Chapter 2: All the fantasy
The War Room’s silence was no longer empty. It was full, heavy with the weight of what was to come. Jean sat, back straight, a queen on a throne of cold steel. Kurt lingered by the muted monitors, his tail coiled tight with anxiety. Scott remained standing, the truth serum a chemical puppeteer pulling his strings.
“Start,” Jean said. The word was not a request.
Scott’s voice, stripped of its usual careful modulation, began. It was a debrief. A tactical report on shared delusions.
“Sam Wilson. The UN Gala last year. The one where Doom’s diplomats tried to poison the champagne.” Scott’s visor remained fixed on the blank main screen. “He said the music was too loud, the diplomacy too fake. He saw you—Peta—laughing by the buffet, looking uncomfortable in a dress. He imagined pulling you away, into a service closet full of linens. The smell of starch and floor polish. He said he’d kiss you to shut you up, because you’d be making a joke about the canapés. It would be fast. Urgent. Your back against the shelves, his wings—the harness, not the actual wings—pressing against the door. The fantasy was about the noise of the gala outside, the pretense, and the absolute, silent truth of the two of you in that dark, cramped space. He described the sound of your necklace breaking, beads scattering on the tile. He said he’d find them all later. Every single one.”
Jean’s expression didn’t change. She was a psychic, she’d heard worse. But this was different. This was her husband’s voice, calmly narrating another man’s illicit daydream.
“Bucky Barnes. The safe house in Helsinki after the Skrull infiltrator chase. Damp concrete, a single bulb. He told me he’d replayed the fight in his head, the way you used the narrow corridors, bouncing off walls he’d have to plow through. In the fantasy, you’re both still buzzing from the fight, adrenaline with nowhere to go. He’s checking your wounds. You’re checking his. It turns from clinical to something else. The fantasy is about the quiet after combat. No words. Just the sound of the Hydra-suppressed heater clicking on, and the rustle of tactical gear being removed, piece by piece. It’s about his flesh hand discovering the strength in your back, and your hands tracing the scars on his metal arm. He said it would be a reclaiming. Of touch. Of silence. Of a moment that wasn’t about violence, but used its language.”
Kurt made a small, pained sound. Scott continued, relentless.
“Steve Rogers. The main meeting room at Avengers Tower. At night. The city lights through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He said it was about contrast. The grand, formal room—the table where they decide the fate of worlds—and the complete informality of it happening there. He imagined it after a long, frustrating strategy session. Everyone’s gone. You’re both too wired to sleep. He’s white-knuckling the back of a chair. You’re perched on the edge of the conference table, swinging your legs. An argument about tactics turns into something else. The fantasy is about you, in that setting of ultimate responsibility, making him forget duty for an hour. He described the cold, polished table against your skin. The way the reflective surface would show the skyline, and the two of you, a living blur against the static lights of the city. He said it was about ‘feeling present.’ Not a symbol. Just a man.”
“Johnny Storm. Reed’s lab in the Baxter Building. The one with the ionic containment spheres.” Scott’s head tilted slightly. “It’s about the danger. The illegality of it. The thrill of possibly getting caught by Reed or Sue. He imagines showing you some new unstable molecule, standing too close in the glow of the spectroscope. A joke about ‘thermal reactions.’ His hands would be warm. The fantasy is all sensation. The hum of the lab equipment. The chill of a stainless steel table. The contrast of his heat and the cool surface. He described the faint smell of ozone from his skin mixing with the clean, sharp scent of your web-fluid. It’s playful, in his head. Less about emotion, more about the exhilaration of the secret, the sheer fun of it. He said he’d make you laugh the whole time.”
“Namor. A beach at sunset on a private atoll. No technology. No civilization. Just the two of you and the ocean. It’s… primal. Possessive. He described the salt on your skin, the way the dying light would catch the water droplets on your shoulders. In the fantasy, it’s not gentle. It’s a contest. A claiming. The ocean itself is part of it—waves crashing, the pull of the tide. He told me he’d want to see if you could match the ocean’s rhythm. It’s about raw power meeting adaptable, resilient strength. He called it ‘an assessment of genetic compatibility through direct, physical trial.’ He was completely serious.”
Jean’s knuckles were white. The air around her shimmered, a barely-contained corona of psychic energy.
“Matt Murdock. A fight. It always starts with a fight. A warehouse, maybe. Or a rooftop. Trading blows that are a little too precise, a little too personal. He said he can hear the shift in your heartbeat, the change in your breath when the focus changes from defeating to… something else. In the fantasy, a grapple doesn’t end with a throw. It ends with a hold. Your spider-sense and his radar sense creating a feedback loop of hyper-awareness—every shift of muscle, every quickened pulse. He described the texture of your suit under his fingers, the exact sound of the zipper coming down. It’s about tension snapping. Combat melting into a different, more intimate kind of struggle. He said it would be the quietest thing he’s ever experienced, and the loudest.”
“Gambit. A card game. His place. Low stakes at first. Then the stakes change. A piece of clothing for every lost hand. He described the atmosphere in detail. The low jazz, the smell of beignets and bourbon. The way the charged cards would make the air taste of ozone. It’s a game of wit and luck, and he fantasizes about you being good. Very good. Taking off his jacket, his shirt. But he loses a few on purpose, too. To see you think, to see you strategize about what to remove. The fantasy is about the slow reveal, the conversation that turns from playful to charged, the anticipation drawn out over an hour. He said the moment the last piece is gone, the game changes again. But the playfulness never does.”
