, offended, looking at her expectantly. 

“We’re going to have to lie about how we met,” Wanda says, haunted. He blinks. “Oh, my God. Vision. We’re… we’re going to have to lie.”

“We don’t have to lie,” Vision replies, thoughtful, pensive, beautiful and sleepy, “Of course, it’s more embarrassing for you than it is for me.”

She drops her head back, miserable. “Oh, my God.”

“Hey,” he laughs, kissing the underside of her jaw. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright.” She covers her face and he kisses her over her hands. “Oh, fuck, I’m - I’m always gonna be a criminal. I’m stuck with the evidence of my crimes.”

“I'm not evidence, how dare you," he nips at her knuckles, "It wasn't a crime."

She peeks out from her fingers. 

He seems to reconsider, “Unless you filmed me.”

“I didn't film you.”

“Then!” He shrugs, “No harm, no foul, darling.”

She sinks further into the mattress. “We need to come up with a better story.”

“No.” Vision kisses all of the shallow hickeys he’s left down her chest, down her stomach, resting his head on her hip bone. She glares at him. “I like our story. If I didn’t like it, I’d not be here.”

“Well - “

“We can leave out the part where you saw me naked,” he says, “and the part where I saw you naked.”

“... So, what’s left?”

He grins. He hugs her leg. “People adore love at first sight stories, don’t they?”

She nods. She rests her hand on his head again. A movie scene. Better than a movie scene. 

“Mm.” She doesn’t know him. She loves him. “When you meet my parents, you should say that.”

“And when you meet my parents," Vision closes his eyes, "you should say it too.”

Chapter Text

two days

Yesterday was a Monday. 

Yesterday was insane. Almost as insane as the day before it.

Yesterday, Vision was in her bed when she woke up. 

She was so convinced in her mind that they’d stay there forever, that that’s… where it’d end. All things had settled into their permanent places. 

Can you blame her, though? Considering? Everything else had worked out for her up to that point - you know, watch a guy get naked without his permission and then you get to help that guy get naked with his permission? Surely that meant she cracked the code. 

Nope. 

He’d given her a pat on the ass before crawling out of bed, gathering his things from the floor as if they hadn’t just discussed what they were going to say to each other’s parents. As if they hadn’t just basically solidified a future on the spot. Vision dropped love at first sight into her lap and was suddenly making a swift exit. 

“... Uh?” she had said, rolling onto her back to watch. Her confusion was momentarily stalled by the sight of him stuffing himself back into his briefs. A bit like a magic trick. It really is a dangerous thing to wield so flippantly. He’s really good at wielding it. She was going to miss it. “Vision?”

Vision smiled sunnily, his hair a mop on his head, looking so pretty it made her genuinely upset. “Yes, Wanda?”

She huffed. No matter how she felt about him, she didn’t like being spoken to like that. Like she was being unreasonable. “Where are you going?”

He hummed as he pulled his shirt over his head. Wanda audibly groaned, devastated, and he only smiled wider. “If you must know, I have things to do today.”

For some reason, this was a surprise. Technically, anything he could possibly offer would be a surprise. (Because she has no idea who he is.)

“Hm,” she said. 

“Hm,” he mocked.

“And what… what are… the things?” 

Vision laughed and shoved his legs into his pants. “Did you forget I had a life beyond being your creepy eye candy?”

“No. Obviously not.” 

She had. Her throat hurt and her thighs were sticking together and she thought she found her life’s work.

“Well,” he said in the tone you’d use around a toddler who was one bad look away from a tantrum, a thin-ice tone, “I’m going to run next door to my home, unfortunately, to shower off all the evidence of our fantastic night.” He pointed to the door, a visual aid. Wanda’s attention flickered in that direction for only a second. “And then I’ll get dressed and go to work.”

Wanda stared blankly. 

Work. Right. 

That’s… Yeah. 

Surprise, Wanda, the credits didn’t roll. The world still exists. 

The mattress groaned as he leaned over, bracing his palms on the bed, a kiss offered that was far too sweet for a stranger to be capable of giving to another stranger. Wanda grabbed at his shirt. She wasn’t proud of it. She was tired and needy - for the first time in a long time, needy with an actual outlet, a person to need. A place to put all her need and he was leaving.

“Wanda,” he said, a patient impatience that sobered her a bit to the fact that, no matter how insane, this was reality. She was acting childish. He’d known her for twelve hours and he’d already spoiled her. “I’ve stayed as long as I could. I’m about three hours late at this rate.”

She sighed, falling back, releasing him. He smiled and yanked the blanket down to kiss her bare stomach before standing. Wanda whined at the cold, dragging it back to her chin.

“Will you come back after, at least?” she asked as he started toward the door. “For a little bit?”

He laughed again. It was offensive. “Yes, you clingy thing. I’ll come back.”

She sunk down into the covers as he disappeared, listened to his footsteps, listened to the front door opening and closing. There was a great urge to sleep until he returned, succumb to this newfound petulance, pull the duvet over her head and be frustrated in peace. 

She had to stop herself for a second. 

Because what… exactly… was she frustrated about?

She’d been touched more in one day than in the past two years and she was pouting because…?

Because you want more. You want him all for yourself. And you don’t want anyone else to look at him. And you don’t want him to look at anyone else. And you don’t know him well enough to verify that he wouldn’t.

Wanda sat up a bit. 

The conscience was back. That was handy. 

It always reminded her that she had a life to maintain, even at its lowest standard.

She cleaned a few things, a poor attempt to seem put-together after he’d already seen her in disarray, as well as every single room in this house that was a similarly barely-evident-but-still-noticeable mess. Changed the sheets and changed her clothes and moved the damn vanity mirror back to its place. 

She cleaned until she got bored, which happened quickly, and took her place on the sofa to stare with an empty head at the television until he got back. 

Mm. Empty… is not quite accurate.

When he gets back, you need to talk. Talk about more than hometowns - for example, get his phone number. Ask if he has a criminal record. Ask where he works. Ask why he lives in a big house by himself. Ask. If he has. A criminal. Record. 

… Hmmm. I should ask him if he needs a special kind of toothpaste. I don’t know if his teeth are sensitive. Good teeth. Good at biting. Gotta keep them safe.

Wanda. Focus. You need to look up his name on social media. Google him. You need to see who he follows and you need to figure out his values. The toothpaste doesn’t matter - are you in danger, is the real question. 

I should make some room in my closet for his clothes. Just so he doesn’t have to go all the way back to his house when he stays over. Aw. We could get dressed together. 

Jesus Christ. 

Of course, Vision returned that night, peeking his head inside to scan for her. And he was wearing a tight button-up shirt. And they got… sidetracked. 

Today is Tuesday. The day after the yesterday after the yesterday.

(She told him to change clothes before he came over.)

Vision arrived with a pizza and a short-sleeve shirt just as the sun began to set. And Wanda permitted entry. 

They sit on the ground of her room while they speedrun important trivia that they missed. You know. The things you’re often aware of before throwing yourself into a forever relationship. The trivia that they just blatantly didn’t bother with before deciding to love each other. More or less. 

They’re about thirty questions into a game of Twenty-One Questions. Wanda loves Twenty-One Questions. She also never actually looks at a list. Improv is the best way to get to know someone, she thinks. 

“Last name,” Vision nudges his plate across the floor and she tosses him another slice. “You already know mine.”

(She’s almost 100% sure he’s given a fake name. No way in fuck is this man named Vision Shade. That’s ridiculous. And impossible. And kind of funny.)

“Maximoff,” she says, pinching a piece of crust to tuck into her cheek. “Wanda Maximoff.”

“That’s hot.”

“Thanks. Okay, ummmm… favorite body wash.” Wanda places a hand over her mouth as she chews, “I like mint. Anything mint.”

“More of a shea guy,” he shrugs, half-humble. “I’ve also got a minute obsession with coconut oil, so. If it’s got that on the label, I’m buying it.”

“Coconut oil works wonders,” she repeats, her face warm. 

He grins. She hates his face. It’s like he knows everything. That’s what confidence does, she supposes. “It does. Really.” A cheeky glance over his shoulder. “If you have some, I can show you.”

“... Later.” Wanda is too invested in this pizza right now. But it’s only a matter of convenience. “Your turn. Question.”

“Ah, yes.” He takes a bite, leaning back on a palm, thinking as he stares at the ceiling. “Favorite tea. I’d say black because I’m insufferable.”

“And British,” she reminds him. 

He hums an agreement. “We love a good Earl.”

Wanda can’t stop thinking about Vision’s voice saying I didn’t come for tea, Wanda. Mmmm. She needs to focus. 

She focuses. “I… had a really good orange tea a few months ago and I’ve been chasing that high ever since.”

“Orange,” Vision makes a face. “Awful.”

“Grow up,” she folds her piece in half, smiling around a mouthful. “Mmh. Ever gotten into a fight? With your fists?”

No hesitation: “So many.”

“So many?!”

He nods, casual. “So many. You?”

“God, no. I’m a wimp.” Wanda looks over him, drinks him in. She stares at his hands. Mm. Mm. She’d like to see him pummel a person. She’s not going to say that, though. (Please definitely do not say that, Wanda, holy fucking God.) 

Vision waves at her, the bastard, as if hearing her train of thought through an invisible frequency. “I’m surprised you haven’t. You’ve got the spark. You’d likely win.”

“Aw, thanks. Your turn.”

He takes a dramatic breath. He closes his eyes as if concentrating before opening an eye, sparkling, “Got any… interesting hobbies?”

She glares at him. He drops his chin and snickers toward his lap, shifting his legs on the floor as if to shake off the weight of her eyes. She glares harder. “Yes. I do. For the record.”

“Mm. And they are?”

“Reading.”

“Ooh, and what do you like to read?”

“Hold on, you haven’t - “

“I’m tired of this taking-turns thing,” Vision takes another, smaller bite before setting his plate to the side. He lays down on his stomach, chin in his palms, looking at her. “I just want to hear you talk about yourself.”

She wrinkles her nose. He flutters his eyelashes. She hates him. “You’re fucking up the game.”

“Twenty-One Questions is a fun game to play when you have no idea how to keep a conversation going,” he says, which she resents. “But I have faith in us. We’re adults. Tell me about your favorite books. Tell me things. Talk forever.”

She squints. “I… like… biographies.”

“No, you don’t.”

She laughs, “No, I don’t. I like the shitty romances in the clearance section.”

Vision snaps, pointing at her, “Knew it.”

“Why, am I that transparent? Can you tell I’m a lonely lady who lures men into my home via disgusting and questionable tactics - “

He grabs her ankles and tugs her across the floor before she can finish. 

Wanda squeaks as he climbs over her, straddling her waist, pushing the box and the plate aside. He looks victorious as if it was at all a hard fight, as if it’s impressive to have won a wrestling match that she didn’t even know she was going to be in. 

(Wanda would in no way be opposed to a wrestling match. God. His hands.)

(Pummel me, Vision.)

(Gross.)

“Jesus,” she whispers thinly through the smile she wears. 

“Not that transparent, no. I simply pay attention to what you’ve got on your shelves,” he says, so pleased with himself. “Lots of shirtless men on beaches. Lots of sensuality. Kudos.”

“Not fair.” Wanda shifts underneath him, unsure what he wants. Unsure what to prepare for. They both definitely taste like garlic right now. “Vis.”

“Why aren’t you asking the questions you want to ask?” His voice is calm. She wraps her fingers around his wrists where they rest on either side of her head. Handles. “As much as I enjoy discussing literature with you, I don’t think these are the pressing matters. I don’t know you well but I can tell when you’re trying to build to something.”

“...” She lifts her chin, emboldened. “... Where do you work?”

“There you go.” He smiles, hands adjusting on the floor. “Boring office job. Marketing.”

“... And what… do you do.”

“Do you think you can handle it?” He drags his teeth over his bottom lip. It’s meant to be a joke but it really does a number on her.

Wanda frowns at him, needing to close her legs, “Don’t bully me.”

Vision drops down to his elbows. He’s heavy. He kisses her, half pity and half consolation. Half Vision and half garlic. “I sit behind a desk and answer phones all day. I talk strategies. I talk money. Incredibly sexy stuff.”

She nods. He shouldn’t have put her in this position. She can barely think, the weight of him, the way he kisses her. “Okay.”

“Where do you work?” he asks, dropping his head and kissing her jaw with lax lips. She scoffs, arms around his neck. “What’s so funny?”

“I’m supposed to be the desperate one,” she murmurs. His touch is light down her sides and it makes her restless. 

“Can’t be desperate for something I already have.” Vision pushes her shirt up with a hand. His touch is warm and the air is cold. “Not my fault that I can’t keep my hands to myself when you talk about your disgusting and questionable tactics. Tell me about your job, Wanda.”

“Don’t have one.”

“Fired?” 

“Quit.” She arches up against him and he smiles, pushing his thigh up between hers. “Got tired of it.”

“Mm.” He kisses the place beneath the bridge of her bra. The skin is sensitive. He knows this. “Get tired of things often?”

“I have… a, uh,” she really tries to stay calm, tries not to be desperate, a ridiculous notion, “tendency to jump into things blindly.”

Vision chuckles, resting his cheek to her stomach, looking up at her. Wanda drags her nails through his hair. “I require two-weeks' notice if you plan to quit this new endeavor of yours.”

She shakes her head. She can’t tell if the smile he wears is more serious or if it’s just new. “That’s not gonna happen. You’re stuck with me.”

“Wonderful.” His breath is warm against her skin. He’s so warm. “Wanda.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d quite like to get your phone number, when you get a chance.”

She laughs embarrassingly hard and embarrassingly loud. Vision sits up, looking absolutely delighted, and kisses the sound right out of her mouth. He seems to like her laugh. Her laugh and her stomach, he kisses both with the same enthusiasm. 

She doesn’t get it. Maybe she’ll figure it out tomorrow. 

seven days

Vision sees her backyard for the first time. 

He’s appalled. 

“Jesus fuck, Wanda Maximoff, have you ever touched a lawn mower in your entire life?” he asks, pinned to her back porch by sheer surprise, hands limp at his sides. “This is just unacceptable.”

(He uses her last name a lot. She isn’t sure if it’s to pretend that he knows her well or if he just finds it to be effective for scolding. Maybe he just likes it.)

“Hey,” she stands beside him, looking out at the forest of hip-length grass. It greets them with a wave. “I just… I mean, I never come out here, so.”

He’s silent for a long while, baffled. Wanda, after the first few minutes of quiet, genuinely begins to think that this is the final straw for him. He’s come over nearly every night for a week, she thought she was in the clear. Does he have a thing for women who do yard work? Yard work is a lot of exercise… Wanda’s tired.

“... I know we had plans,” he speaks slowly, a very measured volume. (The plans were just watching movies and necking in her bed.) “But I now have to correct this.”

“Correct?” Her eyebrows draw together. “Uh?”

He sweeps a long arm out, a flat-palmed and horrified gesture, looking at her with wide eyes, “You could lose a child in there.”

“There are no children in my backyard.”

“How could you know? You’d not be able to see them.” He spins on a heel and walks back inside with his ridiculously long legs, already miles away before Wanda even knows what’s happening. “Will you open the gate that connects our yards? I’ll roll my mower through.”

She finally catches up to him, “Vision, oh, my God, you don’t have to - “

“Don’t worry, this isn’t for you. It’s for me. It’ll drive me mad.” He’s opening the door before she can even stop him. He kisses her hair sweetly, if a bit manic. “Back in a mo. Mow. Ha. Okay, I’m going.”

Wanda struggles to open the gate due to all of the… grass in the way. Her efforts are rewarded when Vision appears shoving a ridiculously heavy piece of machinery. 

