Work Text:
While working with one’s former paramour can stir up feelings on either part, Vision is content to work with Wanda. She has an expertise into the magic arts that he, sadly, does not have insight into. He can provide technological input. It stands to reason that their partnership would be beneficial. Though, he is certain there were dual motives to pairing the two of them together on this project.
It is of no matter. Previous updates of his body were romantically involved with Wanda, but his current state has gone through over a dozen changes to his soft, firm, and hardware since their passings.
He will behave professionally in this capacity. He will create a neutral and welcoming environment for Wanda, and then he will leave.
Wakandan technology has filled in the cracks left by S.W.O.R.D butchery, turning his white sins a saintly red. It should be a neutral observation for himself.
Out, out, damn spot, he felt as white paint washed off until it was cloudy, then clear. His appearance is not the same as either Vision, because he is neither of his previous forms. A restored ship modified with a few new bells and whistles.
He is curious about Wanda Maximoff’s opinion on the new model. That is all. He does not require her approval.
It’s a well lit laboratory and yet it’s the red lights of her eyes that seem to illuminate everything between them. Perhaps it is his own feelings, and perhaps it is the haze of magic that surrounds Wanda of late. Her skin looks cut from marble, with its lights glowing and its shadows disappear. She looks like a….
Searching for analogy:
- Siren emerging from the sea.
- Painting of a woman from far away.
- Demonic presence sitting at the foot of the bed.
- All of the above.
That settles what is unsettling him. The analogy solved, he can return to his work.
Still his mind cannot focus on the monitor in front of him.
Checking processes:
60% of his memory is focusing on either Wanda Maximoff or not trying to focus on Wanda Maximoff.
She’s wearing a wedding ring.
Correction: she’s wearing his ring.
Memory: Uploading software that provided immediate sizing calculations to his fingers. Wrapping his forefinger and thumb around each finger (as not to raise her suspicion, and to keep the measurements for future, less significant rings). Finding the right jeweller for the design. The right stone, right cut. Lab grown red sapphire surrounded by white diamonds. Lab grown. The rock making is a wonderful form of productive meditation Western cultures are so fond of. He adds the beryllium to the corundum, letting the work tweak his finer motor skills. Tony’s forge is used to armour, but he has enough moulds of ring size for Vision to work on. He believes it is perfect in its imperfections, though of those, there are few. Character, one might call it. He tucks it in a black box and keeps that box in his jacket with the intention of surprising her with it when a scythe separates a few of his ribs from the inside.
It must have been on his personal affects. Sent to her and then opened after her own rebirth.
And on her left hand, ring finger, it sits. Given to her by the Other Vision, no doubt. Her Vision. The Vision who freed him.
Running diagnostic: attachment to Wanda Maximoff.
Hardcoded. It was, after all, her magic that brought this body back online. Other results of the diagnostic brings up 21,900 hours worth of footage to review. He browses through the highlights and finds his attention drawn to a reel of Wanda Maximoff’s bitten lips, bare thighs, and bouncing breasts. He feels his circuits heating and tries to derail into something more appropriate.
“You are thinking about me naked. Loudly,” she announces.
“My apologies. I am doing my best not to.”
“You don’t have to stop,” Wanda turns to look at him. The new outfit is what is occupying at least 30% of his attention. He’s avoided it, and her, for a successful three days, but now that he’s up close he can’t help but record every detail. For training purposes. Likely. The stretched leather over her bust may be what first draws the eye, but it’s the fingerless gloves that keep his attention.
Fact: A fixation on Wanda’s hands has existed in Vision’s memory processes since day one of boot up. Long fingers. Black nails. Unique joint flexibility. And the channel of her powers. It is difficult not to fixate on her hands, because it’s the most active part of her.
He fidgets. He’s not supposed to fidget, it’s an unnecessary process. Too human.
Perhaps he does it to put her at ease. Wanda’s staring at him with a cocked head. He mirrors the action.
“Would you like to read my thoughts?” she says, “Do you have memories of those days we went without speaking a word? Just to see if anyone else noticed?”
There’s a raspy texture to her voice that he feels his body reacting to. Auditory stimulus causing his flesh to ripple. A wonder of Shuri’s upgrades.