“Black Bolt. The throne room in Attilan. Silent, vast, lit by the eerie glow of the Terrigen crystals. He didn’t speak it, of course. He showed me. A mental projection, stark and symbolic. You, in that immense space, not looking small. Looking like an addition that makes the scale make sense. The fantasy is about absolute power choosing to be silent. About a king, who can level cities with a whisper, using every ounce of his control not to make a sound for an entirely different reason. It’s about the reverence of touch. The crushing weight of his attention focused into a single, silent point. It was the most intense one. Because it had no sound. Only feeling. And in the vision he sent, you weren’t overwhelmed. You were the anchor.”
Scott stopped. The recitation hung in the air, a gallery of illicit portraits.
“And you?” Jean’s voice was scraped raw. “Your fantasy, Scott. Don’t you dare leave it out.”
Scott swallowed. For the first time, his voice lost its clinical edge. It softened, revealing the ache beneath.
“Mine isn’t in a throne room or a lab or a closet,” he said. “It’s in the morning. In a room that’s just a room. Sunlight through a normal window. The fantasy is about the quiet after. Not the adrenaline, not the conquest, not the game. The calm.”
He shifted his weight, a rare nervous gesture.
“You’re asleep. Or pretending to be. Your hair is a mess on a pillow that isn’t tactical gear. I can see the faint dusting of freckles across your shoulders that your suit usually covers. There’s a cup of coffee cooling on a nightstand. The fantasy is about my hand on the bare skin of your back, feeling the rhythm of your breathing, slower now. It’s about the complete and utter lack of crisis. No comms buzzing. No alarms. Just the sound of your breath, and the distant sound of a city that, for once, doesn’t need us.”
His voice dropped to a near whisper.
“The fantasy is about you turning over, still mostly asleep, and tucking your head under my chin. Not because I’m Cyclops. Not because I’m a leader. But because I’m warm, and I’m there. And for that one, silent, sunlit hour, I’m not responsible for anything else in the world. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”
The difference was devastating. The others had fantasized about moments of intensity, of possession, of passion. Scott’s fantasy was about peace. It was, in its own way, infinitely more intimate.
Jean stared at him. The fury in her eyes fractured, revealing a deep, bottomless hurt. She had fought aliens, gods, cosmic entities. This, she had no defense against.
In that moment, the muted monitors lit up again. Not with the male heroes, but with a spliced-together feed of the women’s reactions from across the network.
Natasha Romanoff’s face was a mask of cold disgust. “They reduced her to a set of locations. A scenario. A conquest in their favorite setting. It’s not admiration. It’s mental blueprinting.”
Carol Danvers shook her head, her glow flickering with anger. “Sam’s was bad. Steve’s is somehow worse. The conference table? He turns her into a rebellion against his own icon status. That’s not flattering. That’s selfish.”
On another screen, Ororo Munroe’s eyes crackled with contained storm. “Namor’s is predictable. Barbaric. He sees a remarkable young woman and thinks only of heritability and dominance.”
Kitty Pryde looked ill. “Johnny’s is just… juvenile. But Gambit’s? The game? It turns intimacy into a transaction. A trick. It’s vile.”
The most devastating reaction was Susan Storm’s. She looked directly into her feed, her voice quiet but clear, aimed at the absent men. “You all looked at someone’s brilliant, brave, kind-hearted daughter, sister, friend… and you saw a set of props for your own psychological theater. You should be ashamed.”
The words echoed in the silent War Room.
Jean finally stood up. The psychic corona winked out, replaced by a terrible, still emptiness. She looked at Scott, not as her husband, not as the man she loved, but as the source of a poison that had just been dumped into the water table of their entire world.
“The serum should be wearing off soon,” she said, her voice flat. “You’ll be left with the memories. With the knowledge of what you’ve done. You’ve broken trust with every one of those men. You’ve violated her privacy in a way none of their fantasies ever did, because you made them real by speaking them aloud. And you’ve shown me that the man I loved is capable of a cold, detailed cruelty I never imagined.”
She walked to the door.
“Jean,” Scott said, the first hint of his own horror seeping into his tone as the serum’s effects began to ebb.
She didn’t turn.
“The fallout isn’t yours to manage anymore, Scott. It’s hers. Peta’s.” Jean opened the door. “And God help anyone who gets in her way when she finds out.”
Jean left. The door closed with a soft, final hiss.
Kurt looked at Scott, his yellow eyes wide with pity and shock. The monitors showed the female heroes already mobilizing, talking in hushed, urgent tones.
Scott Summers slowly sank into the chair Jean had vacated. The weight of his actions, no longer buoyed by the serum, crashed down upon him with the force of a collapsing star. He had mapped the secret desires of the world’s greatest heroes, and in doing so, he had not just exposed them.
He had declared war on the very idea of trust.
And somewhere, completely unaware, Peta Parker was swinging through the cool night air of Queens, heading home after a long patrol, about to walk into a storm she didn’t see coming.