(Hands. Perfect hands wrapped around a shiny black metal bar. Yes. Yes. Strong.)

“It’ll only take me an hour,” he promises as if she’s worried about the time, “and then I’ll run back, clean off, and we’ll both be satisfied.”

Wanda’s already satisfied. She wordlessly nods, turns, returns to the porch, sits on the chair there, crosses her legs, folds her hands on her knees, smiling at him. 

She cups her hands around her mouth to heckle him before he can turn the loud motor on. “Take your shirt off!” 

Vision makes a face. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have to get sweaty first.”

Point taken. Wanda silenced. His laugh is drowned out by the growl of the mower. 

It’s been a while since she’s been able to sit in a chair and watch Vision do something mundane. 

It’s different, obviously. 

For one, because he sees her. He mows in his trademark straight lines and, every few widths, he’ll glance up at her and smile. Not in the old hi, neighbor way. Not in the old grin and bear it way. He smiles because he knows her, because he likes her, loves her, whatever. Because he knows what he’s doing to her. And it makes him smug. 

Secondly, she can’t sit still. She knows she has him, sure, but this is new, isn’t it? The end of the first week and she’s got all the pieces she wanted in the first place - voice, birthday, occupation, his humor, the way he speaks when tired, when he’s about to come, the way he walks when he’s just woken up, when he’s dreading work, the way he runs and launches himself onto her when he returns. 

She has all of that. 

But there’s more. More to have. Seven days versus the rest of time. She’s going to make him come so many times in so many ways and he’ll sound different every time. They’re going to go outside, at some point, and he’ll walk differently there. He’ll talk quieter. He’ll be different.

She wanted the bare minimum before. She’s going to drive herself insane trying to get every single piece of him. 

“Oi!” comes the distant shout over the racket. 

Wanda sits straight, looking forward.

Vision slowly pulls his damp shirt from his body. He takes his time. It clings to his skin like it doesn’t want to leave. Understandable.

(He’s good at taking his clothes off. Not even necessarily in a slut way. He makes it seem easy, makes it seem like the damn things melt off. Simultaneously, it’s like an art form. Wanda feels like she should be paying him for this striptease.)

She presses her lips together, feigning a lack of amusement, feeling very amused. He winks when he’s finished, tucking it into his pocket to hang down his thigh. She can’t hear over the noise but he seems to be whistling. She hates him so fucking much. (He needs to hurry it up. She misses him.)

She’s in her mid-twenties and he makes her feel like she’s in high school. She could see herself dragging him by the hand to a locker room during a pep rally. She could see herself taking him to prom and ending up with her dress hitched up to her chin in the backseat of his car. Fuck, truly, she’d have no issue going down on him while he drove her home. 

Ideas. Ideas. 

The mower sputters to a stop. Wanda’s got her head in her hand like a girl watching her jock crush run across the football field. 

He notices. 

“Did ya like that?” he squints through the sun, raising a hand to shield his eyes, muscles shifting and moving and Wanda wants to taste them. “Eh?”

She pushes herself to stand, legs wobbly. Her arms are outstretched almost on autopilot, “Yeah. C’mere.”

Vision pulls his shirt from his pocket, dragging a dry corner down his face. He saunters his way over to her but he stops just short of the stairs despite her clear need for contact. A drop of sweat rolls down the side of his nose. “I would not recommend hugging me right now.”

“I’d like to,” she says, taking a few steps down so that she can reach him. He hisses when she touches his waist, sun-warmed and sticky. “I’ve seen you sweaty, you know.”

“You don’t get me this bad, though,” he looks at himself with a grimace, hands over hers to try and inspire distance. No way in hell. She digs her nails in and he hisses for a different reason. “Nnh. Wanda.”

“Thank you for correcting my backyard,” she says sweetly, rocking up on her toes to kiss him. “Lemme clean you with my mouth.”

Vision’s face screws up and he brushes her hands away, “You’re absolutely disgusting.”

Wanda frowns, grabbing again, “C’monnnn.”

“You’re disgusting.” He bends, arm around her waist, lugging her up and over his shoulder. She chokes on a laugh, kicking her legs, hugging him upside-down. “And you’re mine. Does your shower have a grip mat in the bottom of the tub?”

“... Yeah?”

“Perfect.” Sharp slap to her ass through her sweats as he carries her through the door. She sucks a mark into his lower back. He grabs her leg hard. “You ever put it to the test?”

She laughs. He’s shifting her weight before she can bite him. His knees would probably buckle. She’s got plenty of time. She’ll make him weak one of these days. 

Maybe that’s the next question she should ask, if he’s capable of being weak. 

Every single day that she knows him, she believes it less and less. 

one month

Vision wasn’t kidding about their floor plans. Holy shit. It’s like she’s entered an alternate universe where she’s a little bit more tidy and a lot more color-coordinated. 

She suddenly wants to live here forever. 

The door clunks closed behind them and Vision huffs out a laugh. Probably at the expression on her face, awed for no real reason. She’s rewarded with a kiss. Yes, this will be a wonderful sleepover. 

“You can drop your bag anywhere,” he says, toeing off his shoes. He’s walking away and toward the stairs with little else given for an introduction. Vision moves so fast these days. (She says that as if she ever had a clue before.) “I need to change, this belt is choking the life out of me.”

Wanda throws her bag blindly, perking up. It thuds somewhere. She won’t need it, anyway.

“I! I can help!” She follows with fast steps, running up behind him to rest her hands on his hips as though he may collapse at any moment.

Their hallways are so similar. He leaves all his doors closed when he’s not in them, apparently, so she can’t see what he uses the rooms for. (No doubt, the first door on the right isn’t his childhood-turned-voyeurism playroom. She’d love to see how he makes use of the space.) 

He somehow manages to slip out from Wanda’s hands, pushing her instead, guiding her through a house she’s never been inside. 

“I hope you’re not expecting anything exciting,” he murmurs. 

He nudges the door open. 

Mm. Yes, she might never leave. 

It’s like she’s stepped inside a painting, free to move around, arrange and repaint as she likes.

(Obviously, there’s that voice in her head again that’s telling her to be grateful, most creeps only get one view of a given room, you’ve been let inside.)

Let inside indeed. She gets every angle, no wall to press her knees to or glass to press her face to as if she might get a better look. The yellow light is warm and the room smells like residual cologne and whatever coconut nonsense he used this morning. She wants to live in this space he’s made for himself. It’s just like him, warm and very carefully assembled. Intentional. He’s so hot, she’s so upset.

(She doesn’t look through his window. Not now.)

Vision’s day has been particularly exhausting, it seems, because she gets to witness his exhausted fall against the door motion in person. She gets to hear his sigh and the thud of his body. Wanda internalizes the sight. New angle, high-definition, sound and color. 

“Aw, baby,” she says out loud. Not on purpose. He smiles tiredly, opening an eye. “I’ll help you.”

He rests his head back against the wall as she undoes his belt, slides it through the loops, drops it at their feet. (He looks at her through half-lidded eyes as if he’s trying to figure out what she’s thinking about, the hint of a smile through the analysis.) Vision doesn’t stop her as she continues to do the rest, his arms up and limp as the shirt goes, his legs still as his pants fall around his ankles. She kisses his chest, proud of herself. 

“You’re very handy.” He runs a hand through her hair, holding her head with one palm. (She thinks about the first time he kissed her, the way he held her still, the way he caged her in, consumed her space, demanded answers in that soft voice. I didn’t come for tea. Come here. I want you to look.)

She smiles, resting her entire weight back into his touch. “I know.”

Vision scoffs. (He’s so tired. He’s so pretty. Wanda should not be allowed to have this. This is reserved for people much better than her. But, also, people much better than her are also much less greedy than she is.) “May I be honest for half of a moment and we never speak of it again?”

She hates the way she’s looking at him. She can feel it in her bones. This is love and it’s way too early and it looks way too gross. “Oh, you’re that tired, are you?” 

“Mhmm.” He pets her hair, heavy and drowsy. He drops his head a bit as if telling her a secret, “... I like having you here.”

She’d love to hook herself up to an I.V. of his praise. She wants to live here and she wants to live with his hand on the back of her neck over her hair. She wants him to keep being honest and keep looking at her like this. 

Be cool, Wanda.

She isn’t sure if that was her or the conscience. Therefore, she’s obliged to listen to it.

“Thanks for inviting me. Wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. After… y’know.” She glances around. “You’re very clean.”

“In a good way?” he kicks his pants to the side before crossing to the closet - she knew it was over there, she’s a genius. Her mental image was worryingly accurate. She’s an awful person. 

“Oh, yeah. Everything about you is endlessly impressive.” 

(Wanda stares at the bed. She wants to do a swan dive on it. The sight of him fucking his fist is so clear it may as well have occurred yesterday. A weird dichotomy in her head right now - wanting to see him touch himself again, up close and with sound, versus wanting to be his sole outlet, wanting to replace that entire routine. Wanda’s a disaster. She shouldn’t be able to have this, she’ll wrap herself in it and go insane. He’ll swallow her up, sure, but only if she doesn’t do it herself first.)

“Ah, you’re a charmer.” The hangers clink as he pulls a soft, short-sleeve down. He looks over his shoulder at her, sticking his arms through the sleeves, “Full disclosure, I plan to jump into bed and immediately pass out.”

Wanda beams. Swan dive soulmate. “I’d love to snuggle.” 

Vision coos, forgoing pants, making good on his word. His bed doesn’t creak when he lands. Wanda winds up. He groans and wheezes out a laugh as she follows, jumping almost completely on top of him. 

“Sorry for the boring introduction,” he says, clicking off the lamp, arm over her stomach and cheek on her shoulder. (Wanda is in his bed. She should not be in his bed. How did this happen.) He closes his eyes. “I’ll be more exciting when I’m rested.”

How does someone communicate the sentiment you’re exciting even when you’re boring without sounding absolutely, tragically whipped? How does someone remind a person that I found you exciting before I even knew what you sounded like? That I watched you read a book for, like, an hour one time and I was enthralled. 

She just kisses his temple and he grumbles about her being too sweet to him. She does it again. He pinches her side. They’ve only known each other for a month but that can’t be right. But it is. 

(They’ve gone about this terribly backwards.)

(Of course, if they hadn’t, if this had gone the way it should have gone, Vision would have finalized a restraining order and Wanda would have had to go into hiding.)

(She’s the luckiest creature on the planet. She has no idea how much is left. Without a doubt, she’s going to run dry soon.)

There’s a little television in the corner of his room that Wanda watches idly as Vision sleeps. 

She plays with his hair, his nose tucked into her neck, soft breaths tickling her skin. The volume of the show is off but she’s more interested in the sounds he makes anyway. She will know everything about him by the end of the first year. Anything less is a failure. 

Something she has learned about Vision - he’s a cuddler. It’s almost scientific the way he fits on any piece of furniture, the way he can wrap up, tangle, lay atop, lay under, lay around a body as if he was made for that specific shape. It seems like he’s made for everything. It makes no sense. Nothing he does is ever wobbly, uncalculated, unmeasured. It makes no sense. 

She’s already gotten over the train of thought that it’s because he’s huge. No, that’s not how that works. Big dick energy can only get you so far in life. You can be an absolute monster in bed and still lack everything else - after the dick part is done, you know. There’s a morning-after awkwardness that they somehow completely avoided as if they were speeding past a car crash down the highway. 

Somehow, inexplicably, Vision’s intoxicating. And it’s frustrating that the word applies, such a genuine and encompassing word. He sleeps and Wanda sits awake, zoning out at a documentary, remote on her stomach that tempts her to pick something exciting as if she doesn’t have her favorite TV show laying right beside her. 

She turns her head. She watches him sleep. She’s good at watching. His face is relaxed and his skin is soft. His legs are bare and his toes are cold. Wanda loves him. She’s still missing so many pieces but, with every little fragment she can pry out of him, she falls more. 

Vision is intoxicating - and somehow, she got to him first. 

How does that work? She practically didn’t leave the house and somehow he still came over, found her interesting, let her have him. Surely there have been others, right? People Wanda hadn’t noticed, coming over here, sharing this bed, before the week she’d watched. 

Stop thinking about this, you’re going to work yourself into a jealousy spiral. 

No, no, I’m fine. 

You’re going to start thinking about the other people he’s fucked. And you’re going to be weird about it. 

Nooooo. No, I’m not. 

You really think you can handle that image? While you’re in this bed? 

This… is starting to feel like a set-up. 

She twirls his hair around her fingers. She thinks about this big house of his. She thinks about how he’d been looking at her picture frames, asking about the men in them. She thinks about the way he’d wandered around so confidently, putting pieces of a puzzle together, so calm and so collected. He wanted to see if she lived alone. Vision lives alone. His bed was empty and now Wanda is in it. 

Wanda. Bad idea. Watch the documentary about dolphins and fall asleep. 

Do you think he has a box of condoms in his nightstand?

Wanda.

How many are in a typical box?

Wanda.

If I count how many are left - 

Oh, my God. 

Truly a terrible idea, this entire situation. She was just going to watch, and then she did more than watch. She was just going to show him, and then she did more than show. And she has yet to learn a lesson. And now she’s trying to sleuth her way through his history. And he’d probably not even say anything about it, if memory serves, but still. Wanda’s insane. 

What does it matter? She has him now. He invited her over and she won. Doesn’t matter how many condoms are left in the box. Obviously. As long as she gets to deplete the rest. 

Wanda has an obsession problem. 

“Mmh.”

She blinks. Vision’s eyebrows draw together and his cheek is pressed against her arm. She knows his wake-up cycle now. He scrunches up, stretches his arms out straight, and rolls on top of her. Every time he sleeps over, it’s the same. 

It’s different today. Since it’s his own bed. 

He just looks at her with hazy attention.

“Hello,” he says groggily. 

“Hi,” she says. Then, unwarranted: “Am I better than other people you’ve fucked?”

He rubs his eyes, snickering, voice cracked and fuzzy. “Oh, great. Good morning.”

“I mean it!” She rolls onto her side to face him. His head falls from her shoulder and thuds onto the pillow. “It’s just a question.”

“Mm, yes, a big question.” He turns his face into the pillow, smirking. “What in the world have you gotten up to while I was sleeping?” 

“I just - !” She scoots closer and he peeks out to see her. “I was thinking about your room and then I was thinking about what I did - “

“Uh-huh.”

“ - and then you just… came over? Just like that?”

“Mhm.” He stuffs his arm under her. His bed is really nice. Makes no sound at all. “I did. The very next morning, if you remember.”

“But that’s…” Wanda squints at him. “Vision, you’re fantastic.”

“Mm, thank you.”

“Too fantastic,” she urges.

“... Thank… you?”

“Too fantastic to have been single.”

Vision laughs. New laugh. High-pitched, genuinely mystified. She tucks it in her pocket for later. “Wanda, you are… something else. Every time I think you’ve reached your threshold, you say something like that and the bar is raised.”

“You’re - “

“Just tell me what I can do to put you at ease, darling,” he says, a faux-pitying tone that she’s insulted by. He pets her back and it feels very nice. “What do you need me to say?”

“Listen, I…” she sighs, embarrassed but definitely not enough to stop. That’s a theme. Sorry, but not sorry that much. “I mean. I. I’m just confused.”

“Okay.”

“Because, I’m… I am insane.”

“Yes, you are.”

“And you didn’t know me, but you still came over.”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

Vision tilts his head, trying to figure her out. Good luck. Wanda doesn’t even know how to understand what’s going on, here. “Is because I’m insane too not a viable answer?”

“No. I already know that.”

“Right.” He props himself up on an elbow, hand dropping to drag his fingers through her hair like she’d done for him. “Well, at the risk of sounding repetitive, you turned your light on. I saw you naked. And I thought you looked cute.”