“Yes,” he stares at her from beneath shaded brows.
Her thoughts used to be choppy loops of surf he could submerge into. There are spikes now, and the loops have turned into complex fractals. Still, he can feel her guiding hand inviting him in.
The number of processes she has going is impressive. It must be the new magic.
Keyword: Magic.
Wanda’s memories take over.
“I am Glamour and this is my assistant, Illusion,” he announces in a half-cocked flourish.
She has no idea what’s gotten into him, but she kind of likes it. If not for the need of a serious Vision executing stage magic with the utmost gravitas, she’d ask the goofball to stick around.
“I’m Glamour and he’s Illusion,” she corrects.
His hair falls in his eyes just so. His smile is wide, and his eyes are sparkling. The magic is secondary, all instinct. Wanda’s full attention is on Vision. It all may be tricks, but he is magic.
Magic.
Red fingers flipping through grimoire pages, tracing runes, the way magic crackles on her tongue as she speaks the words.
Magic.
That thing that fills her veins just as much as blood. More maybe. If the legends are to be believed.
“Thank you,” he says, processors entering the present rather than ruminating in the past. Her body has moved closer to his with their meld.
“That’s what you asked to see, now what I’m thinking right now.”
The red in her eyes has burnt out to their natural green, and yet, the stare she shoots him is hotter.
He knows what she’s thinking about and it’s his fault for his own broadcast.
Once more, he crashes onto the shores of her consciousness to see his own face reflected back, but hovering over hers. The changes in expression from concentration, to pleasure, to tenderness.
“So, we are both thinking of sex. I suppose it’s not very professional of us, but we can work past it,” he says with some dry humour he did not expect to come out of his mouth.
She laughs a little, her head falling closer to his. He should pull away. He doesn’t. Instead he fixes a hair that’s fallen in front of her eyes. His fingers brush the thin line of a scar that almost bisects her eyebrow.
Memory: Edinburgh. The Vision inspects the damage to Wanda Maximoff’s epidermis after she rescues him from alien assailants. She leans into the touch. He says the words, “We should have stayed in bed.”
The look she’s shooting him now is almost a perfect visual match for the one she was shooting him then.
How does he feel more emotional stimuli in five minutes alone with her than he has in 4380 hours?
It is only logical. The biggest emotional totems of his life were experienced with Wanda. His highest highs of euphoria, joy, and delight, and his lowest lows of jealousy, grief, and sorrow.
Naturally exposure to her would dislodge some feelings. Entire blocks of his identity, previously snipped in their neural pathways by S.W.O.R.D scalpels.
“Vis?” she asks him with some concern. He avoids her eyes, “Being around you is confusing.”
Wanda exhales in what could be a laugh, “You’re right about that.” She backs off, instead choosing to lean against the work desk, biceps flexing with the strain of her grip on her elbows.
Instinct is what has him pivoting to stand in front of her.
Wanda stares up at him. His hands move slowly, brushing index fingers against her thumbs, then eclipsing her hands on the work desk.
Probability calculation: 92.7% chance of this happening.
It’s why he’s been deliberate in his avoidance of her.
Wanda parts her legs. Vision moves to stand between them.
She’s the one who grabs the front of his uniform to drag him into an open-mouthed kiss. He’s the one to push her up on the desk.
They don’t bother with clothing removal. He phases through both layers.
“No underwear,” he says neutrally.
Wanda licks his lip. The curve of her smile and size of her pupils show how deliberate all of this is.
It’s love an the absence of that has him battering her hips at a bruising pace. She cries out on each thrust, clawing to his back, pulling him closer with her own locked legs.
“Vis, Vis, Vis,” she chants.
“Wanda,” he growls into the crown of her head. His lips are drawn there for a kiss.
Her hands drag down to his biceps, holding him in place. She wants it harder and he wants her closer (infinitely closer) and it’s hard to do both at the same time. Ragged, shallow thrusts, and then he’s murmuring about pulling out--which isn’t something they’ve needed to do before, and he tries to explain, but she locks her legs harder and bites his lip as she cums.
It spurs him into his own orgasm, small and fleeting in comparison to the types of pleasure they’ve subjected each other to before.
