Chapter 2: After the Storm
The key turned in the lock with a sound like a bone breaking. Sen didn’t look up from his desk. He’d been staring at the same paragraph on atmospheric pressure gradients for forty-three minutes. The neon from outside was a migraine.
“I figured you’d have changed the locks.”
Her voice was a raw scrape in the silent room. He finally turned.
Wanda stood just inside the closed door, leaning against it as if it were the only thing holding her up. She looked like she’d been dragged through a sewer and then baked in a desert. Her hair was a matted dark halo, her clothes—some generic, dark sweats she hadn’t left in—were stained and torn. But her eyes were the worst. They weren’t blazing with power or clouded with grief. They were just… exhausted. Hollowed out.
“Where would I get a new lock?” Sen said, his own voice flat. “Campus maintenance? ‘Hey, need something to keep out a witch who can walk through walls.’” He swiveled his chair back to the desk, a useless dismissal. His heart was slamming against his ribs.
He heard the soft shuffle of her boots, then the creak of his roommate’s empty bunk as she sat. The room smelled of her now—cordite, sweat, and that weird, ozone-crackle of her magic, gone stale.
“They got away,” she said to the quiet. “Steve. Sam. Most of us. Not all.”
“I watched the news. I saw them carry Rhodey out.”
A thick silence followed. The hum of the mini-fridge was absurdly loud.
“I’m in a floating prison now,” she continued, as if listing groceries. “Or I was. Until Steve came. Now I am… here.”
“Why?” The word burst out of him. He spun to face her again. “Why come here? To gloat? To check if your little mind-game worked?” He touched his own lips, a gesture he instantly regretted.
She blinked, some life filtering back into her gaze. She studied him—the defensive hunch of his shoulders, the way he couldn’t hold her eyes. A ghost of something crossed her face. Not a smile. Something sadder and more knowing.
“Was it?” she asked quietly.
“Was it what?”
“Your first kiss.”
He felt his entire face burn. He looked away, at the singed corner of the Wakanda map on his wall. “That’s what you want to talk about? Now?”
“It is a simple question.”
“It’s a stupid question.”
“So it was.”
“Shut up.” There was no heat in it. He was deflating, the anger bleeding out replaced by a bewildered ache. He’d replayed that moment in the terminal a thousand times. The shock of it. The terrifying, unwanted thrill. The profound loneliness that followed when the red mist cleared and he was left alone with the taste of her and the screaming of sirens.
“I am sorry,” she said. The apology hung in the cheap air, so simple it felt like a trap.
“For which part? For the kiss, or for trying to fold me into a metal wall?”
“For hurting you.” She stood up, moving with a weary grace. She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the fine lines of dirt etched into her neck, the flutter of her pulse. “I did not want to hurt you. Not really. I was… angry. At the situation. You were just there.”
“A casualty of circumstance. Great.”
“And I am sorry you signed their papers,” she added, her gaze dropping to his hands. “I am sorry you felt you had to.”
He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “You’re sorry I made a choice you didn’t like. There’s a difference.” He looked up at her. “Why did you come back, Wanda?”
Her green eyes searched his face, as if the answer were written there. “I do not know where else to go.”
The raw honesty of it disarmed him completely. All his reasoned arguments, his principles about accountability and structure, they melted like wax in the face of that confession. She was a fugitive, a weapon of mass destruction, a haunted woman standing in his dirty laundry.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the torn fabric at her elbow. A tentative point of contact. “You smell like a battlefield.”
“I feel like one.”
His hand slid up her arm, over the curve of her shoulder, coming to rest against the side of her neck. His thumb brushed her jawline. He felt her tense, then a shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with cold. Her eyes drifted shut for a second.
“I am sorry too,” he whispered. “For choosing the side that wanted to lock you up.”
When her eyes opened, they were wet. “You were trying to be good.”
“So were you.”
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against her stomach. He just needed to not see for a moment. To feel something solid. She went very still, then her hands came up, fingers threading hesitantly into his black hair. The touch was electric, grounding and terrifying all at once.