Wanda frowns. “... Cute?” 

“As good as it was, I can tell when someone’s never done a striptease before.” He kisses her forehead to soften the blow. “I thought perhaps there was someone in the room with you but… I saw the chair by the window. And I was terribly flattered.”

She frowns deeper. 

He mimics the frown, “Don’t look at me like that.”

“I wasn’t going for cute. ”

“You warmed up to it. Really. You were… mm. You found your rhythm, trust me.” He pushes a few wild strands of hair behind her ear. “And it worked, anyway, didn’t it? I came over to meet you, see what your deal was. You were single and nervous and beautiful. And very receptive, so. I’m unsure what the surprise is, here.”

She leans into his touch, still grouchy about this. It makes sense that she wasn’t flawless for her first time getting off with an audience but it doesn’t feel good to hear. “You liked it?”

“Fuck, Wanda.” Knuckles down the side of her neck. “I’m glad I didn’t miss it.” 

“Did you…?” 

He nods, fast, “Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding?”

Okay, she feels better. She glances down at the bed. “Here?”

He points toward the window. “Knelt over there on the ground. Chin on the sill. Came all over the wall.”

“Fuck. ”

He grins, toothy and smug. “Does that make you feel any better?”

Wanda nods quickly, face burning. She can’t stop staring at the floor by the window. Yeah. Yeahhhh. Yes. Wonderful.

“Um.” 

“More questions?” he asks. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. 

“About the people you had before.”

“Christ,” he sinks down under the covers. His shirt rides up a bit and she slips her hand in, feeling the warmth of him, thinking about him on his knees. “You’re obsessed.”

Wanda has a problem with obsession. 

“Yep. Am I better?” she tilts her chin up, “If I’m not, just lie to me.”

“What does better mean?” he asks. She hits his chest. He laughs, “Genuinely, give me a benchmark here because I have no clue what you’re asking of me.”

“You’re being rude.”

He laughs toward the ceiling, “Yeah, a bit. I’m fucking with you. You’re most certainly the best.”

Wanda beams. “Yeah?”

“Well and truly. A real trooper.” He kisses the corner of her mouth. “Only an insane woman would take me in like that. First try, too. And to the hilt. I was proud of you.”

“...” She rubs slow circles on his stomach, thinking about that. “Wait.”

“Mm.”

“Wait. ”

“Yeah.”

“So…” Okay. She’s starting to get that rumbly sort of pride in her stomach. She is an insane person. Is it still insanity if she’s in company? “Soooo…”

“Haven’t had penetrative in… hm, about a year? More than? Mm. That was a thrill.” He sighs, closing his eyes, holding her like a trophy. Wanda feels like a trophy. Holy shit. “Thank you for the invitation. And an enthusiastic thank you for seeing it through.”

Wanda stares at him until he looks at her. 

“Tell me more,” she whispers, enthralled. 

Vision launches at that like he’s been waiting ages to talk about it.

“God, Wanda. I can’t tell you how crazy it made me, watching you take me in like that.” He adjusts himself through his briefs, palm laid over his cock as if to protect it. Or stop it from lashing out. Hilarious. “Didn’t even flinch. Fuck.” He surges forward to kiss her and she’s smug about it, smiling for about fifteen different reasons. “I thought I’d broken you, thought you were in shock or something. But you broke yourself for me before I even met you, didn’t you?”

She winds her fingers into his hair and pulls. Vision moans and kisses her deeper, right down into the mattress. 

“How… did you… survive before me?” Wanda asks between kisses, only half-joking. Mostly not joking. Hard to joke when he’s hard enough to cut steel just at the memory of fucking her for the first time. 

He hums like they’re in an interview. “A lot of hand work.”

Wanda leans back to look at him. “...”

“My hands, anyway. People usually don’t even want to touch, which is understandable, so I’d help them get off and then I’d go home and I’d - where are you going.”

She’s crawling under the duvet. 

She’s the best he’s ever had. If there’s anything that makes an obsession worse, it’s being validated for it. If there’s anything that makes an insane person more insane, it’s being told that she’s cute. 

Vision winds his hands in her hair as she fishes him out of his briefs. He looks proud. Wanda feels proud. 

She likes the way he slides down, legs opening as she takes him in her hand, his head falling back and his lips falling open. Wanda strokes him until he’s visibly impatient, urging her forward by the hair, raising his eyebrows. 

“You can take it,” he says. “Perfect fit.”

Wanda knows. She opens her throat and welcomes him in until she can’t breathe. Vision moans and rocks his hips up into her brain. He fucks her mouth until she is blissfully stupid. His moans are soft and unpitiful. Round at the start and jagged near the end. Moans that wear her name.

He lugs her up by the arms when he’s finished, long before she’s finished, and mutters compliments against her tongue. He doesn’t need to ask if he’s the best she’s ever had because he already knows. 

two months

Wanda has the idea to visit him at his job on a particularly boring day. One of those days when she has no intention of going anywhere but she feels like she looks good and the vibes are being wasted.

(She has a person to need, now. A person who looks at her sometimes and thinks she’s pretty and does his little growly noise and shoves her back onto the bed. And she misses him.)

She grabs him a coffee on the way because she’s a good girlfriend. She can tell that whatever boring money things he’s doing all day are completely wiping him out but he won’t say it. So, one coffee and Wanda pick-me-up at eleven in the morning on a Wednesday. 

He talks about his office building like a grey, barren wasteland, so she dresses the part. In a dress. Grey, barren wasteland dress. (Wanda hasn’t worn a dress in how many years?) She doesn’t own any high heels, though, so it dulls the illusion of an actual office lady ornament.

Anyway. Woman in a dress holding a coffee asks for Vision’s office, she’s assumed to be an intern and is let up with very little fuss. The luck continues. 

In her head, she always saw him in one of those cubicles from the 90s movies. Surrounded by people and noise, the kinds of things that would make Wanda quit a job, the kinds of things that made Wanda quit her job. 

The guy at the front desk told her that he’d be up the stairs, down the hall, past the main workspace. Wanda has no idea what the main workspace is but she figures she’ll find her way.

Her sneakers are a funny flat sound through the echoey hallways definitely meant for people with more-than-twenty-dollar shoes. She can’t wait to see Vision and make fun of him for all of the grandeur. It looks so posh. She wonders how he decorates his cubicle. (Yes, she’s still trying to get all of his stupid pieces. She’s got a ton but it’s all naked realizations and coffee orders. She wants to know what he’s like when he’s professional. She wants to know what he looks like in a little tiny office space.)

She walks past a door with a big, shiny plaque on it. She walks for a few more seconds before pausing and retracing her steps. Wobbling herself backward to look again.  

It seems to be a large office. It’s got a huge window with drawn, white blinds. She can’t see inside. 

She can see the plaque, though. 

She could have sworn it was a fake name. 

Vision Shade. VP of Marketing. He has his own fancy office. With a door. And a window. 

She knocks twice with a free hand, not waiting for a response before opening the door and peeking inside. 

Holy shit. 

He looks up from his desk. He stares for a second. “... Wanda?”

“You have an office.” She steps inside. “You have an office and a fancy… like, a really fancy plaque.”

Vision’s wearing a suit jacket. Oh. Oh. Oh, God. “What a lovely surprise. Yes. I like having my own space.”

“You have a big office.”

“I like having a lot of space.” His gaze drops to the coffee and he perks up a bit, “Oh, is that for me?”

“You… have… a big-boy, real-time, fancy-man office,” she says. The door closes behind her and she crosses the floor, big floor, big office, to hand it to him. He hums gratefully, sweeping out an arm for her to stand beside him. “Vision.”

“It’s not that fancy,” he mutters, head falling back for a kiss when she gets close enough. She offers one, brief and chaste, bracing her hip to his arm as she looks around. He takes a sip of coffee and groans, closing his eyes, “God, I needed this. Thank you. You’re an absolute dream.”

She’s distracted. “Were you ever going to tell me that you had an office?”

“I told you I had an office,” he says. 

“Yeah, but like.” A wide gesture. “A vice president office.”

Vision sets the cup down, swivelling in his chair to see her. He smiles, “You like it?”

“Yes,” she breathes. “You’re so hot with your vice president office and your fuckin’ suit.”

“You’re very easy to please,” he chuckles, reaching out to poke one of the buttons on her dress, “Never seen you in this.”

A little spin. “Like it?” 

He bites the inside of his cheek, “Mhm. Are those buttons just for display?”

Wanda grins, looking down at herself, “Yep, it’s a pullover. I just wanted to make it seem like I belonged in an office setting.”

“You fit right in.” He runs a hand through his hair, glancing back at his desk. She didn’t know this dress was going to get this much of a reaction out of him. She’s being a distraction and it feels really good. “Right. Um… I’ve got a call at noon and then I’ll be reviewing some plan proposals, but I should be good to come home after that.”

He’s so hot when he talks about stuff that doesn’t matter.

“Great!” Wanda spins and falls into one of the chairs across from him. “I took a cab. We can go home together.”

He smiles like he doesn’t believe her. “I wasn’t kidding about being dreadfully boring.”

“Your definition of boring is ridiculous.” Wanda crosses her ankles politely, settling in. “I could watch you take calls and press buttons forever.”

“There’s a joke here. I’m not going to make it but I want you to know that I know there’s a joke here.”

She sits and watches him talk on the phone and she has a goddamn blast. 

She studies him intently. He holds the receiver with two fingers, writing with the other, his handwriting fast yet legible. She likes when he has to pin the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he writes and opens drawers at the same time. He can multitask. Wanda knows that very well. Mouth and two hands working simultaneously? Yeah, she knows.

He’s good at telling people no. She can tell when he laughs at bad jokes because his eyes are completely dead. Even when he’s bored to death, he’s good at his job. He’s been explaining the same concept for twenty minutes. Wanda would have given up a long time ago. 

He has such good hands. Good hands and good clothes and good hair. Wanda gets to sit in a chair and watch him do things. This is where she belongs. 

It’s all she ever wanted. The clench of his jaw and the way he opens and closes his free hand when he disagrees with something but can’t say it out loud. One day, she’d love to see him angry. Not at her, she’d likely melt into the floorboards. At someone else, though? She’d lose her mind. 

“Fuck,” he sighs, dropping the phone into his cradle and pinching his nose. Wanda laughs at him and he peers through his fingers. “What?”

“You’re sexy when you’re stressed,” she says, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair. 

He sits straighter, stretching his arms over his head, “I’m glad at least one of us is enjoying this.”

He drinks his coffee and makes a little thank you, wonderful girlfriend noise. She’s proud of herself.

Wanda decides to look around a bit after about half an hour of watching him click through graphs and muttering under his breath. There’s a lot of space behind her that she’s neglecting. 

It’s one of those offices from the shows she used to watch, far too big to be necessary, books he definitely hasn’t read and lamps he’s definitely never turned on. 

She walks the perimeter, touching every spine and every lampshade. She likes looking but she likes touching even more. Instant gratification. She rolls dust between her fingers. 

“Not very clean here, Mr. Shade,” she says, turning, holding up her hand as proof.

Vision glances up through his eyelashes. She waits for a response. She waits for a long time. He just looks at her. She drops her arm. 

“Vis?”

He taps his hands on his desk for a second, eyes trained on her. “... Fine.”

Wanda blinks. “Sorry?”

He pushes himself to stand, pulling his blazer down a bit, looking almost stern. She brushes the dust down the side of her dress, shrinking a bit under his gaze. Oops.

Vision, tall and wide and tight in the jaw, takes steady steps across the floor. Wanda takes a step backward - not necessarily afraid but definitely feeling alarmed. 

He gathers her up in her favorite hands and pushes her back before she can form an apology, kissing her so hard that her skull clatters against the wall. She hums, eyes wide before they screw closed, grabbing at his stupid lapels lest he push her through the damn drywall. He tastes like the coffee she brought him. 

“Fuck you for calling me that, you absolute nightmare,” he murmurs as he mouths down her neck, grabbing her ass and urging her into him. She squeaks, clutching at his hair, feeling him pant against her skin as he sucks a mark just above the low collar of her dress. (Weakness. She found a weakness. Wanda wins. Wanda. Wins.) “Can’t fucking believe you.”

“You’ve… you’ve got a plaque and everything, I gotta treat you with respect.” She tries to joke but she’s far too deep in this moment to really sell the humor of it. Something about the look in his eyes right now, his hands groping almost painfully, is breaking her in half. “What… mm, what are you gonna do with me?”

He groans against her collarbone. He bites. “Whatever I want.”

Wanda could never have guessed that this was going to happen to her today. She could never have guessed that his dress would have such a practical application. She could never have guessed that Vision would have such an on-off switch like this. He was bored out of his mind a few seconds ago. 

Wanda smiles as he hikes her dress up, shoving his hand into her underwear, kissing under her ear as he traps her against the wall of his very big, very fancy office. She pretends she’s an intern. She pretends it’s her first day. She pushes her hips up and into his fingers and he sinks two inside, biting at her throat, one hand on her waist pulling her forward, closer, urging, important, damn near desperate. 

“Fuck, baby,” she whispers, glancing toward the wall of windows, the blinds over them, the shadows of people moving past. “Vision. Oh, my God.”

“Shhhhh,” he licks across the mark he already made before starting on a new one. She hiccups, feet shuffling apart, needing more. He doubles effort, wrist rubbed raw against the elastic, doubles speed. She pulls his hair. He chokes on a laugh before nosing at her jaw, voice soft and uneven, “Keep quiet or I’ll have to kick you out.”

“I can be quiet,” she whines. Three fingers. She covers her mouth with her palm and closes her eyes and muffles the whimper.

“We both know you can’t be quiet, but you’re going to need to be.” Vision digs his fingers into her side, keeping her still as if she has anywhere else to be. He fucks her with his hand, fast and hurried like she’s a task to complete. “The glass is thin.”

Wanda moans. He kisses her again, trying to catch the sound. 

“Vision,” she wraps her arms around his neck, holding on for dear life. 

“Ah, then again, you’d probably want them to hear, wouldn’t you.” He smiles at her miserable face. He adjusts his angle and she gasps. “Hm, Wanda? Want their attention?”

“Noooo.” Wanda is grinning and she doesn’t care enough to stop. Vision marks her throat purple and she focuses on his breath, focuses on this office, anything to slow herself down. “Vis. Nnnnh. Need you.”

“No, you don’t.” He strokes her with three fingers, rapid pace over her clit, before burying them back inside again. She’s wrinkling his suit, fabric tight in her fist, but it doesn’t matter. “I can finish you like this.”

“Please.” She breathes heavy and grasps at his arm to get his attention. He leans back to see her, slowing. “Vision. Need you to fuck me in your office, baby, please. Fuck me in your f-fancy executive important office, Mr. Shade.”

“...” He runs his tongue across his teeth. She’s testing him. She feels like God. He tilts his head to the side, one finger dragged between her legs, making her shudder. He smiles, then, so cocky, “Sorry to say, darling, but I’m afraid you’re not wet enough to take me.”

Wanda’s lips part. She leans up to kiss him, his hand slipping from the front of her dress. He thinks he’s in the clear. His weakness is an encouragement. (He’s been encouraging her since before he knew her. That’s not nice to say.)

She kisses him lazily until she regains control of her legs, hand on his chest, words spoken into his mouth: “So fix that, then.”

Vision stares at her, eyes practically crossed. He seems proud. Yeah. Good. 

He huffs and takes her arm, dragging her to stumble across the floor. She laughs, so damn happy, joy momentarily halted by a grunt as he pushes her into his chair. She rolls back a few feet with the force of it.

His weakness is strong.