Memory: “Administrator access: Code High Voltage. Receptor sensitivity to 110%,” her voice is hard.
No material can hold him, but it is a practice in a way, of both their abilities. Red light tethers him to the bedpost. His chest is rising and falling faster. His artificial pulse is hammering against his bound wrists.
Even the slightest brush of her hair against his stomach is enough to make him shudder. Her lips curve. He knows the night will be a long one.
Vision collapses against Wanda, her knees unlock, allowing him to extricate himself.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you I have ejaculate now.”
She reaches between her legs with a smile, then frowns as her fingers brush plush leather instead of bare skin.
The silence is punctuated only by their panting. He ruined the bow of her lipstick with his mouth, making the spot a blurry mess.
“You don’t have to apologize for that,” she cups herself and he groans at the sight.
“But I should apologize.”
Her eyes meet his.
She is in distress. Something that initially drew him. A desire to help life. Alleviate her pain.
He is in distress. The simplicity of life’s great complexities come into question in her proximity. Wanda is a probability bomb shaped like the love of his life. A single being incapable of wreaking havoc on reality by asking every cell down to its nucleus “what if red were blue, and up was down?” --and, she snores. He knows she snores because he has hours of recordings of her doing it next to his ear.
Memory: compilation. Wanda Maximoff sleeping habits.
- Snoring. Slight septum deviation from a broken nose. Injury occurred in childhood during a fight with another orphan. One who had been stealing Pietro’s boots.
- Hand holding, just below the covers, usually on his sternum. She always paws around when he gets up before her, frowning in his absence.
- Spooning. Big spoon 87.8% of the time. She tells him she likes to make him feel small and safe. It is effective.
And she still wears his ring.
The ring he didn’t get to put on her finger, but the one she kept for the illusion of him ( “I’m Glamour and he’s Illusion.” ).
“Vis, I can’t hear you right now, you need to talk to me.”
He sighs and watches the curl of her lips at his irritation. No. Not at that. His posture has shifted from neutral to natural and she appreciates it.
“You are the most important creature in the world to me and it is frustrating,” he says, “It is hardcoded in, and my two purposes are to: preserve life on this planet, and to destroy you, so it puts my brain into debate.”
“And, was that your attempt to destroy me?”
Another set of emotions: regret, shame.
“It was neither,” he sighs, “It was both.”
“I can help with your brain’s debate, if you want,” she says.
“How?”
“We did practice the Socratic method when you were last living, or alternatively…” she tips her head and manifests an orb of red energy.
“You want to go rooting around in here,” he taps the replacement gem.
“Only if that’s what you want,” she says with a shake in her voice to betray her own desires.
She is Wanda, so he is compelled to give her what she wants.
“I’m afraid that if you do that then I will either lose my logic-focused thinking, or that I shall disappoint you with indifference.”
She nods, still, she holds out her hands. Ready to slip inside into his head with a flash of parasitic red.
“And which do you find more frightening?”
Running risk assessment:
Running…
Running…
Running…
“Well, if I were to develop a complex emotional core centered around you it would lead to instability in my brain,” she scoffs a laugh and he continues speaking as if uninterrupted, “And if I fail to do so then you will be in pain.”
“So you want to stay where you are because it has the lowest risk?”
“Correct.”
“Have you considered that not doing anything might cause more damage than doing something?”
He opens his mouth to speak. It’s true, the passage of time is as much a factor as saying the right thing.
“And, have you considered the weight of feeling that comes with one of your greatest fears still being to hurt me, even after they programmed you to do just that?”
“I’m not the man you lost. The men, rather.”
She takes a deep breath, looking at him with glassy eyes.
“I know,” she says, “You’re something else now. And, isn’t that beautiful?”
He exhales shakily, eyes meeting her bittersweet smile.
“I’m not the same as I was either. I like to think I’ve changed for the better,” she says.
He does remember how much time they would spend in telepathic sync. How he’s never experienced closeness at a molecular level in the same way since then. In a previous life, he and Wanda were like three vessels, two pouring into the third, then back out. Always further blurring the lines in identity between her and him . Sometimes he would dream her dreams. Sometimes he would speak through her, long distance, to a teammate. The others saw it as a frightening violation. They would never understand the intimacy.