“Sen,” she murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
He pulled back, tilting his head up. Her expression was unreadable, a mixture of tenderness and a deep, calculated need. With slow, deliberate movements, her eyes never leaving his, she gathered the hem of her stained sweatshirt. She pulled it up and over her head in one fluid motion, letting it drop to the floor with a soft thud.
She stood before him in just a simple, dark bra. The pale skin of her stomach and shoulders was mapped with faint, silvery scars—old, thin things that spoke of laboratories and shrapnel. The curve of her breasts, the dip of her collarbones, were lit in the garish neon alternation. She was all stark lines and vulnerability and fierce, challenging beauty.
“Make it up to me,” she said, her voice low.
His brain short-circuited. All the air left the room. His mouth was desert-dry. “I… what?”
“You said you were sorry.” A faint, real smirk touched her lips. “Show me.”
“Wanda, I…” He swallowed. “I’ve never… I mean, not with…”
“I know.” Her smirk softened. She took his wrists, his hands so much larger than hers, and guided them. She placed his palms flat against the warm skin of her waist. His thumbs rested just under the swell of her breasts. He could feel her breathing, could feel the rapid, bird-like flutter of her heart beneath his right hand. “It is okay. Just touch me.”
His first touch was pure clinical terror. Fingers splayed, stiff, like he was handling a volatile artifact. He was a meteorologist. He understood pressure systems, vorticity, the flow of invisible forces. This was a different kind of turbulence entirely, one that made his own internal weather go haywire.
He moved his hands upward, an inch. His thumbs brushed the lower curve of her breasts through the fabric. She inhaled sharply, a tiny, hitched sound. Encouraged, he grew bolder, his touch firming. He traced the shape of her, learning the weight, the incredible softness over firm muscle. His own arousal was a sudden, acute pressure, unfamiliar and overwhelming.
He found the front clasp of her bra. He fumbled with it, fingers clumsy. She didn’t help, just watched him struggle with a dark, amused patience. The clasp gave. The fabric loosened.
He pushed the straps down her shoulders. She let it fall.
For a moment, he just looked. The pink and blue light played over her skin, painting her in otherworldly hues. She was more real than anything he’d ever seen. The scars, the power, the devastating history—it was all right there. He wasn't thinking about the Accords, or the airport, or right and wrong. He was thinking about warmth, and softness, and the terrifying privilege of being allowed to see her like this.
He bent his head and kissed the hollow of her throat. Then the curve of her shoulder. His hands finally, properly, cupped her breasts. She made a low noise in the back of her throat, her own hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders, her nails biting through his t-shirt.
He touched her with a reverent hunger, his thumbs circling her nipples, feeling them peak under his attention. She arched into his hands, a silent plea for more.
When he finally found his voice again, it was ragged. “You know I’m nineteen, right?”
She laughed, a genuine, surprised sound that vibrated against his lips. “I am aware.” She tilted his head up to look at her. “Does it bother you?”
“No.” The answer came instantly, honestly. “Does it… bother you?”
A shadow flickered in her eyes, something old and complicated. “When I was nineteen, I was in a cage, being experimented on by men who saw a tool, not a person.” She leaned down, her lips a breath from his. “You see me. The number does not matter.”
She kissed him. It was nothing like the terminal. That had been a statement. This was an exploration, slow and deep and tasting of dust and desperation and a shared, hungry loneliness. He kissed her back, his hands still on her skin, anchoring them both.
The world outside—the Accords, the raft, the divided Avengers—it all shrunk to the size of this dim, messy room. For now, it was the only jurisdiction that mattered.
The kiss broke, leaving them both breathing hard in the neon-striped dark. Her hands slid from his shoulders down his chest, fingers tracing the tense lines of his stomach through the thin cotton. A nervous, exhilarating energy crackled between them, thicker than the ozone from her magic.
“You think too much,” she whispered against his mouth, her voice husky. Her fingers found the waistband of his jeans, tracing the line of it. “All those rules in your head. All that pressure.”