She watches him with wide eyes as he slips his jacket from his shoulders into a heap on the floor, getting onto his knees and rolling her close with the wheels she’s now been blessed with. Her underwear is jerked down to rest around her ankles and she sits and allows herself to be poised to his liking, her legs hooked over the arms of his office chair, presented more like an art piece than a woman. 

“Wanda Maximoff,” he says softly. She’s unsure if she was meant to hear that. He takes in his work, shaking his head, hooking his fingers under the seat and pulling her forward until his mouth is right where it needs to be. She drags her dress up to bunch around her stomach. He snickers, eyes glazed, kissing the inside of her thigh, “Swear to God, I’m in love with you.”

Rolling chairs are very useful. He grabs the arms, keeping her in place as he effectively renders her spineless. His tongue is hot, flat, rigid, dipping inside, warming her up. Wanda stuffs her fist into her mouth, glancing over the back of the chair toward the shadows, the window, the blinds, full circle, but different. He kisses the crease of her hip as he works her open, smiling like an idiot. 

“You wouldn’t happen to have a condom, would you?” he asks, pushing himself to his feet. She reaches into her pocket, because of course the one dress she owns has pockets, and hands it over. “Mm. Lovely.”

Wanda’s hands immediately go to his belt buckle. He gently nudges her down to his zipper with a wink, tearing into the packet. Loud and clear. She frees him easily. They’re very efficient at this. “We’re very efficient at this.”

“We’re going to have to be, aren’t we?” He rolls the condom down with one hand, closing his laptop and setting it aside with the other. Multitasking. “Up on the desk.”

“Ooh, you’re gonna fuck me on the desk,” she whispers, thrilled, sitting and bringing her knees to her chest. Her fancy lace underwear are hanging from her sneaker. “Really?”

“It’s office sex, darling, obviously I’m going to fuck you on the desk. That’s the point.”

He rolls up his sleeves and Wanda gives him a toothy grin, spreading her legs wide, leaning back as best she can without knocking anything over. He wraps her around his waist. She jumps as he smacks his heavy cock against her heat, hand around the shaft like a weapon. 

“Vis,” she practically cries. 

“You’re beautiful,” he braces a hand on her stomach, “If you’re not ready, we can wait ‘til home, I can get you nice and ready there.”

She gives him a look. “I’m a trooper.”

He hums, “My trooper.”

Vision pushes in. She’s well wet enough. She drips for him. 

He lets out the most glorious, stuttered exhale she’s ever heard. (Like he’s amazed he fits after all this time. Wanda is proud.) His fingers flex on her stomach. The fabric of his pants is rough against her skin as he presses flush against her ass and he balls up the front of her dress, pulling her to sit upright as if on a leash, kissing her so hard their teeth click.

“Oh, Christ,” he bites her jaw, the tendons down her throat, “So good. So fucking good.”

The desk is hard and unforgiving against her skin and he chokes on a moan when she moves and shifts around to amend it. She snickers, happy, until he rocks forward the first time, slow, feeling, testing, savoring. She clutches at the edge of the table. 

It’s a familiar slide, by now, the promise of more to come, but the more to come often makes her scream. His nails are digging into her hips like they do when he’s trying to hold himself back from making her scream. 

“Hold on to me,” he says, serious, and she does. “Be quiet. Try.” He steps forward until his knees thud against the drawers. “Need to be fast.”

Oh, he’s fast. The desk creaks and everything on it shakes. Wanda has to hide her face in his shoulder to keep from being heard, laughing and moaning and laughing again at the absurdity. Wanda misses her headboard, misses the noise they could make back home. They will most certainly be making a lot of noise when they get back home. 

Someone calls another person’s name through the window. Vision bites her shoulder through her dress, driving into her hard, quick, the slap muted by his slacks. Urgent but not desperate. She got so close to making him desperate.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” she mutters, head spinning. “You’resohotandyouhaveanoffice.”

Vision wheezes out a weak laugh, covering her mouth with his palm for half a second, “Tell me in the car.” He thrusts forward and her eyes roll back. “Take it so well, take it silently.” 

He pushes her dress up so that he can sweep fast touch over her clit, taking the rest of her words. She keeps her mouth closed. Her throat clicks and whines, it feels so good.

“Come on,” he pushes her legs further apart, fitting between, touching her better, fucking her fuller. Her mouth opens but there’s no air for sound. “All over my desk, darling, come on, that’s it.”

Wanda squeaks into his neck when she comes, scratching at his back through the starch of his shirt. His hips stutter and she digs the heels of her shoes into his ass to pull him in, beg him silently. 

He tenses under her hands, slumping forward, warm and restless inside. One last rock, harder than the others, nearly knocking her backward, and he takes the fabric of her collar between his teeth as he finishes.

Wanda’s head falls back. Something crashes to the ground. 

He makes an it’s fine noise, pressing sweet kisses to her throat, her cheek, her nose. Wanda giggles at the quick turnaround, soaking up his ill-timed but completely welcome chasteness. He hasn’t even pulled out yet. He’s still pulsing. He gives her loving pecks all the same.

“Vision,” she murmurs through the onslaught.

He kisses her forehead. He sighs. Then, he glances down. Realizing. “Right.”

“Sorry.” (Nope.)

“No, s’fine, just, um.” He shifts his hips and she hisses. He scrubs a hand over his face, realizing. “We… probably should… go. We should leave. Very fast.”

Wanda feels empty when he recedes, now as she always does. He tucks himself back into his pants, condom and all, and she audibly retches as he zips back up, “Vis, that’s so gross - “

“I’m not going to throw it away here, are you fucking kidding me?” He gestures around before bending down, grabbing her panties in one hand and his blazer in the other. He sounds a bit like a bird when he’s overwhelmed. He squawks a bit. She loves him. “Running away. We’re running away. Put this on.”

She catches the jacket he throws. He tucks her underwear into her pocket like he’s hiding evidence. He’s probably hiding evidence. “Vision - “

“People will be coming back from lunch soon. And I’ve made you look like somewhat of a spotted cat, so.” He pulls the jacket up her arms, popping the lapels, taking her hand and pulling her toward the door. He fumbles with his keys, locking the door handle on the way out. “Whose house is it, tonight?”

Her legs are still a bit unwieldy. She clutches at his rolled up sleeve so that she doesn’t faceplant, “Y-yours.”

“Great. I bought you a toothbrush.” He glances both ways down the hall, highly suspicious, before punching the elevator button with his knuckle. He slips his arm around her waist. She cuddles up to him, sated. “Are your teeth sensitive?”

Wanda looks up at him. “I love you.”

He nods at the steel doors of the elevator for a moment before clearing his throat and meeting her eyes, “... Is that a yes?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs. 

He shoves her forward as soon as the doors open, punching the close doors button and collapsing back against the back rail. Wanda leans on the wall by the buttons. He does a double take at her, swaddled in his giant jacket with its wide shoulders. She’s drowning in it. She’s never giving it back. 

“You look cute,” he says. His cheeks are a bit pink. From effort. 

Wanda nods. “So do you.”

Vision smiles. He works his lip between his teeth, looking forward. He exhales, metallic sound in the belly of the elevator, “I should have just thrown the condom away.”

“Yeah, you really should have.”

“Reaaaally not feeling great right about now.”

“I can’t imagine that it does.”

“And, er, sorry for stealing your…” he pats his pocket. 

“No, it’s fine. You can keep them.”

He holds an arm out and she shuffles into his side. “We’re going to run to my car and we’re not going to look back.”

She rests her cheek against his shirt, “You’re so sweet when you’re panicked.”

“If you had a job, I’d come by and fuck you, see how you felt then.” He rests a hand over his heart. “Always a pleasure, Wanda, but I’d like it if we don’t do that again.”

Wanda reaches up to shake his hand. His fingers are still damp from her. They shake and they both know full well that they will definitely be doing that again. 

four months

Vision meets Wanda’s parents. 

He’s very good at making conversation. He tells them about marketing. Wanda makes sure to make him talk about the office. He shakes their hands, kisses her mother on each cheek, offers the bottle of wine they brought. He looks so handsome in his stupid pullover sweater. He laughs and listens and helps reach the ingredients on the higher shelves. 

Wanda is content with this. Her mom gives her approving glances that Vision definitely sees and her father doesn’t ask him about sports which is a clear indicator that things are going well. Vision compliments his mustache which is a definite plus. It’s the first boyfriend she’s brought home in a while that doesn’t mimic her parents’ accents. In fact, her parents mimic his accent.

(Every time they turn their back, Vision looks over at her for a sign. She gives him two thumbs up and he relaxes, relieved.)

Everything settles. Wanda shares a single couch cushion with her lovely boyfriend while her parents speak at her about all the things she needs to be doing that she isn’t. Like getting another job or renovating the childhood home that they’ve entrusted to her. 

“I think she’s doing a smashing job,” Vision pipes up once he finds a window, arm around her shoulders. “Truly. It looks fantastic.”

Her parents coo and move on. Wanda squeezes his leg, thankful.

Conversation lulls. Her mom disappears around the corner to make some odd treat just to keep busy, her dad disappears to the shed out back. Vision gets a funny look on his face and takes her hand, pulling her up and down the hall, asking about a private place. 

They end up in an empty storage closet in the hallway. Don’t ask her why. Vision gets on his knees and ducks his head under her skirt and she’s more than happy to let him go to town.

She lets her leg fall over his shoulder, resting her head back, hand in his hair. He laps at her leisurely, fingers rubbing soothing circles on her bare thigh. She isn’t sure if he’s rewarding her or comforting her but she feels rewarded and comforted. 

Wanda moans. He pinches her side to get her to keep quiet. She’ll do what she wants. She rolls her hips down onto his mouth, his cool nose bumping against her clit, and she shivers. 

“Mm,” she drops her chin to her chest as he presses his middle finger in, “Vis, baby, you’re doing so good.”

Vision peeks out from under her skirt, the light filtering under the door assisting her in seeing his face. He keeps fucking her with his hand as he looks up at her with a confused expression, “I… I know?”

“I mean.” She raises a weak hand to point, “With them. They like you.”

“Oh, thank you,” he smiles, going under again, encouraged, “That means a lot.”

He crooks his finger and Wanda puts all her weight on his shoulder. His stupid hands. His stupid mouth. 

“Close,” her voice is cool and raspy in the dark of the closet, muffled and safe. “Fuck. I love you. Make me come, Vis.”

“Mmn.” 

Translation: I am. 

Wanda twists her hands in his hair, urging him close. He groans. He loves that. “Almost.”

Then, distantly, her mother’s voice: “Wanda? Where did you and that boy get off to?”

Vision hesitates, interrupting his own wonderful rhythm. 

She shakes her head and guides him further in. “Don’t stop. Making me feel so good, almost, almost…”

“I’ve just taken the pie out of the oven!”

“Vis. Oh. Oh, yes, yes.”

“It’s coconut!”

Vision has never moved so fast in his life. 

His hand is gone and his mouth is gone and the light blinds her as he wanders out, searching for the pie in question. 

Wanda slumps against the wall, panting, completely unsatisfied for the first time, staring at the open closet door with pure rage. She leans and waits for him to come back, finish what he started, apologize, get back on his knees. 

Nope. The throb of a steadily impending orgasm disappears and she’s just… standing in a closet. By herself. With her underwear around her ankles. 

She grumbles as she bends to pull them up again, wincing at the squish. She’s going to murder him.

The door clicks closed and she stomps her way down the hall to find him, her boyfriend, the love of her life, leaning on the kitchen counter, holding a plate in one hand and a fork in the other. There’s a little smudge of cream on the corner of his mouth. She is furious. 

“This is a dangerous recipe, Mrs. Maximoff,” he says to her mother, pointing at the pie with his fork. “Absolutely amazing.”

“We get our vanilla bean locally,” her mom says proudly. 

He looks down at his plate in awe, “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Wanda’s got steam pouring out of her ears as she stands in the doorway. 

Vision glances up at her. He scans. He finds the rage easily. He slowly lifts a forkful up to her. She glares. He doesn’t back down. 

Hesitantly, still upset, she shuffles over and takes the bite. Vision smiles and kisses her forehead. He smells like sex and it’s annoying through the sweet taste of coconut. 

“Yeah,” she mutters, tone sharp, daggers shot at her idiot, “S’great, Mama.”

Her mom smiles, untying her apron, walking over to hang it up, mumbling about making the beds. Vision takes another bite and moans. Wanda slaps his shoulder and he jumps. 

“What?” he whispers, his tongue peeking out and finally licking the cream from the corner of his mouth, the wrong kind. “Obviously I’ll finish you off in a second, I just - “

“Rude,” she hisses, “Rude and I hate you.”

“Aw,” he pouts, tucking another bite into his cheek. They stand completely still as they wait for her mom to leave. It takes a second. When she does, he melts into a sweet smile, she hates him so much, and lowers his voice, “Have I not edged you yet? You’d love it.”

“Vision.” Angry. Not the time. 

“Mm?”

“You’re sleeping at your house tonight.”

“Oh, please,” he sets his plate to the side. “I won’t make you wait tonight. I’ll fuck you as soon as we get home. You can choose where.”

“You are sleeping. At your house. Tonight.”

Vision sticks out his bottom lip. She wants to bite it. It would taste like coconut. She will not bend to his charms. “I think you’d be good at it, really, edging. Taking it. We could do it at yours, make you comfy. I’d make it good for you.”

“No.”

“I’m going to edge you for so many hours and you’re going to ask me to marry you so many times.”

“Don’t talk to me for the rest of the day,” she points at him, walking toward the door.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Fuck off.”

She has to come back into the kitchen half an hour later to get a slice for her father. Vision kindly offers to bring it out to the shed and Wanda kindly offers to kick him in the balls. 

six months

Wanda is taking a shower for the first time in four days. She’s started slipping on trying to impress Vision because she physically cannot get rid of him no matter how awful she looks or how knotted her hair gets when she sleeps or if she’s wearing the nip-hole shirt when she wanders out half-asleep to check the mail.

He likes her when she’s a mess. That doesn’t mean she should just give up, though. 

She showers with water so hot that it turns her body pink. Mint wakes her up, makes her skin feel tight and real and alive. 

Vision got her this new no-slip mat as a joke half-year gift but it really is doing its job. Every time she feels the rough material on her soles, she thinks about him. Sure, the sexy parts of him, pushing her up against the wall or down to her knees… but also the sound of him bitching that he’s cold and she’s taking up the spray. He’s a real delight.

The towel is cool as she wraps it around her waist, a steady trail of water drops on the ground as she walks back to her room. It’s nice to feel like a person again. Funny what even the smallest attempt at self-care can do for the soul. 

Her phone is lit up on the nightstand when she enters. She pauses and stares at it. Can’t be good news. No one talks to her. And Vision’s long since given up on sending an on my way text. He just barges in and picks her up. Which is how she likes it.

A missed call and a voicemail from Vision, fifteen minutes ago. 

She listens to the message on speaker as she dries her hair. 

“Hi. Sorry. Work’s really been taking a lot out of me and I didn’t notice until I got home, uh… and I’m not feeling very personable tonight so… I’ll see you tomorrow, alright? Take you to breakfast to apologize or something. This could have been a text but I… I can’t even type anymore, I don’t think. I dunno. I love you, I’m just gonna… sleep this weird feeling off. Back to normal in no time. Okay. Night.”

Wanda doesn’t even bother putting anything fancy on. 

She throws a sweater over her head and a pair of shorts, stuffing her phone and charging cord into the pockets, doesn’t bother with any shoes. She hangs Vision’s favorite her-house blanket over her shoulder and brings down his fancy wine before walking across the lawn. The sun is setting, the sky a darker blue, and it’s the perfect time of day for a blatant interruption of a sulk.