An intimacy she’s offering now.
“Do it,” he says on an exhale.
“Do what?” she tilts her head at him.
“Upload the missing piece,” he presses his index finger against his gem. Blunt, reinforced sapphire instead of proper star stuff like the Mind Stone.
“I don’t have that,” she says, referring to the yellow gem.
“I want to see your piece,” he says.
They exemplify the idea of “soul mates” on a very literal level. Wanda has twenty percent of the stone to his eighty. She’s more human, more organic, and operates under the laws of chaos and construction. He is synthetic and orderly, needing more life from the stone to become the golem he is.
“Okay,” she rasps.
Her hands bracket his face, and he wants to flinch at the proximity of wide eyes and long lashes. He’s deprived himself of her gaze this whole time, knowing it within himself to wilt in his convictions around her.
It’s a notable pattern in his memory banks, not something he’s been ruminating on.
“Can I have your whole mind?” she asks.
“Yes, of course,” he says.
Red light courses behind his eyes and then everything is Wanda.
Memories, both his and not, flood him. He’s looking at her from behind his own strange eyes at that stunning outfit . And, he’s staring up in wonder as she mounts his lap, fingers pulling apart the buttons on his pajamas. Then he’s got his nose to the soft hairs on her neck, inhaling her scent while palming her belly. A pregnant belly. Butterflies and baby boys. Tommy reaching for him, Billy making his first babbles. He became enamoured--obsessed even, with their perfect fingers and toes. Their little noses and their big eyes, and how much they needed him. They were tiny and strong, and perfect.
His boys. Their boys.
Then doubt.
Then fear.
Then rage.
Then understanding.
And so much grief.
The emotions that flood his synthetic limbic system, forcing a set of switches to flip on-on-off one too many times and--
His eyes slam shut.
Rebooting…
Rebooting....
Rebooting....
Stand by.
Uploading Vision 2.0.5.1.3 Memory...
Loading.
Loading..
Loading…
Overwhelmed is an overstatement.
Air pushes up from his lungs to try and expel the emotional block. A cough, two, strong arms pulling him into a soft lap.
Her scent restarts the olfactory. It sticks to the inside of his nose along with concrete dust, the firecracker smell of magic, and gunpowder. His nose connects with her head. He pecks his lips there, once, twice. She is thrumming. Alive.
“Vis?” His audio processors are back online. His ears. Her teeth scrape across the metal plating, causing a whole body shudder he didn’t think himself capable.
“I’m here,” his own voice seems quiet and thick. Oh, the ceiling is spinning, fantastic.
He is not damaged, but he is in pain.
“Are you okay?” Wanda asks.
“Yes, and no,” he says, feeling different layers filling in the cracks in his voice. She’s got one hand cupping his head, the other gripping his hand. All tangible with her double-jointed fingers. He squeezes it. She squeezes back.
Memory:
“When we were little, I would always hold Pietro’s hand when I got scared. And, vice-versa,” she says, stuck in the passage of time.
Vision shuffles himself so their knees are touching. He holds his hand out, feeling the rhythm of his nervous pulse in his neck, “You can always hold my hand when you are frightened.”
Her smile is radiant, “Thanks Vis,” she grabs it, “You too, okay? Any time you get scared, just grab my hand.”
His eyes open in a flutter of lashes and adjusting cameras. It’s not that radiant smile, but her concerned stare. The one with the dropped mouth and knitted brow. Her lips are moving--Sokovian syllables. He reads them as:
“Come on, Vis, stay with me this time. Just stay.”
His chest restricts, and then he sighs in relief. He feels very much the fainting ingenue spilled across her lap like this. He might as well play his part well. Feign reverie, play delicate, let her be his hero.
It’s not like it’s much of a stretch anyway.
“Wanda,” he says on parted lips.
“Hi,” she breathes.
“Hello again,” he brushes a hair away from her face.
She flinches, “Vis?”
He brings her hand up to his lips for a kiss, “Darling?”
Her expression breaks into equal parts grief and relief. Her whole chest shakes as she drops soft, urgent kisses on his head, lips, and cheeks.