“I’m trying not to,” he managed, his own hands still memorizing the shape of her ribs, the incredible softness of her skin. His erection strained painfully against his zipper, a blunt, demanding fact.
“Good.” Her smirk was a predatory thing in the shifting light. She pushed him gently, and he stumbled back to sit on the edge of his rumpled bed. The springs groaned under him. She stood over him, a pale, scarred goddess in the artificial twilight, looking down at him with those bottomless green eyes. “Now just feel.”
She knelt on the worn carpet between his knees. The position sent a jolt of pure, hot anticipation through him. He could only watch, mesmerized, as her deft fingers found the button of his jeans, then the zipper. The metallic rasp was obscenely loud. She tugged the denim and his boxers down just enough to free him.
His cock sprang out, hard and flushed and utterly exposed to the cool air and her unwavering gaze. He was painfully, obviously inexperienced, but the raw hunger on her face wasn’t mocking. It was ravenous.
“Fuck, Wanda…” he breathed, the swear word feeling foreign and necessary.
“Shh.” She wrapped one hand around the base of him, her grip firm and knowing. The other hand cupped her own breast, lifting it. She leaned forward, guiding the head of his cock between the warm, impossibly soft swell of her breasts. Her skin was so smooth, so hot.
She pressed them together, trapping him in that slick, heavenly valley. A low groan was torn from his throat. The sensation was unreal—softness and pressure and her scent everywhere. She began to move, sliding him slowly between her tits, her eyes locked on his face, watching every flicker of overwhelming pleasure.
“You like that?” she murmured, a sheen of sweat now glistening on her chest.
“God, yes…” He couldn’t form a more coherent sentence. His hips twitched, seeking more friction.
She bent her head, her hair falling around them like a curtain. As she slid him upward, she met the tip with her mouth. Her lips parted, and she took just the swollen head past her lips, sucking gently while her breasts still cradled his shaft.
The wet, hot suction combined with the rhythmic pressure of her tits made his vision spark. It was filthy and perfect. Her tongue swirled around the tip, tasting the pre-cum already beading there. She moaned around him, the vibration traveling straight to his core.
“Tastes good,” she said, pulling off with a soft pop, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his glistening crown. She didn’t stop moving her breasts, the rhythm becoming more demanding. “You’re so hard for me. So eager.”
She leaned in again, sucking him deeper this time, taking more of his length into the warm, tight cave of her mouth while her hands worked her breasts around what she couldn’t take. The sounds were lewd, wet, and hungry. He tangled his hands in her hair, not forcing, just holding on as the world narrowed to this single, devastating point of sensation.
His back arched. A torrent of fractured words, curses and pleas, spilled from him. “Wanda… I’m gonna… fuck, I can’t…”
She pulled off, breathing heavily, a dark satisfaction in her eyes. A trail of her spit shone on his length. “Not yet,” she commanded, her voice rough.
She stood in one fluid motion, her breasts swaying with the movement. Her hands went to the waistband of her jeans. She let it down, pushing the stained fabric down over her hips. She let them pool around her ankles and stepped out of them, kicking them aside. Now she was completely naked, standing in the fractured neon light, more real and more terrifying than any hallucination her chaos magic could ever conjure.
Sen could only stare, his cock throbbing in the cool air, his mind a static blank of want.
“Stand up,” she said. It wasn’t a request.
He pushed himself up on shaky legs, fumbling to push his jeans and boxers further down his thighs. He was exposed, vulnerable, towering over her physically but feeling utterly mastered. She placed a hand on his chest, right over his racing heart, and pushed.
He sat back down on the bed’s edge.
“I said stand.” A thread of scarlet curled from her fingertips.
The magic coiled around his biceps, not painful but implacable. It was warm, with a texture like thickened air. It lifted him. His feet left the ground for a moment before she set him down firmly, holding him upright in the invisible, shimmering bonds. He was trapped standing before her, his arms held slightly away from his sides, completely at her mercy.
“Wanda, what are you—”
“Making it up to me,” she interrupted, her gaze dropping to his rigid cock. A hungry smile touched her lips. “My way.”