She knocks twice on his door, shifting between her bare feet. The wood of his porch is a lot smoother than hers. A few seconds pass so she knocks again, three times. She’s not going to shout but, if he doesn’t answer, she’s not above breaking in. 

He sounded so sad. Wanda’s fine to pick a lock or two if it’d help.

The door opens a crack. Then a lot wider. He’s wearing his ratty pajama pants. That’s not a good sign.

“Oh, hey,” he croaks, voice dead. His eyes are pink around the edges. He looks absolutely crushed. “Right, hey, sorry - did you get my voicemail? Because I - well, I’m afraid I… uh…”

Vision trails off as he sees the state of her. And the things she’s holding. And he’s visibly surprised.

Wanda tackles him in a hug. He grunts, staggering backward, letting the door fall closed. His hands are warm on her back and he makes a sound of distaste when he feels how damp the fabric is. She’s a serial under-drier. He can’t stand it. 

“Hi,” she says, kissing his cheek before holding up her gifts. “I have reinforcements.”

“Wanda…” he takes them hesitantly, blanket draped over his bare shoulder, holding the neck of the bottle like a bouquet. “This is… very nice.” 

She likely looks like a drowned rat but it really does not matter. “I was in the shower and I missed your call.”

The look on his face is very validating. Happy through the wallow. “... I said I was going to sleep it off.”

“Yes, you did. And that is the most stupid, repressed male thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” She snatches the wine back, setting it on the nearest table. Vision’s so out of it that he doesn’t even disagree. “Bed or couch. Or floor.”

“For what?” he asks, gone behind the eyes. He doesn’t look like himself when he’s not standing with that stupid wide stance, prepared for anything. He seems like he’s prepared for nothing. He’s prepared for something within the negative digits. 

“For snuggles,” she says. 

“...” Vision slowly reaches up, takes the blanket, wraps it around his shoulders like a cape, holding it in the center with two fingers. A moment spent revelling in the feeling. He takes her hand and starts walking in his sad, lethargic pace toward the stairs. “Bed.”

He’s grouchy as she tucks him in, even grouchier when she jumps on him. She understands why but she’s made it this far with this routine and she refuses to break a six-month streak of rocketting into his ribs.

Long story short, Vision is burned out. Because that’s what happens when you put on a suit and sit in an office and work very hard on the same things every day for however many years without acknowledging that you’re exhausted. That’s what happens to wonderful people when they think, for even a second, that they’re not. He’s ridiculous.

Wanda curls up at his side as he talks about the situation in his lame, vague terms, wanting to get the talking part over with so that he can sleep. 

Of course, then, Wanda kisses his arm, says she loves him, and the dam breaks. That’s all it took, it seems, to get the rest of the information.

There was a promotion and a raise and some other rewards that he’d wanted, none of which he’d told her about. He’d worked extra hours and extra projects and extra effort, nearly killed himself to get them, only to get nothing. 

“I would have given you that promotion,” Wanda mutters. He doesn’t do his cute little humble smile and she gets worried. “At the very least, a sex bonus. I would have given you a big ol’ sex bonus - “

“It’s trivial,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Really. Like I said, it’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Wanda stares at the side of his face and waits for more. He pinches and sighs and a few minutes pass and she realizes that he’s trying to hide behind his hand. 

“Vis,” she murmurs. 

“Don’t look at me,” he scoffs, wiping his eyes. “I’m so fucking tired. This is childish.”

Wanda frowns. The idea of Vision’s vulnerability was always very appealing when he was sitting up straight and sparkling and smirking. She’s afraid that she’s manifested this. That’s not what she wanted at all.

She scoots close and kisses the backs of his hands, his chin, the tip of his nose, little chaste kisses like he always gives at the least appropriate times. He parts his fingers to see her, smiling weakly. She kisses him until he relaxes.

“You’re very pretty when you’re sad,” she tells him. 

Vision gives her a look and a wobbly grin, “Oh, you’re just saying that.”

She crawls up and onto his lap. The lamplight is dim and the shadows of his face are fuzzy as he tilts back to see her, humming. She frames him in her hands, thumbs his tears away while he curses the things for falling. 

“I wanted to see this, you know,” she presses the pads of her thumbs to his eyelids for a moment. “To see you upset.”

Vision turns his head, kissing her palms. “You want to see everything. That’s your whole thing. You creep.”

She scoffs. “Creeps get things done.”

“Mmh. More or less.” He hugs her waist, his head thudding against the wall. “Wanda. We’re both in agreement that this is a stupid thing that’s going on with me, yes?”

“It’s only stupid if you say it like that,” Wanda hits his chest, “Look, we’re on opposite poles of the career world. I drop things the second I don’t know how to do them and you stay in a job you don’t like for a million years until it scoops out all your hopes and dreams.”

“Can’t wait to see you try and turn this into a positive message, darling,” he slips down into the pillows. 

“I’m just saying. You’re exhausted.”

A no shit, Wanda smile. “Correct.”

“I’m over-feeling and you’re under-feeling which means that I’m the expert for once. You can’t just hide this stuff from me and think that stress goes away overnight, like I won’t figure it out.” She pushes his hair back from his face. He huffs. A child. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me. And I think you’re sexy when you work and when you’re boring and when you cry. And people in relationships do this funny thing where they… hm, talk? To each other? About things?”

Vision presses his lips together. 

“C’mon.”

“I already talked about it,” he squeezes her waist. “I want to sleep.”

“We’ll talk about it more tomorrow, then.”

“This is the worst.”

“So break up with me, then.”

“Don’t even joke.” He tugs her down to rest against his chest, laying down, clicking the lamp off. Wanda grins. She wins. “Unlike you, I don’t quit when the going gets tough.”

She rests her chin on his chest. “Ha-ha. Funny.” 

“I know.”

“You’re soooo hot when you try to distract me from all your vulnerable parts.” Wanda really likes his vulnerable parts. Really took a lot of willpower not to lick his tears up but that’s an awful impulse. “Especially now that I know how irresistible they are.”

“Mm.” He closes his eyes, hands interlocked on her back. “Sorry to disappoint your endless and pervy libido but I’m not really in the mood.”

Wanda kisses the center of his throat before laying down on top of him with a sigh. “I didn’t come to fuck you, obviously. I brought you a little blankie.”

His laugh vibrates every single bone she has. He rests his hand on her head, holding her close, “You did, didn’t you.”

She nods sideways, her cheek squeaking against his chest. 

“You sounded sad and I didn’t want you to be lonely,” she says softly. 

He pets her damp hair. Her favorite thing. “You’re a very sweet creep.”

Wanda shines. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Fuckin’ creep.”

His breaths are calm and sound like a lullaby with her ear pressed against him. He lifts her up and down with each inhale and exhale and it sounds a bit like the ocean when she doesn’t think too hard about it. 

It’s nice to fall asleep in company. It’s nice to fall asleep with his voice fresh in her mind, his body beneath hers, it’s nice to know what he looks like he cries well enough to never want to see it happen again. 

Because he deserves the world. Obviously.

And he knows that she thinks that.

Wanda’s woken up in the middle of the night by an insistent poking in her side and a whispered voice in her ear. She groans and rolls over on her side, pushing him away with both hands. 

“Whaaaat,” she whines. She’s barely able to see in the pitch black of his bedroom. “Vision, it’s so late, I can literally hear how late it is. The air is heavy with late. ”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he whispers, patting her face, hand warm and vaguely sticky, “So… so sorry, I just…” A gentle touch on her waist, a reluctant one that then slips into her waistband. “Mm. I’m… back to normal now.”

“...”

“So, if you’re available.”

“...” Wanda slowly pushes the covers away. “Between my thighs, if you must.”

He kisses her cheek with a surprisingly genuine thank you, my darling before pulling her shorts down. 

eight months

Vision enters his bedroom, still in his fancy-man work attire, and freezes immediately upon spotting Wanda sitting in the center of the mattress. 

“... Oh,” he whispers, dropping his jacket on the floor and immediately working at his belt, too stunned to even smile, “You remembered?”

“Of course I remembered,” Wanda teases, cold and naked and thrumming with excitement. “Happy birthday, baby.”

“Fuck. You.” Never before has she seen such genuine glee from him. “Fuck you, are you serious!?” 

“ So serious,” she confirms, puffing out her chest. 

“Wanda, I love you.” He kicks off his pants and tears his shirt over his head. He leaps onto the bed, kissing her soundly, looking at the gifts she’s holding in the basket of her bare legs, “I can’t believe you found it. How the fuck did you find it? You know I’ve been looking everywhere.”

She grins as his hands smooth over her chest, down her sides. He’s such a touchy thing. It’s seldom that she’s ever naked before he is, it’s usually a team effort. She’s his gift afterall, as per his request, but she took the liberty of getting him something else. 

“I ordered it online,” she squirms as he trails his fingers down her breasts, far too light for her liking, “I got two of them, one for sex reasons and the other for - mmfh. ”

He shoves her to lay back, picking up the tub of coconut whipped cream, walking on his knees to sit over her. 

He’s really been talking about this specific brand of this specific coconut topping almost constantly. He said it was like eating a cloud, that he’d only had it once while he was visiting with his parents last year and he’d been dreaming about it since.

His job continues to pull the life out of him and Wanda will do quite literally anything to make him feel better.

So, she’s the birthday present. And also whipped cream.

His cock’s fighting for its life to try and escape the fly of his underwear. He rips the lid off, immediately bringing it up to his tongue, closing his eyes as he licks it clean. Wanda flicks his stomach to remind him that she is, in fact, still here. 

“It’s so good,” he kisses the lid sweetly before tossing it over the edge and onto the floor, intending on using the entire container tonight. “The plan. Tell me the plan.”

She braces herself up on her elbows, “It’s your birthday, y’know. There are a few options. I can put it on you, or you could - “

“On you.” He nudges her thighs apart. “Any of this stuff that doesn’t go into my mouth is an absolute waste. You don’t have any plans, do you?”

“... No?”

“Good. This is going to take several hours.” Vision scoops a literal handful of white fluff into his hand. “It’ll be cold. Sorry.”

Wanda yelps as he smears it from her navel down to the sheets. He lifts her hips up in his hands like she’s a plate to clean. His tongue is hot through the cream and she practically stands on his shoulders to urge him deeper. 

Surely someone sets a world record tonight. Vision licks her for hours with an unwavering enthusiasm, stopping only to reload from the tub. She comes and he continues and she gets overwhelmed and it feels good and she comes again. 

At some point, Wanda’s basically doing a headstand, his cock poking her back, his arms around her stomach to keep her steady. Her legs go numb and all the blood rushes to her face and Vision apologizes very insincerely when she tells him she’s about to pass out. 

Her thighs are sticky and her clit aches when she taps out, a heavy boyfriend crawling up to kiss her with a cold, coconut-flavored tongue. It does taste pretty good.

“Thank you, wonderful woman,” he says, laughing at her half-lidded eyes. “I love you so much. Oh, my God. You’re beautiful.”

“Love you too,” she murmurs. She spares a glance down. “You forgot something.”

“Mm. Didn’t forget. I had priorities.”

“You’re not getting anywhere close to me with that thing, I hope you realize." She pretends to faint. "I need a break.”

Vision kisses her again. She rolls onto her side, watching with a wide grin as he savors himself. One hand on his shaft while the other grasps firmly below. He wrings himself painfully. The noises he makes are as sweet as whipped cream. She summons the strength to crawl over and taste them. 

one year

Wanda’s been trying to learn how to cook recently. For spite reasons. Vision made a batch of cookies for the first time a few days ago and they were amazing and now she wants to one-up him more than she wants to breathe. 

Pasta. People can make pasta. Wanda is a person.

Vision did this whole amazing gift-and-dinner thing for their anniversary - anniversary, a whole year, she fucking did it - and she’s been left with her thoughts about how little she’s capable of doing. Sure, she can take a baseball bat down her throat but she… somehow manages to burn water. 

She pours it down the sink and starts again. She’ll say it’s her first try when he gets home. She stands with her hands on her hips, staring pointedly at a pot of water, focusing so hard her head begins to ache. 

The surface begins to rumble after approximately one thousand years and she panics, throwing a bundle of noodles like a grenade, water spilling over the side and sizzling against the burner. No casualties.

“I’m amazing,” she whispers, grabbing for a wooden spoon, holding it like a sword. 

This is further than she ever got before. Vision’s going to reward her so hard for this. It’s going to hurt to sit down. Yes. The man loves pasta and hard labor. She should probably bring down the coconut oil sooner than later but she refuses to step away from the pasta for even a second. She’s poised and ready for any explosions or disasters. With her little spoon. 

Her brain is so incapable of multitasking at this very moment that she doesn’t hear the front door open. 

Vision slinks up behind her, kissing her on the cheek. 

She hits him on the head with the spoon. 

It’s completely on instinct. An audible clunk. He doesn’t even react, standing upright, staring at her as if he’s puzzled rather than attacked.

She reaches up, panicked, pressing her hand to the little red spot on his temple, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry - “

“We need to talk about self defense in the home,” he says, smiling, patting her shoulder before hopping up to sit on the kitchen counter by the stove. “That was a pretty pitiful attempt to guard yourself. You’d be dead right now.”

Wanda waves a hand, shuffling closer to her very successful first try at making dinner. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. You’re so lucky I wasn’t holding a knife. So lucky.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hold a knife,” he says thoughtfully. Wanda pouts up at him. “We don’t cook, Wanda. We buy groceries that require no assembly.”

“Yeah, but it makes it sound like I do nothing.” She’s well aware she does nothing. It just doesn’t feel nice. “You’re early. I was gonna… set the table and stuff.”

“Oh, yes, what are you making?” he leans over to peer into the murky water. He grimaces. “Hm.”

“... What.”

“Have you stirred it in a while?”

“... I’m supposed to stir it?”

Vision laughs and slides down, taking her sword from her hand, patting the place he’d just been as if to say oh, honey. “It’s alright, don’t fret, I can salvage this.”

“You can’t cook either,” she mumbles. She struggles up onto the countertop and falls back into the cabinets. “I was trying to do something special.”

“The thought counts more than you would ever expect.” He’s so handsome with a stupid wooden spoon in his hand. 

He’s capable of things and it makes her upset. It’s fine because she gets to see him be capable. It’s fine because one of the things he’s capable of is wielding a baseball bat. 

Wanda kicks her legs as she watches him stir for a minute or two, feeling around blindly for the strainer that he knows is there. It feels good to watch him up close, watch him in her space, watch him know her space. He likes a lot of space. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I was… sort of hoping that I could surprise you and I’d get… I dunno… rewarded. Or something.”

Vision hums, carrying the pot over to the sink, settling the strainer down. “I’m listening.”

Wanda places her hands in her lap. So casual. So good. “You have the day off tomorrow and I was thinking. If you break me tonight, you can nurse me back to health in the morning.”

He snickers. The steam rises as he pours the pasta out. His face is shiny from the vapor when he turns to see her. “Incredibly romantic, trying to lure me into your fuck trap with a fancy dinner.”

“Don’t call it that.” She laughs as he sets the strainer to the side, rolling his sleeves up. “It’s a… making sweet, sweet, violent love to me… trap.”

“Rolls off the tongue.” He looks around the kitchen, scanning the empty burners, before nodding slowly, “No sauce either?”

“... Forgot.”

He’s too pleased about this.

“You’re a gem. I’ll have to make something quick. Rachael Ray says pasta must never be made to wait,” he holds up a finger as he recites. Like a dweeb. 

“Why are you quoting Rachael Ray at me, right now?” She doesn’t mean to sound devastated. “After I failed.”

“Collaborative effort, my love.” He opens the fridge and sticks his entire head inside. “Do we have any butter?”

He throws together some basil and garlic and butter nonsense that tastes good enough to make her want to kill him. It takes him like five minutes. It’s so annoying.