“Wanda,” strength blooms through his limbs. He pulls her into him, and it’s ridiculous. They must look like a spilled drink, all tangled together and kissing like there’s no tomorrow.
“Vision,” she rumbles against his cheek.
He kisses her nose, “Wanda.”
She’s the rest of the spectrum he’s been missing. All the missing hues of reds and blues.
“The boys,” he gasps, feeling their loss like a scythe to the stomach.
She nods against his temple and he holds her head there.
“We’re going to get them back,” she says with that terrifying conviction he fears and admires. She would tear heaven and Earth apart for him, and her love for their children is tenfold that.
And--and this may be the remaining influence of Wanda’s mind in his own--don’t they deserve it? So many unhappy endings for Wanda and Vision Maximoff. He is a pacifist by nature, but he’d say by laws of universal averages (roughly, he’s fudging the numbers for personal gain) that they are owed a win or two at this point.
So long as they’re not directly causing suffering and death, what harm can ripping down the heavens do?
“We are,” he says, kissing her hand again with a promise. Right on the ring. His ring. Wanda frowns at his hand.
“Vision.”
“Yes, My Love?”
“Will you marry me?” she asks.
He short circuits for a moment.
“I--yes?” then spots the absence of a ring on his own finger. “We never had a wedding,” it dawns on him.
He’s flopped against her, using her chest as a pillow, and she shakes her head with her chin pressed into his crown.
She is his wife, in spirit, hell, even by legal standards. She was his next of kin. They owned property together.
Still, there are no photos of her in a white dress. Or, of him in a sharp suit. No cake or first dances. No friends and family in tears.
“Can we wait until we’ve fetched the boys to have a ceremony? I don’t think I can celebrate such a milestone without them.”
She nods against his crown, “Me either. We’ll make bastards of them yet.”
He chuckles and kisses her fingers.
The energy is less weird, but definitely still weird. Things are usually weird and not-weird between them. It’s part of what triggered the bonding exercises that led to bonding exercises .
Simply put, they were often paired off with each other because no one else wanted to include them. He’s alien and off putting. She’s a reformed adversary on a team riddled with trust issues. In their isolation, they clung to each other.
Which worked in the long run. Case and point: he is presently flopped out on his own bed while Wanda brushes her teeth in the previously unnecessary en suite. (Ramonda gave him a knowing look when he said neither the bed nor the bathroom would be needed. Once more she is proven more correct than he.)
“The telepathy helped us connect too,” she says, re-railing the train of thought.
“It certainly did and does, Darling,” he replies.
It’s how they successfully tiptoed around the others with their affair for the better part of two years. No physical trace or evidence. All rentals were done in cash. Fake names used. Gwendolyn and Victor Shade. Mary and Francis Shepherd. Rebecca and Jeffrey Kaplan. Wilt and Walt Shakespeare. They stopped caring after a point, as did the front desk. The horses before zebras explanation was that they were likely cheating on other spouses. One woman thought they were a student and professor, having an affair away from his wife and kids. He’s a little affronted at that one. He doesn’t look that old, does he? He’s the robbed cradle in this situation! She’s the older woman with a husband and children.
“I know, I know,” she says, entering with a towel to dry her hair.
“You know they have instant hair dryers here,” he says, sitting up.
“Sometimes technology for the sake of innovation isn’t actually necessary,” she gripes, “I want you to brush my damp hair. An instant dryer isn’t going to do that.”
“Am I a necessary innovation?”
She sits next to him on the bed and leans down to peck him. He meets her half way.
Compiling: every memory of kissing Wanda to harddrive memory.
“Of course you are. I don’t know if they’re going to be churning out synthezoid husbands on a mass scale, but if you’re a limited edition I’m happy to have the only one.”
He wrinkles his nose at her, “Three at this point technically.”
“Three? I’d say two point five.”
“What’s the point five in this case?”
“Separate mind and body,” she cocks her head. He mirrors it, lips pursed.
“I mean, there’s three of you but there’s only one of you,” she says, “I think two-point-five is a fair half way point.”
“Technically two is half way between one and three.”
“Well, if you’re gonna round down, Mr. Expert,” she says.
“Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes,” he quotes.
“You certainly are large, Walt,” Wanda scratches his chest, voice dipping suggestively.