Vision is too happy with himself as they eat, drinking wine out of a mug because she still hasn’t run the dishwasher, and rests his chin in his palm as he waits for the compliments that are never coming. He was totally just guessing. He’s not Rachael Ray. He gets no credit for throwing things into a pan and hoping they work. 

“You’re not Rachael Ray,” she says toward her empty plate. 

“I know.”

“I’m Rachael Ray.”

“Of course you are.”

They sit in silence. His side is likely more comfortable than hers. Her silence is full of rage and envy. His silence is nothing. He looks so happy that he looks empty-headed. 

“Hello.” He breaks the quiet. He lifts his leg to rest his heel in her lap under the table. “Hi.”

“… Hi?”

He pushes his plate away, another sip of wine that solidifies the purple of his lips, setting that aside as well. He wears a wide, sick-sugar smile, “Hey.”

Wanda makes a face at the way he sits up, hands folded like they’re suddenly in a business meeting. She pushes her own things forward hesitantly. The dishes clink. “This is very ominous.”

“Hi, my dear. My lovely, lovely Wanda.”

“Okay, what is happening?” she shakes her head, “Don’t like this. I don’t like it, just say what you wanna say.”

He lets his hands fall, clearly humored (a good sign). “Right. I know you’re frustrated about the food but, other than that, how are you feeling?”

Her eyes narrow. “Is this a trick question?”

“Nope.”

“I feel good. Full. A little sleepy. Because wine.”

“Mm.” He doesn’t move, a subtle confidence to him that reads as an omen. “And are you in a good mindset to discuss the future?”

Immediate lightning bolt of worry down her spine. 

She stands and wanders over to take the seat next to him. No hesitation. Conversations about the future are best had hip-to-hip. “Is it a good thing? I’m only okay if it’s a good thing.”

He chuckles and takes her hand, interlocking their fingers and kissing her knuckles. “Might be good. A big thing.”

Terror. Horror. Fear. “... Mmkay?”

Vision squeezes her hand, “It’s fine, don’t look at me like that. I’ve merely been giving some thought to… potentially selling my house and moving here with you. If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

Wanda stares. 

“I’ve almost paid it off and I’m not terribly tied down to it,” he continues, reaching for his wine again, and Wanda’s having a crisis. “And this is your childhood home, you know, so it’s not a question of where or how. Rather a question of when.”

Wanda stares.

“It just doesn’t make much sense, the two of us running back and forth between two neighboring homes. And I’m personally confident that it’s a good decision, I think we fit well enough to cohabitate.” Vision takes a sip, staring at the table, nodding as if convincing himself further with each word. He’s very pretty but Wanda’s having a crisis. “We spend all our time together and you’ve not gotten tired of me yet, which I know was a concern. And, maybe if I’m officially living here, I can pay for those pesky renovations your parents have been on about for the past few months. Everyone wins.”

Wanda stares. 

Vision finally looks at her again. Braves her reaction. Finds that she’s completely blank.

“... I see,” he laughs, kissing her hand again. “My apologies. I haven’t signed anything, I promise, so there’s no need to worry. I’m only as present in your home as you want me to be. I thought I’d put it out on the table since it’s been a year. And you say people in relationships talk to each other about things, apparently, and I think I’d quite like to live with you.”

Wanda stares. 

“... Er. Well. I mean, my mum didn’t move in with my dad ‘til they were together for a decade, so… I know I may be jumping the gun…” He squints, his tone becoming a bit wary the longer she stares blankly at him. “... Wanda.”

Wanda stares. 

“... Is this an ambulance needed silence or an I don’t want to talk about this silence?” Vision waves his free hand in her face. “Did I poison you?”

Wanda stares. 

“... Ooookay.” He goes to let go of her hand but she grips him tight. “My bad. I didn’t mean to - “

“You… wanna live with me?” she chokes out, eyes stinging, chin wobbling. “You wanna…? Live? With… m-me? Live with me? You want?”

Vision slumps forward, practically gasping for air, kissing her shoulder, relief settling as heavy as his body, “Oh, Christ, Wanda, yes. ‘Course I do.”

“You wanna live with me?”

“Mhm.”

“You wanna live with me?”

“Mhm.”

“Oh.”

He snorts and pulls her into a hug. (She scratches his back on accident and his leg jerks. He likes the hurt so much.) He shakes as he laughs at her while she cries into his neck. “I’ve told you I wanted to live here a million times.”

“Yeah, but it was always after I did that thing with my tongue that you l-liked so I thought you were thinking with your dick or something,” she cries. “Vision. You really like me.”

He laughs even harder. “Yes, surprise, I’m very much partial to you.”

Wanda sits at the dining room table and slowly melts into herself, face wet, as Vision clears up their dishes. He runs the dishwasher too. Oh, he’s going to do all the chores when he moves in. She’s going to do absolutely nothing. 

Vision picks her up over his shoulder when he’s finished, carries her up the stairs, and breaks her just like he said he would. 

And Wanda cries. 

And Vision licks her tears. 

And it’s all really fucking amazing. 

For a bit.

one year and one month

She can’t handle this anymore. 

Vision keeps talking about all the things that he’s going to be doing to prepare to list his house. 

And Wanda’s... really excited about it. 

But she is also a disaster who cannot, for the life of her, seem to handle the all-around perfection that is living with her boyfriend.

So, the more she thinks about Vision selling his house, the more she thinks about his room, the more she thinks about his window, the more she thinks about her window. 

Things culminate and things explode. 

She’s started having this dream. The same dream over and over again. It’s one of those realistic dreams about insane situations that shouldn’t be possible. But, in this very specific case with two very insane people, it is very possible.

It’s a month to the day since Vision asked. Wanda has been counting. He’s laying in her bed as she changes into her pajamas, reading some boring biography before bed, and he’s talking idly between chapters about house-moving things. And she’s going to rip her hair out. 

“I’m good to start the process whenever you’d like, really,” he continues, flipping the page, tucking his hand behind his head as he holds the book in one hand. Big hand. Big, perfect hand. “I know a guy who can list and close it all within fifty days. That’s his promise. Great reviews. This side of town, you’re typically looking at seventy, eighty days minimum. It’s incredibly fast.”

“Mm,” Wanda can’t breathe. She undoes the clasps of her bra and tries to feel better as she discards it. She bends to pick up her shirt and Vision whistles.

“I can honestly start everything tomorrow. If you’d like.” He closes his book and sets it aside, finding her more interesting anyway. “Or the day after. So we can have one more tour around the rooms. Y’know. Say farewell properly. We could do… whatever the opposite of christening is.”

That’s a good idea. 

Mmmmm. No, it isn’t. 

She thinks about the window and she gets sick to her stomach. She hasn’t eaten all day. 

Stupid dreams. Stupid mind and heart and body. The body’s the dumbest of all for harboring all these feelings and making her feel all wobbly over them. 

Wanda stands at the foot of her own bed, likely looking somewhat of a ghoul as she thinks very hard about what she should do in this situation. She’s never wanted to be one of those girlfriends who got mad at their boyfriends for something that never even happened but she’s mad at herself for something that didn’t even happen. And, of course, her conscience is nowhere to be fucking found. 

“... You look like you’re going to pass out,” Vision says, hands outstretched to catch. “Try to fall forward, if you can.”

She covers her face with her hands and lets out a long groan. It goes on for a few minutes. She presses her eyes until stars swim around in the dark.

The mattress creaks quietly as he scoots over to sit on his knees at the edge, right in front of her, gently pulling her hands away. 

“You’re meant to be the one who knows how to talk about things,” he says, kind smile and pink lips, so pretty, oh, fuck, the dream, fuuuuuck. “Darling.”

“It’s dumb,” she says. He gives her a look. “It is. Sorry. I always say your things aren’t dumb because they aren’t - mine are. I’m insane. I’m so… I’m so… ”

Vision hugs her loosely in case she might want to run away. She has no idea what she wants. Ideally, he’d hold her head down on his cock until she actually passes out - but even unconscious, she isn’t safe. 

“I like your dumb things.”

“Not this one.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re gonna… either laugh at me or leave me and both would be equally devastating.”

Vision wrinkles his nose, “Oh, it’s serious.”

Wanda rests her forehead forward, thudding against his. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I know that I’m overreacting. I want to say that now so that you don’t think I - “

“You’re already insane to me, Wanda, please just say what’s on your mind.” He kisses her quick. Wanda wants to push him back and tear herself apart on him for a little bit but someone would die. Stress makes her clench up. “You’re frustrating when you get like this. Wordy and incomprehensible. Save us both.”

With a shallow sigh, she recedes to stand in the center of her room. A bit like she’s about to give a speech. Or a dramatic monologue. Both very possible. She walks in a small circle and Vision lets his legs fall over the edge of the mattress, leaning back on his palms, prepared. 

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay.”

Dread. “Hey.”

Toothy smile. “Hi.”

“Um… remember when we were talking… all that time ago…?” Wanda hugs herself close. Gathers her heart and her worry and her boobs all up in one little package. “And I… and I said I tend to jump into things sorta blindly and then regret them later?”

Vision shifts his weight onto one arm so that he can scratch his jaw thoughtfully. 

“... Yes,” he nods, “I’d very much like for you to continue your thought before I begin to panic, please.”

“Panic?” she frowns, “Why?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Is this not the preamble to the it’s not you, it’s me talk?”

Wanda’s knees buckle. She squeaks, crawling into his lap in about half a second, taking his head in her hands. “No, no, no, no, absolutely not.”

“I wasn’t kidding about the two-weeks’ notice thing, I need some time to prepare.” He’s sort of joking but Wanda is far too focused on the genuine part in his eyes, in his voice.

“It’s not that. No. It’s dumber than that, it’s…” She pushes him back against the bed to sit on his stomach, guiding his hands to her thighs because this is where she has all her best ideas. The most clarity. “I had a bad dream.”

“...” Vision slowly begins to smirk. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“No. No, it’s - “

“You don’t need to talk in circles,” he pats her thigh, “Tell me what the dream was, then.”

She places her hands on his chest. “Don’t laugh at me.”

He’s already laughing. “Go ahead. Recount the tale. Spin the yarn. I’m dying to know.”

the dream

Vision sells the house. He sells his furniture and almost everything he owns because none of it will fit in Wanda’s house. He’s happy. Work is going well. He got the promotion he wanted. And a bigger office with a couch.

“Well, already this is just blatantly unrealistic,” Vision mutters.

A month has passed since they’ve officially been living together. They have a perfect new routine that doesn’t include alternating between locations, Vision brings dinner home and they eat together on the couch like couples in TV shows. It becomes a very beautiful, almost normal life. 

They’re both too busy wrapped up in excitement to notice or even mention when the new neighbor moves in. 

Vision is rearranging their bedroom. Or the living room. Or something. Downstairs or upstairs, it always changes. Wanda gets the perfect idea for a picture to hang up on a wall. Those details don’t matter.

The thing that matters is that she knows where the picture is. And the picture is in her childhood bedroom. And she hasn’t gone in that room in ages. 

And, so, Wanda walks up the stairs. 

The door always creaks as she opens it and she reaches for the switch to flick on the light, grab the picture, and leave. 

But she sees a square of yellow light through the window. Blinds open. And Wanda can’t move. And it's a very familiar feeling.

Their neighbor is a man. He seems to have also chosen that room for his bedroom. 

She freezes and stares. 

Some nights she actually has the picture frame in her hands, some nights she doesn’t. She stands in the center of the room and she watches him stand there, breathing, doing nothing. Not even undressing. Not even reading. Absolutely nothing. 

Wanda has no idea how long she looks. She isn’t interested, she knows that much. Because she has Vision. But it’s just the shock of genuine deja vu, the feeling in her chest that she’s in the dark and this stranger isn’t. Wanda hasn’t thought of anyone as a stranger in a long time. It’s all been Vision. 

And now there’s someone else and, for some reason, she just can’t move. 

Close the blinds, shut the door, lock it, go fuck her boyfriend, she has so many options and she takes none of them. 

The floor creaks in the hall. 

Wanda gasps and turns. Sometimes she drops the picture frame, sometimes she covers her mouth with her hand, sometimes she just pivots slowly and calmly.

But she always sees Vision standing there, lit up from the back in the most terrifying way.

Vision looks at her. And he looks over at the window. And his face gets so grim so quickly because he knows her, now, for certain. He knows what she did and how long she did it and he’s putting pieces together before they even had any time to happen. 

He laughs bitterly, shaking his head, “Jesus Christ, Wanda.”

And then he walks away. 

Sometimes Wanda just stands there and stares at the empty door frame. 

Sometimes she follows him. 

When she follows, it’s always to their bedroom. And he’s pulling his shirt off like he’s getting ready for bed but he’s got this awful, broken smile on his face and Wanda doesn’t know how her brain created the image but it makes her feel absolutely gutted.

Sometimes he gets completely naked, sometimes he just stands there without his shirt, but the details don’t matter because what he says is always the same. Same disappointed, hurt tone. Same wide, fake smile.

“Well, fuck, darling, if I knew you only liked me without a voice, I wouldn’t have bothered to come over in the first place.”

“And then we fight,” Wanda sighs, close to tears. “And I always wake up before I get to explain. But. That’s it.”

“...” Vision’s eyes are sparkling. “... Well. That is certainly… something.”

“You think I’m crazy.” She covers her face, skin crawling from the memory. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m really the craziest person on the planet - “

“You are definitely not the craziest person on the planet. Murderers exist.”

“ - and maybe I’m just not cut out for relationships or something, it’s like my mind is just conspiring against me now that I finally have what I really want - “

“Aw.”

“ - because c’mon! You can’t disagree that that’s a plausible scenario!” She gestures wildly. Vision’s jostled up and down under her. “I mean, it’s happened before with no rhyme or reason. I didn’t know you, I didn’t hear you, I barely had a name and an image of you and I still went absolutely insane - “

“This is a bit different than that.”

“ - and I know I’m a creep but what if I’m a cheater too, Vision?!” She’s hysterical. She doesn’t know if she’s ever been hysterical before. He seems to be having the time of his life as she shouts and jerks him around. “What if - I mean, I don’t want anyone else, I don’t even wanna see anyone else, but I don’t know how I work! What if I’m the worst and I just didn’t know because I never had a person to cheat on? What if I go into the room and I see a person and I just - ! I don’t want to fuck anyone else, Vision, you’re the best person I’ve ever been with and you have the biggest dick and the best mouth and the best voice and the best hands and if I lose you because of this, I swear to God, I’m gonna - “

Vision places a hand over her mouth. The room gets very quiet. He slowly sits up until she’s straddling his lap, eye-to-eye. Intense. Real. 

“Wanda,” he says calmly, warm through a repressed smile. “Respectfully, I do not think you know how cheating works. You aren’t going to just trip onto another man’s cock.”

“I know,” she says into his palm, miserable.

“If you get the urge to cheat on me, it’s not because you like windows.”

“I know.”

“Mm.” He removes his hand, thumb across her bottom lip as he goes. “So, if I may, I’m gonna try to recount the minutes. For clarity’s sake.”

She doesn’t want him to. This is so fucking embarrassing. 

He does anyway: “You don’t want me to sell the house because you’re afraid you’re going to want to fuck the new neighbor.”

“No!”

“Okay.” He nods patiently. “Then, alternatively, you’re afraid that I’m going to catch you looking through a window and assume that you want to fuck the new neighbor.”

Well…

“... Uh?”

“You. Are. Incredible.” He sits up, kissing the corner of her mouth. “If you think I’m letting you go after this, you are most certainly mistaken.”

“Vision,” she whines as he licks a stripe up the side of her neck. She grabs at his arms. “Seriously, I think something’s really wrong in my brain. I think it might be a premonition.”