He sucks in a breath. It’s normal. A strange progression of normal in that he is Vision and she is Wanda and therefore, any private space they share becomes one for lovemaking. As evidenced by the prior coupling in the lab. He has an encoded, false, but real memory of taking the opportunity to fuck her into the couch cushions while the children took a nap.
“You okay, Vis?” she strokes his jaw with a black nail.
“Yes,” he says.
“We don’t have to--”
“No, no, I want to. Believe me, all revved and ready to go when you are. It’s just….”
“Just what?”
“Suppose I wanted to catch up first. I know what I’ve been up to, and I have a faint idea of what you’ve been up to. Time has passed. I’ve rebuilt my giraffe collection.”
“Now you have to show me your giraffe collection,” she drawls, “It’s a shame you had to start from zero.”
His previous collections of giraffes were lost, he assumes, in either some spring cleaning during his five years of death, and, the rebuilt collection only a part of her illusion.
Ah well, so the rock reaches the bottom of the hill yet again.
“It is a Sisyphian endeavor,” he agrees, kissing her knuckles and leading her to his shelf. He’s sorted his library by dewey-decimal system because it is objectively superior.
“I don’t know these authors,” she says, taking one off the shelf.
“I’ve been getting into Wakandan theory and literature. Getting to know my roots,” he says.
“Which do you recommend?” she asks.
He uses his height and their proximity to brush against her as he grabs a tome off the shelf. It has its desired effect. Her eyes darken and she bites her lip.
“ Under the Sky. Should be right up your alley. Witches, lost loves, and perseverance,” he places it in her outstretched hands.
“Does it have a happy ending?” she asks, “I’m awfully tired of tragedies.”
“No spoilers, but yes,” his voice is hushed as he dips in to kiss her nose. She leans into it, and he watches helplessly as big tears gather at her lashes. He cups the back of her head. She shakes it and presses her face into his chest.
“I missed you,” she chokes out, “I missed this.”
“It has been a waking nightmare, hasn’t it?” he muses.
Analogies come freer with the update. Her brain patterns have cross-pollinated to his, making his simple processes a series of complex fractals.
It’s liberating and terrifying. He-her-he-her-he-he-her. The binary blurring. Evolution through destruction and transformation. The closest he can come to describing it is to call them Lord Shiva of the Hindu triumvirate, and any scholar of Hinduism would laugh--for the Lord Shiva is indescribable. (In the sense that Shiva is all-encompassing. Male, female, the very essence of creation and transmutation itself.)
“I like that,” she rasps, clearly eavesdropping on his thoughts.
“Is it wretched of me to be glad our places were not reversed?” he asks.
She rests her chin on his chest, craning her neck to look up at him. He cranes his neck downward. What a pair they are. Their necks are going to be so sore. And, not for the right reasons. Not yet anyway.
“And if they had been?”
He pushes her still-damp hair back. Right, he’s supposed to brush it.
“Well, I have never had an existence without you. You spent a good twenty-odd years living and breathing without me.”
“You’ve been living without me just fine by the looks of it,” she says with a hint of bitterness.
Vision makes a noise in his chest, “Existing with the knowledge that you are out there. My other half. Even when we are apart. Is infinitely more comforting than facing the vastness of existence alone. I don’t know how you did it.”
“I wasn’t alone up until that point.”
Pietro. Ever the elephant in the room.
“I wasn’t meant to be one,” Wanda says, “I’d much rather be part of a matched set.”
She wipes her tears on his shirt. He huffs a little laugh and she looks back up at him.
“What?”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” her arms wrap tighter around his middle. He presses his lips to the crown of her head and they bask in the moment.
“Vision.”
“Yes Dear?”
“I’m loving this room tour.”
“But?”
“You need to either brush my hair or fuck me.”
“Yes Dear,” his semi turning to a full erection makes that decision for them. Wanda presses harder against it with a groan. He nods against the kiss she launches at him. She’s a slight thing, so carrying her while she climbs him isn’t an issue.
“This is going to mess up your hair,” he tells her between kisses.
“Honey, you’ve gone down on me while I was wearing my depression jammies. I’m not worried about it.”
“Well, it seemed to be a point of concern earlier.”