“I haven’t even sold the house yet, we have plenty of time to make sweet, violent love before you leave me for another voiceless man,” he rocks his hips up against hers.

“That’s not fucking funny,” she tries to push him away but he leans back of his own volition. “Vision, I’m losing sleep over this. I’ve never had such a repetitive stress dream in my entire life and it’s all about losing you and it’s all my fault and it’s for such an idiotic reason and I can’t figure out how to stop it.”

He kisses her chest through her shirt. “You told me. Surely that’ll help a bit.”

Wanda is very confused. She just said one thing and Vision is groping her as if she had said something entirely different. She wants to melt into his attention, wants to accept the hickeys and the massage and the rumble of his approving hum as she lets her head fall back to let him do what he wants. She wishes she wasn’t so bent out of shape over this. She wishes she could be bent over without worrying so much. 

He stops after a moment, about three suckbruises already formed. She can feel his contemplative focus before she opens her eyes to see it. 

“Okay,” he decides. “Idea.”

She yelps as he stands, holding her against his chest with a single hand, walking out with no hesitation. It’s almost like he’s a superhero carrying her out of a burning building but it’s probably the opposite. Maybe he’s carrying her into a burning building. 

She watches the bed get smaller, the warm light of their room growing distant as he carries her through the dim hall and through a different door. 

He sets her down in her childhood bedroom. 

“Stay,” he says, open-mouthed kiss to her cheek. 

Fuck. 

She doesn’t move. Not as he steps back in the dark, not as he walks over to the desk and takes the chair, not as the legs scrape against the ground as he tows it over to its place in front of the window. 

“Vision,” she whispers. 

She’s got that telltale nervous heartbeat. She isn’t sure if it’s because she’s in this room again or if it’s because Vision has never told her to stay. 

He takes unhurried steps to the door. “Clothes off and sit down. Before I return, if you would.”

“What the fuck…?” She watches him, bewildered, heart in her throat and in her ears, “Baby, I’m enthusiastic but who is this new Vision, where did he come from, and what is his phone number?”

“Strip and sit, Wanda. Won’t ask again.”

And then he’s gone. 

She listens to his footsteps, listens to the front door open and shut, and she’s immediately ripping at her pajamas. 

Her top gets thrown in one direction, her pants the other. One article lands with a thump on the dresser, the other gets hung on the edge of the bed frame, she has no clue which is which. She didn’t bother to wear anything underneath for comfort’s sake. She loves when she’s accidentally efficient. 

The wood of the chair is cold against her skin and she clenches her teeth. 

She stares forward.

She stares through her window and into his for the first time in a long time. And the urge to scoot forward, press her knees against the wall, feel the cool of the glass… it doesn’t appear like she thought. Not even as she sits here bare, not even as Vision’s stupid commands ring like sirens in her ears. That was the worry in the dream, that she’d just not be able to help herself. Maybe she’s not as awful as she thought - 

Ah, nevermind. 

The light flickers on across the way, one house over, Vision’s house, Vision’s room. The urge returns like a punch to the face. 

Vision’s standing, facing the door, hand on the switch. His back is tense and his shoulders are square and it’s been a damn long time since she’s seen him like this. Distant. Blurred and foggy through glass, all his details smoothed over. 

When Wanda scoots forward on instinct, see him better, get closer. She misses him. Her skin clings to the chair like a weak set of restraints. She’s hot and bothered in a dark and cool room, it glues her down.

He lingers there, not sparing a glance over his shoulder, for a minute or so. Like a photograph, really. His hair is all spiky in the back from the way he’d been laying in bed. She wants to comb her fingers through it. For a second, for a real second, she forgets that she can. 

Wanda can’t believe she lived without him before. She can’t believe she found things like this to be enough, soundless and colorless and touchless glimpses into a life. She wants his life to be loud and close and hard and inside. 

Vision disappears again. Wanda slumps back in her chair. It creaks and her back immediately melds itself to the chair. 

The light remains on and she waits for him to emerge again. Maybe naked. Naked would be good. Now she knows what he sounds like when he’s rocking up into his own hand, it might be a bit more fun. 

The front door opens downstairs. 

She sits and stares forward at a home lit up and seemingly lived in, knowing it to be vacant, knowing that the man who lives there is steadily making his way up the stairs. 

There’s barely any light coming from the hall but she can see a shadow shift anyway. 

The floor creaks in the hall. 

“Keep looking,” he says, rumbly in the dark. 

Her jaw hurts from the way she’s been tensing it. “Vis.”

A gentle sigh breaks from his lips.

“I’m going to tell you what I think, and you can tell me if you agree. Alright?”

Wanda tries to focus on his reflection, dim against the spotlight he’s turned on outside. “Mhm.”

He takes a step forward and the air shifts. The door closes and it’s completely black in this room. The diluted yellow light warms her face and down her throat but everything else may as well not exist. His mouth would help.

“From what I can tell… you’re stuck on the window. Because you’ve forgotten how it felt. And you don’t trust yourself around it because you think it doesn’t matter who’s on the other side as long as they don’t know you’re watching them.”

Wanda opens her mouth. She doesn’t know what she plans to say. Certainly not a disagreement.

“This feels like therapy,” she mutters.

(No, it does not. If therapy felt like this, she’d have actually gone.)

There are warm hands on her shoulders and she hiccups, leaning into his touch.

“Yes or no, Wanda.”

“... Yes.”

“Mm.” A kiss to her hair. “Yeah, I know what you need.”

She wants to rest her head back and look up at him, see him in this light, but she was given very specific instructions to keep looking. And if there’s anything Wanda is, it’s a good girl. (Ha! Hahaha? No?)

“What do I need?” she asks. 

Hot mouth on her neck. She lifts her hips but her skin burns when it peels away from the chair. 

“You need me, don’t you. To make it so you can’t even think about this…” he reaches over her shoulder, tapping the glass, pointing beyond, “... without thinking about me.”

Wanda looks up at the ceiling for a sign. Maybe a bolt of lightning. Vision laughs and takes her chin in his hand, tilting her back down. 

“Is that what you want?” He has already made up his mind.

“Yes.”

“Do you need me, Wanda?”

“Please.”

He takes his time dropping to his knees. He settles in front of her on the floor, clothed, too unhurried for her liking. She feels studied like a test to be passed. She reaches for his shirt, to tug and demand he remove it, to even the playing field, hurry, hurry, things to do. He guides her hands back to the chair, pushing her fingers to close around the armrests. 

“How patient are you feeling?” he asks, a trick question. She blinks at him. “Hm? How long do you think you can wait?”

Wanda curls her toes. “I don’t know.”

He looks at his watch. He’s never worn a watch before. He put on a watch for this. “We’ll try for an hour.”

“Vision.”

“We’ll try for an hour.” He smiles. Mind made up. The light is behind him, catching his hair like a halo which is just thematically and spiritually and generally incorrect. He’s a demon. 

He pushes the backs of her thighs up, folding her in half, hooking her knees over the sides of the small chair. Her hips immediately hurt. Vision likes the hurt. She might actually like the hurt. Oh.

“You’ll tell me when you’re close, won’t you?” Vision asks. Still studying. She hopes he starts the test soon. 

She bites her lip. She nods. 

“Wanda.”

“Yes,” she huffs, “Hurry.”

“Not this time, I’m afraid.”

Vision starts with his fingers. 

Wanda waits for him to up the speed, lick and breathe against her, do the special thing with his thumb, but he doesn’t. It’s slow and nearly infuriating, circles and light pressure in the dark of a room that she’s almost always been alone in. 

He promised to make this good for her but she’s getting bored. 

She drops her head back, annoyed. Vision bites her knee and she immediately lifts her head up again. 

“Eyes on the window, Wanda.” Slow, boring circles just left of where she needs him to touch, hardly touching the nerves that need it.

“You’re gonna make me fall asleep,” she says. 

“Don’t be a brat.” Vision presses small and unaffecting kisses to the inside of her leg. Wanda whines. Not for the normal reason. “Watch the window.”

Wanda deflates, the sides of the chair digging into her hips, kicking her legs a bit. Boooored.

Vision bites her again. “Stay still.”

“Fine.”

Vision’s fingertips are as precise as they are big. It makes no sense. She sits and waits to be fucked as he always does. Time moves slowly and he touches her but not as hard as he usually does. He rubs at the side of the hood and intends to start a fire. 

Wanda stares through the glass into the room that won’t be his in only a matter of time. And she’s so convinced that she won’t feel anything, that it isn’t working, that he’s just playing a game with her, that she barely notices when the tight feeling begins to build in her chest. 

She squirms a bit. A palm on her thigh to keep her still. 

“There you go.”

“Vision.” 

It’s supposed to sound like a warning. She sounds pathetic. She isn’t sure when that happened. She was bored and now she’s… not.

He shifts on his knees, sinking further down, the slightest extra bit of pressure added. Wanda looks down at his hand as if she expects some sort of witchcraft. As if he doesn’t know how to play her just right. He could just stare at her and she’d come. Which either bodes very well or not well at all, depending on how she wants this to go. 

Vision’s voice is quiet through the buzz in her ears. “What did he look like?” 

“What?” she whispers.

“In the dream.” Ah, yes. Right. “What did he look like?”

The chair creaks. “How long has it been?”

“Not even ten minutes. What did he look like.”

She wants to move just the slightest bit, roll into his hand, but each attempt is accompanied by a noise from the chair she’s crammed into. And, every time the chair makes a noise, every time she moves, Vision smiles a little wider.

“... I don’t know,” she says softly. 

Vision smiles. “Good.” He sucks a bruise on her thigh. “That’s good.” His fingers finally press where she needs them, the places that feel. He traces and loves but he’s just as slow. “Too obsessed with me to picture anyone else, aren’t you?”

Wanda wants to be upset. Her face is beginning to burn. She can feel him gather the wet of her on a fingertip, dragging, teasing. 

Another year passes in a minute and she holds her breath. She’s close. She doesn’t know how. He touches her like he might press inside and she arches her back because she wants him to. But he doesn’t. That’s unfortunately the point. This sucks. 

“Darling.”

“Mm.”

“Eyes open.”

She listens. 

Vision’s room is lit and poised and she can see the bed through the mirror’s reflection. She can imagine him inside. She can imagine herself inside, licked clean like a plate on his birthday or fucked slow under the covers. She can imagine dropping to her knees on the floor or helping him out of his shirt when he’s tired. 

Wanda’s toes curl. And point. 

It’s like some fucked up illusion. After the past year, she thought he’d spoiled her for anything that wasn’t instant, fast, hard, hot, intense. He’s barely touching her, when it comes down to it, and her cheeks are stinging like they do when she fucks her hand beneath the duvet when he’s at work or sleeping. Her face is flushing like she’s keeping quiet, keeping secret, touching alone. What is this?

Vision watches her. She watches his window. 

She thinks about Vision. She thinks about the taste of him and the taste of coconut. His breath and his mouth and the way that neither of them are noticeable right now, only his hand teasing her to the point of madness and the thrum of her own pulse in her ears. 

She makes the softest, choked noise. 

“Vis.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. Mhm. Mm.”

Vision shuffles close until she can feel his breath again. His cheek is stubble-rough against the inside of her thigh and she jolts at the feeling. 

“Just a bit more,” he coaxes, grinning and hidden for the most part in the shadow. The light catches his hair and the sill and his shoulders, his outline and little else. “You’re almost where I want you.”

Wanda is stubborn enough to swallow a pitiful noise while she still can. 

He made a fire out of nothing. Not even a spark. Because he knows how. He knows her name. He knows her name and her birthday and he knows her body and its parts, the parts that ache for him, the parts that can make a fire. 

How does it work? He’s hot when he doesn’t know her, hot when he does. Hot when he can see her, when he can’t, hot with a voice and without, with clothes and without, smiling and crying and bored and excited.

Maybe it isn’t the window after all. 

Pitiful noise from her throat that she does not permit. 

“That’s it,” he praises, and she loves his praise. 

“Vision.”

He continues even as her throat closes, prepared for a shout, “I’ve got you.” 

Wanda’s legs try to stretch out to the sides but she’s kept locked and compact in the chair. 

Vision’s on his knees. Vision’s room is lit up and she can see it for the first time in so long. Vision’s on his knees and his breath is hot and his hands are hot and, and, and, and - 

It all disappears. 

Vision leans back, sitting flush against the floor, resting his back to the wall beneath the sill. He unfolds his legs, looking up at her as she, no doubt, crumbles into something devastated to behold.

The fire dwindles into embers. 

“W-w-wha…?” she whimpers, her skin sticking to the chair too persistently to allow her to slide down the way she wants. “Viiiiis.”

Vision checks his watch. She’s going to smash the damn watch. “Wait. Thirty seconds.”

She wrenches her eyes closed. This sucks. She wants to say that to him but he already knows. She wants to say that she hates him, that this sucks, that she just wants him to knock the chair over and have his way with her, but she also… would like to be good for him. Funny how that works. 

Something about stay. Something about wait. In that tone, in this room. Inspires obedience.

“Try to relax,” he instructs. Not helpful. 

Wanda is cramped in a chair made for people much smaller than she is. She drops her chin to her chest to look at him. The light is dark and makes him grainy but his teeth are white and perfect. 

I know what would make me relax, she wants to say. 

She thinks about the dream. She thinks about how her boyfriend/lover/victim/evidence/torturer is sitting on the floor, legs to the sides, exorcising her of the demons of said dream, smiling all the while. 

The fire dies and Vision pushes himself back to his knees as if clocking in to his favorite job. He laves a flat, hot tongue across her once and only once, making her quiver, before deeming her worthy of two fingers. 

“Mmmmmnnnn,” her eyebrows arch and then plummet, eyelids thin enough to see the light through them, “I hate you.”

She feels the soft fabric of his shirt, the stiff press of his shoulders, as he presses idle kisses to her stomach. He loves her stomach. He loves her from the tip of her head to the soles of her feet, every bit of needy skin between. He has favorites. Her stomach, the backs of her knees, the space between her jaw and her ears.

He bends his stupid, long, wonderful fingers inside her.

“I like to think…” he says, capturing her attention, bringing her back to her brain, “... that anyone else would think to close their blinds. Don’t you agree?”

Wanda laughs breathily, nodding. “Y-yes. A normal neighbor… w-would be good.”

“Oh, my darling,” he sighs, gratified, “I love it when you sound like that.”

He rewards her with harder. He rewards her with faster. Her nails scratch the armrests, no doubt collecting years-old wood stain underneath. She tries to rest a leg on his shoulder but he immediately pushes it back, pins her down. 

“Still,” he says. 

She moans and jerks and stammers. 

He laughs, receding to the wall again, checking his watch. 

“Almost done,” he promises as she pants, her arms hanging over the sides of the chair like useless things, her chest heaving, burning with sweat and suspense. “One minute, this time."

“Nnh, hate you,” she mutters. 

“One minute.” Vision is such a bastard. He clears his throat, stretching his arms over his head, yellow light catching the slick on his hands like glitter. He yawns. Bastard. “I don’t think I ever closed those things. Those blinds. They were open when I moved in.”

“Mmmhn.”

He sighs in that faux-nostalgic way. He thinks for a moment. It feels like five minutes. Time doesn’t exist anymore. Has it not even been sixty seconds? Her body aches. In three ways. “I dunno.”

“Mm.”

“I don’t think I’d ever assume something like that,” he tells her. It sounds like he’s having a completely different conversation. Wanda might be losing her cognizance a bit. 

“Like wha?” Her voice is a permanent whine. She sounds like a whore. Yeah. 