“I just want to be close to you,” she says.
It’s so achingly plain and so achingly honest that he pauses to cup her face. She flinches.
Right.
The last time he did this he was dying.
The second to last time he did this he almost killed her.
The two memories are knitted together with red thread. He flinches as well.
“Sorry,” he says.
“No,” she shakes her head, “Just don’t stop touching me.”
Her pajamas are plain and fitted. It’s all wrong. She’s Wanda. She sleeps in baggy clothes. He likes watching her disappear into a large sweater, emerging from it with dark hair and pale limbs. Pulling her shirt over her head and kissing his way down sternum shrapnel scars is both thrilling and familiar.
It’s a strange sensation. Doing something so practiced it comes as instinct, but is still technically the first time.
Her eyes return to embers as she watches him, lower lip between two teeth.
It’s an exhale. That’s what it is. The facade pulled back. Two non-humans putting on their barest people suits under cover of darkness.
Memory: A Vision of a Vision hiding beneath covers because of a prop tree rattling the windows. We are an unusual couple, you know.
They tread so much freakish water that it looped all the way back around to normalcy. Yes, they’re both capable of destroying the planet, but more importantly, they’re getting a CostCo membership.
“It does pay for itself,” Wanda agrees.
“I mean, with two growing boys and who knows how many sets of twins after that,” he says casually, as he tracks her hand’s path to the front of his joggers.
“I love you,” she rasps, so romantically, as she grabs his groin. Tears spring into his eyes unexpectedly. Her touch. She’s always been the one who touches him. “I love you too,” he says, then clears his throat.
“You okay?” she cups his face. He nods and shucks her underwear and pants off in one go.
Kiss path projection: Right knee. Left arch. Left ankle. Right wrist. Right hip. Left hip.
His path is interrupted by an irritated Sokovian woman putting him in a headlock between her thighs. He actually remembers the day he watched Natasha teach her this move.
Fully clothed, of course.
“As the lady wishes,” he tells her as slides his tongue against her clit.
The upgrade to his sense of taste and touch is welcome because that is delightful . She’s soaked. All puffy lips and dark hair. So perfectly Wanda with her voice dropping to the lowest of growls to call him her filthy Vibranium whore in Sokovian. In retaliation, he speeds his tongue up to vibrator speed, making her cry out.
They link minds to get her the rest of the way there. His own hips shudder. Vacuum suction on her /his clit accompanied by the pulse of two buzzing fingers. It’s her back arching closer to his face, and his back arching to mirror it.
The Mind Stone makes itself come messily into its own mouth. Tasting its own remnants there.
He kisses his way up back to her lips, letting himself lie languid against her.
“I like the upgrades,” she runs a hand over a pebbled nipple. Her touch is light, dragging from his breast down artificial ribs to find the divot of a navel where there used to be none.
“And for the ejaculate?” she asks, “I know we talked about a water-based lubricant alternative. Though petroleum jelly would be more easily reproduced with your biology.”
“It’s organic,” he flops onto his back, leading her to be eye level with the weeping head for a taste. She moans, pumping the shaft. He whimpers and tries to continue his train of thought, but the swirl of her tongue is distracting. “I sequenced my own genome using my appearance and some donor stem cell DNA. There’s an aqueous delivery system that’s about half-synthetic with trace elements that I shan’t bore you with. But, it is fertile so,” he clears his throat.
Wanda nods and he chokes at the sensation.
“I love it,” she says, giving him a sloppy kiss he tastes himself on. That’s new as well.
“I’ve been working on a similar solution for vaginal fluids, but the differences in PH are difficult to switch between so easily, so I’ll have to use the same if I am to use one tonight,” he says airily like it’s not a directive.
Wanda smirks, licking her lips, “You mean if I eat you out it’s gonna taste like this.”
He nods a little.
She palms his length, then presses it against his upper pubis, “Do you want me inside you, Vision?”
He nods a lot.
He perks up and glances at her overnight bag with a question.
“Something of my own creation,” she says in her ridiculous American accent, and does a Bewitched flourish.
Between her legs springs a phallus of the same material as her crown. Burgundy in hue, and ridged along the sides. Not insubstantial, though not the biggest thing she’s put in him.