“That you’d want to fuck someone else.” Vision sits up, resting his elbows up on the lip of the window, relaxed. Lounging, fully clothed and casual, while Wanda… is whatever this is. “Maybe you’d look at them, sure. Maybe you’d consider it, even. But I don’t think you’d do it. I don’t think you’d want them more than you want me.”

Wanda groans. Her hips hurt. The armrests are digging into her legs, her hips, shaping her permanently. She’s wet and dripping a puddle into the seat of the chair, onto the floor, leaking hot and being cooled by the air. 

“I love you,” she hears herself say. Vision smirks. “Vision. Oh. God.”

He hums, long and low, “Tell me.”

“Don’t want anyone else,” she promises as if they both don’t already know that, as if she thinks anyone else could give her this, whatever this is, “Don’t - mmn. I. I love your cock.”

He shines. “I know.”

“I love your fucking… I love your cock so fucking much, I love it, it makes me feel so st-stupid,” she cries, and the chair creaks, “Stupid and full. I love it. I love you. Want you, wanna feel you in my stomach. Oh, my God, Vision, please - “

Vision’s up on his knees again. Palms on the backs of her thighs, shoving her even further to fold like a piece of paper, burying his mouth into her, warming her back up again, overheating her, making her shriek and then laugh at the noise and then moan miserably at the hurt and the good and the Vision of it all. 

“Love when you beg,” he breathes, hood taken gently between his perfect teeth before he sucks her clit into his mouth. 

Her legs are finally allowed to hang over his shoulders. Her heels step on his sharp shoulder blades and her hands grasp at the chair, her own hair, Vision’s, his shirt. She feels like she might float away. She feels like she might sink into the ground. 

In truth, he likely spent much of the year between her thighs like this. In his office and in hall closets and in his bed and in her bed and in his car and in the living room and in every possible room and space that he thought was possible. 

She’ll never get tired of it. She’ll never get tired of him.

Hot breath and quick pace turns into fleeting kisses and pinched skin. He can feel the throb of her against his lips, no doubt. Has it not been an hour? Has she not earned a release? She thinks she’s earned it. 

Vision leans back before she’s ready. She drops her head back with a growl. Devastated. Desperate. The fire is built in her belly and she doesn’t think it’ll go without a fight this time. 

“Can you stand?” he asks, though it’s clear that he expects no response. 

He helps untangle her from herself, legs unbent and feet settled on the floor. Arms around her waist, pulling her upright. She flops forward like a doll into his chest and he chuckles. 

“Aw, Wanda,” he kisses her hair, being the worst, “My beautiful Wanda. I can finish you now, if you need, I think you’ve learned your lesson well enough.”

“No,” she says for some reason. She tries to lean up on her toes to kiss him and establish dominance but that’s just not in the cards for anyone tonight. “Teach me my lesson. Make me stupid.”

Vision kisses her nose. He smells like sex. His lips are tacky from her and she hates the way it makes her feel. Good, for the most part. A bit dead, maybe, but in a hot way. Her head falls back and he catches her before she hits the ground. 

He kisses her and she licks the flavor of herself from his mouth. Because she knows it’ll get her what she wants. Because she might die if she doesn’t get what she wants. 

“Alright then,” he smooths his hands down her hips, squeezing as if considering possibilities, her favorite thing for him to do (his possibilities are always fantastic). “If you’re sure.”

“Am. I’m. Yes. I’m sure, I’m.”

Vision coos. He kisses her neck because he’s likely missed it. He slips around to stand behind her, tent in his sweatpants, slowly walking her forward until - 

“Ffffuck,” she hisses at the chill, grabbing blindly behind her for his shirt, “Vision - “

“Cold?” he asks, sounding almost evil, hand on her back to bend her over. She’s pinned to the window, breasts smushed and buds immediately frozen into points, nose just barely pressed in. 

“Oh, my fucking God.”

“That’s it.” He takes all of her hair and rests it to one side, leaving her neck exposed. He knocks his foot to her ankle. “Wider. Let me in.”

She rests her restless hands on the sill, eyes wide, heart beating so fast. She shifts her stance, opens herself, turning her head and pushing her cheek to the glass. She shudders. “Baby.”

“Mm.” The warmth of him disappears for just a moment. She doesn’t dare move. The light is on across the way and she pretends that someone lives there. She pretends she’s an intern or she pretends that she’s a criminal or she pretends that she is seen. Vision moans softly. “Christ, Wanda. Look at you.” 

She arches her back, pushes herself back for him. She yelps as he smacks her ass, making her jump, making her moan. Her face slides down the window a bit with the motion, making the classic noise of a face sliding down a window, Wanda, not the time. She grabs at the small windowsill so that she doesn’t completely succumb to gravity. The sting feels good. The cold feels good.

“Vision.” She turns her toes inward. “Please.”

She can hear the snap of the elastic of his briefs as he shoves them down, pulls himself free. She can’t see him but she can feel the heat. She’d know the heat, the weight, the taste, the shape of him anywhere. She knows it by heart. 

He places a wet kiss to the small of her back and she sucks on her own bottom lip. The crackle of a condom packet. She’s impatient. She’s waited enough. 

She feels the weight first, cock laid on her back as if he’s posing for a picture. Wanda moans as he lays himself across her back, arms around her waist, pushing his hips forward as if he’s inside. 

“Ready?” he asks, cheeky, awful, handsome, horrible, “Hm? Ready for me to ruin this for you?”

“Yes,” she urges. She wants to push back against him but he’s too heavy, sticking her to the window like something to be displayed. “Vision, ruin me, ruin it, c’mon, you’re taking too long.”

He slips a hand between them again, checking that she’s ready, she’s ready, she’s so ready, she’s never been more ready. He lingers for a moment longer than he knows he needs to, like he's so proud of himself that he can't stand it, like he's so proud of her for being so awful. “I knew you’d be perfect for this. Knew it.”

Wanda opens her mouth as he presses in. He buries his nose in her hair, breathing against the back of her neck, measuring himself out carefully. He’s much better at delaying things than she is. He is good at denial. He is as good at being slow as he is at being fast. 

Her mouth is open and she cannot for the life of her make a single sound. 

“You’re the only one who’s… ever taken me all the way like this,” he rests his chin on her shoulder, then bites at her throat like an afterthought, “and you fucking love that, don’t you.”

Wanda shuffles her feet apart. She rotates her hips, swings an arm up and back to drape around his neck, wanting to feel his hair. She is the best he’s ever had. She was made for this. For him. 

“I do. Love it. Love you.” She lulls her head, pressing her hairline against the barrier, fogging it with her shallow breaths. “It’s a creature, Vision. So big it’s… got a… f-fuh-ck, it’s got a consciousness.”

Vision chuckles, airy, stepping closer somehow. The back of her legs presses to the front of his, feels like they melt together. His sweatpants are still on. He was too impatient even to take them off. Wanda wins. 

He rarely ever bends her over like this. She likes being eye-to-eye for obvious reasons. But this is a lesson. And the blinds are open. And she has volunteered herself to be reminded of him when she stands here and, goddamn, if he’s not making a case for himself. 

She likes when he grips her so hard that her skin turns pink and raw. He’s heavy against her back, heavy inside and out, and she feels empty when he pulls back. 

“Fffff.” She pulls at his hair and he stutters forward. “Can take it. I can take it. Remind me. Remind me, baby, please.”

He noses at her bare shoulder, “Remind you?”

“Mmmhm,” she nods as best she can, the glass heating up beneath her skin. She has an idea and it's a bad one but, God, there's no mind left to filter. “Remind me who I belong to.”

Vision pauses. 

He steps back. 

He takes her hips in his hands and yanks her back, bends her over even deeper, takes her even deeper, and she laughs when he mutters, impassioned, “Oh, fuck you.”

She can barely fold her arms to brace her elbows on the sill, hardly any room, hardly any place to grasp as he begins, as he always does, to fuck her into unintelligence. She settles to brace her palms in the square of the pane. He thrusts and she begins to worry he’s going to knock the panes out completely. 

“Big,” she says, very smart, very good, very full of brains. 

Vision brushes her hair further to the side. He fucks forward and she scratches at the window. He marks the back of her neck, an inconsistent line down from the base of her skull to the middle of her spine. 

“Mine,” he replies. Different conversations, different bodies, same window. “Fuck, sweetheart, you belong to me, do you?”

She tries to nod but it’s a thankless effort. He licks and marks and owns and Wanda is an ornament in her own window, peering into another home, remembering how it felt when she didn’t know what it smelled like, didn’t know how soft the bed was, didn’t know how to work his washing machine. She knows now. His favorite flavors and his favorite textures and his favorite positions. 

She looks into his bedroom as she’s fucked against the window, bent in half, bent over, presented. He hugs her from behind, hands on her stomach that roam up to grab her chest, grab her hips, her ass. She is a body beneath his body and she’ll never possibly get used to it. The stretch and the slide. No way in hell.

Wanda laughs and hiccups and claws for purchase on a smooth surface that offers no mercy. Vision laughs and grunts and leaves pink trails as he feels down her back and her ribs and finds every single handle to pull her back onto his cock with. He is most efficient when he’s impatient.

“Are you gonna let me…. L-let me… c-cuh-uh-ah,” she can’t even get her fun one-liners out. Vision’s arms stretch out to place his hands just above hers on the window. A gentle thud. She feels the vibrations. Whatever brains and body were inside aren’t there anymore. Vision fills the spaces. She balls her fists up against the glass. “Ah, ah, ah, ah.”

Vision nods. She can’t see it. She can’t see him. She closes her eyes. He moans into her hair, “So good for me, asking permission.”

“Vis,” she whines. Not a sexy whine. A get this over with whine. An I'm cold and I need this whine.

He smiles, rocking forward, thrusting forward, making the glass ring and the house shake. His sweatpants are soft and they thud when they meet her thighs, his skin slaps in all the places it reaches. “Do it, then, show me you’re mine.”

Wanda hates him. She clutches his hands where they rest on her stomach, pushing them down, wordless and needy. He groans and complies because she deserves it, she’s earned it, she wins. His fingers feel cold against her, now, she’s dripping so hot it must burn him. She cries and lurches and arches and her legs give out. Vision holds her up with an arm, hauls her up so that her back is to his chest, fucks her through it until he’s making those lovely, sweet noises in her ear. 

He hugs her tight when he comes, standing, holding her like a damn pillow. Wanda rests her head back against his shoulder, looking up at him with blurry focus, a yellow square still swimming around in her sight. She watches him, loving his face when it's tense, when it relaxes, when he remembers that he's holding up an entire woman and the adrenaline is waning.

He slowly falls back into the small chair. She yelps at the feeling, attached to his lap, bracing her feet on his knees. The chair creaks in protest. It's at least as old as she is. She hates thinking about that but it's hard not to in this awful pink room.

“Ow,” she gapes up at Vision, whose eyes are closed and whose smile is very cute.

“It’s fine,” he pats her side, slipping down a bit, taking her with him, still so big inside. “You like it.”

Wanda stares forward at the window, waiting for her breath to return, waiting for Vision’s breath to return. She isn’t sure if she wants this to be over yet. This is quite nice. No new neighbor could possibly offer something like this. She knows that for certain. 

“Maybe it’ll be a family,” she says quietly. 

Vision hums. He’s a bit out of it. His pulse drums on her skin. 

“The new neighbors,” she explains. “Maybe it’ll be a family.”

He laughs. Wanda holds on for dear life, grasping at the armrests, afraid she might tumble off of him.

“Yeah?" He kisses her neck, chaste peck, back to normal homeowner Vision, all traces of you belong to me swept onto the floor, "Moved on that quick?”

She relaxes back into him. “Mhm. You can call tomorrow, I’m good now.”

“Wonderful.” He traces shapes on her bare arm with a lazy finger. “So, what’s our game plan, then?”

Wanda looks over her shoulder, “For what?”

He drags his teeth over his lip in the way she hates. “You seduce the husband and I get the wife, or…?”

Wanda winds up to slap him but she’s tethered to his cock and can’t get the right angle so he catches it before she does any damage.

“I fucking hate you," she says.

“Whaaaaaat? Right now?” He shifts his hips and she exhales through her nose. Angry but also feeling very good, very nice, do that again. He nuzzles against her neck sweetly. “I love you too.”

She huffs and crosses her arms over her chest.

Something gets moved inside. That's nothing new, he's awful. Something always gets moved inside. Broken or misplaced, he stirs her up and laughs as he does it. 

Wanda glances down. Maybe to see the light bouncing off their knees, their bodies. Maybe just to remind herself that this is real.

But that's...

She drops her arms. She stares very hard. 

“... Hey, Vis?”

Another lazy kiss. “Yes, my love.”

She smooths a hand down her stomach. She prods. He makes a noise. “... Vision, look at this.”

He sits up a bit to peer over her shoulder. “What, is there someone in my room or something?”

“No, but there’s definitely… someone inside the house, if you know what I mean.”

“What the fuck are you even on about.”

Wanda takes his hand by the wrist and places it low on her stomach, “Do you feel that?”

“...” He squints, moving his hand up and down. “What the hell is that.”

“That’s you.”

“What.”

“That’s you.”

“No fucking way.” Vision stuffs his head under her arm, cheek to her ribs, getting a better look. “That’s me.”

There’s the smallest, tiniest little… bump. Right at the bottom of her abdomen. The plush of her belly. Below the stomach, right above where he’s very firmly planted inside. It’s not her stomach. He can’t reach the stomach. Obviously. But he’s reaching something. 

“That can’t be possible,” she says, full of glee and also full of cock. 

“Hm.” Vision moves his hips. He begins to snicker. “I’m in your guts.”

“I have to look this up.” She starts to stand up. Vision stops her, hugging her tight. They both groan. “I’m sorry, this is non-negotiable. Google is calling my name. I have to know.”

He pushes his face against her torso, looking up at her, hand placed protectively over her pelvis. He looks very cute but that’s genuinely not allowed. Not while this is happening. “You can look it up but only if we can go down to the couch after. The lighting’s good. I wanna see myself in you.”

Wanda holds her hand out. He shakes it. 

She makes a truly horrible noise as she stands up, freeing herself. Vision checks briefly for any sign of injury before kissing her stomach and slapping her on the ass and encouraging her journey of discovery.

A day spent filling herself with fret, with worry, with anxiety, with blurry memories of dreams of events that never could have happened in the first place. She got stuck in the dreams and forgot to do much else.

Like, for example, she forgot to eat. 

It’s all about the angles, apparently. It’s very possible and very weird. Empty body, big boyfriend, two and two makes four. 

Vision doesn’t even moan the entire time he fucks her into the sofa cushions, just pure awe and interest, holding Wanda diagonal or upside down or any other way he can get it to poke out. It was more evident in the dim light, the smallest little change, but they both stare like insane people for about an hour before remembering that there's a goal here besides watching. Almost forgot to finish there for a second. Wanda reclaims her top spot and he folds his hands behind his head, grinning up at her, sweet and kind, warm and soft. 

This isn't domestic bliss, she doesn't think. Something a little bit to the right of it. Domestic bliss is a ceramic plate that got broken and they super-glued it together and put it back in the glass cabinet. It looks normal from far away. That's all they needed. 

He tucks her in like normal with a promise that he'll clean it up tomorrow, dear, sorry about that. He rolls onto his side, invitation for a big spoon, and Wanda takes the offer so fast that her nose hits the back of his head and it aches.

"Goodnight," she says, because they never say that, because it's too movie-like, because Vision hates that. 

"Mmn," he replies, because it's too movie-like and he hates it. She hugs him tighter. He allows it. "Night."

It doesn't take long to slip away. Long day of worry, long day of being had. Wanda dreams about the cold of the window on her chest, about the thud and the slap and the everything about it… except, of course, for the things she can see outside it. 

For the first time, a voyeur dreams about the inside of a window.