He’s already shifted by the time she’s kissing his knee and tugging it over her shoulder. Her thumbs stroke his hips as she hauls him between her legs, separating the lips of his vagina.
“This looks different,” she says, running her thumb over his clit. His eyelids flutter, “I’ve been testing out my own anatomy. Seeing what mine would look like, rather than a copy of yours.”
A pause.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
She’s looking at him like he’s a morsel fit for devouring, her lips part and she nods, before dropping her head between his thighs.
“Wanda!”
“Vision,” her voice in his head is smug.
Two finger press into him, spreading what’s already engorged and lubricated. He trembles under the curl of her knuckles, chasing the spongy inner works for his g-spot.
“I need--” he pants.
She holds her free index finger up, before letting off and pulling back. Her mouth is wet and her eyes are those dull crimson lights again.
There’s little preamble before she glides into him with a smooth roll of her hips. It’s what he likes. Thrusts that are more like a ripple on a lake than the jerky ones she prefers to be on the receiving end of. She never bottoms out. Her grip on his hips keeps them aligned. His inner muscles flutter around her, keeping her close. He stretches one arm up to play with her breast as she fucks him.
It’s a marvel of Wakandan woodwork that the bed neither splinters nor squeaks from the force of their rhythm.
Part of him feels deprived the song and dance of getting to know you again . It’s the first time, and it’s the first in a long line of times. They’re different and they’re the same, and they’re one and they’re two, and they’re three.
She looks absolutely feral as she grabs him by the head and bites his lower lip. He sees his own face reflected both in her eyes and in their shared bond. The stiff features this rebuilt body used to boast have melted into open apology. He catches her mouth in a second kiss, then a third.
This is when his head bumps the crown.
“Oh,” he says.
The Scarlet Witch. He runs his fingers over the patterns of her headpiece.
“Beautiful.”
She flips them, the sight of her above him always making him tremble.
For him she’ll halt time and space. For her, he’ll lose himself in wanton abandon and cry out, head falling against the pillow.
“Did you just?” she pants.
He nods minutely, feeling his nerves sing as his muscles sag.
“That was wonderful,” he says.
She follows him in search of hugs and kisses he’s happy to provide.
“Darling, your hair is a mess,” he tells her.
“We’ll just have to wash it again then,” she kisses his cheek.
They finally settle in for the night after the second shower and a brush through her hair. She uses him as her cushion as he turns the TV on.
“Now, not a lot of American television has crossed the Atlantic. Though, I am quite fond of The Good Place --”
She snorts, “Of course.”
“I know. How on brand for me.”
She kisses his chin. He kisses her head.
“The US are trying to strengthen trade bonds with Wakanda.”
Her face turns to a parody of shock, “No way.”
“Difficult to believe, I know. The United States of America? Trying to make friends with a country full of a natural resource they can use to fuel the military industrial complex?”
“What?! Get outta town. I’m sure all they want to do is strengthen global trade for peace purposes.”
“Sharing culture,” he offers, “The trade with India is stronger here, so I’ve also been treating myself to Indian sitcoms. They are fascinating.”
Still, he clicks the remote to the YouTube app and brings up a channel that has archived old television.
Season 2. Episode 21. The walnut episode.
The young vision of Mary Tyler Moore glides down the pile of walnuts, stretched out like some kind of Juglan Venus. She tilts her head and kicks her heels, gazing up at Dick Van Dyke with a kind of cheeky adoration.
Wanda swears, “She’s so hot.”
He turns his full attention to her and she ducks her head, “What? In hindsight I am discovering the reason for my obsession with this episode when I was ten.”
“So your sexual awakenings were Mary Tyler Moore and Starscream?”
“G1 Starscream,” she insists, slapping his hand for emphasis, “I contain multitudes. Don’t be judge-y.”
“There’s no judgment, Darling. I’m happy that I fall within the intersection of your sexuality.”
“You are my sexuality.”
She says it so plainly and matter-of-fact. He presses his nose into her crown and wraps his arms around her tighter.
“Oh.”
“By the way, how do you feel about dark rituals that possibly involve inter-dimensional beings that could be classified as a Biblical devil?” she asks.
Vision doesn’t really know how to answer that.