She stepped forward, closing the small space between them. The scent of her—sweat, sex, and power—filled his senses. She turned slightly, aligning her body with his. Then she pressed herself against his front, her thighs meeting parallel with his. She reached down between their bodies, her fingers wrapping around him again, guiding him.
The head of his cock met not her core, but the hot, slick skin of her inner thigh. She adjusted her stance, bringing her other leg close, trapping his length in the tight, wet channel formed by the meeting of her thighs. The space was snug, maddening, a breathtaking imitation.
“Oh, fuck,” he gasped, his head falling back.
She began to move. A slow, gliding rock of her hips. His shaft slid through that intimate, squeezing gap, the sensitive skin rubbing against the smooth, heated skin of her inner thighs, wet with her arousal and his own pre-cum. It was an agony of friction, a torturous promise of something more.
Her magic held him perfectly still. He couldn’t thrust, couldn’t buck, could only receive the sensation as she worked him. Her breath was hot against his neck, her own small noises of pleasure puffing against his skin.
“You feel that?” she whispered, her voice a dark caress. “That’s for choosing the wrong side. That’s for trying to be a good little soldier.” Her hips pistoned faster, the soft skin of her thighs gripping him like a velvet vise. The slick sounds were filthy, obscene.
He was drowning in it. The dual sensations—the physical, mind-blowing friction and the psychic weight of her magic holding him captive—unmade him. He was a collection of raw nerve endings, a storm held perfectly in check. Every glide brought him closer to the edge.
“Wanda… please, I can’t… I’m gonna come…”
“No, you’re not.” Her command was absolute. The crimson bands around his arms tightened a fraction, a reminder of her control. “Not until I say.”
She changed the angle, grinding against him, letting his cock rub firmly against the very base of her own sex with each pass. He could feel her swollen lips, the heat radiating from her core, so close and yet deliberately denied. It was exquisite punishment.
“You kissed me in that terminal like you wanted to own me,” she hissed, her movements becoming sharper, more rhythmic. “Now you know how it feels.”
Tears of frustration and overwhelming pleasure pricked at his eyes. His entire body was a tensed bowstring. The pressure built, a screaming tide threatening to break. He gritted his teeth, a strained whine escaping him.
She felt the desperate tension in him, the way his trapped muscles quivered. She slowed, then stopped, leaving him buried in that hot, wet cleft, throbbing and on the precipice.
She held him there, utterly still, his body vibrating with unsheathed need. Her breath was hot on his ear, her own pulse hammering against his trapped arm. “See?” she whispered. “Control is a choice.”
He couldn’t speak, could only gasp ragged swallows of air that smelled of her skin and cheap detergent. A violent shudder racked his frame, a tremor of pure, desperate tension. The pressure was a white-hot coil in his gut, pulled taut.
“Now,” she commanded, her voice dropping to a guttural rasp.
She began moving again, a swift, ruthless piston of her hips. The slick, frantic friction was too much. The coil snapped.
“Fuck, Wanda, I’m—!”
It wasn’t a release; it was a seizure. His vision whited out as his hips jerked against her magical bonds in a pathetic, helpless spasm. His cock pulsed violently between her thighs, and he came with a choked, broken sound, stripes of hot cum painting her inner leg and the rumpled sheets below.
The sensation was immediately followed by a wave of crushing shame. He went limp in her telekinetic grip, eyes squeezed shut, unable to look at her. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I couldn’t—”
“Stop talking.”
Her voice was flat, devoid of the heat from moments before. It was the voice from the airport tarmac. Cold.
He forced his eyes open. She was looking down at the mess on her thigh, her expression unreadable. Disappointment radiated from her like a chill. With a flick of her wrist, the scarlet bands around his arms vanished. He stumbled, catching himself on the bedframe, his legs weak.
She ignored him, stepping back. Her hand glowed with that same crimson energy. She passed it over her thigh, and the pearly fluid there shimmered, lifted from her skin, and hung in the air in a quivering, grotesque orb. It spun lazily, captured by her power.
“All that,” she said quietly, gazing at the suspended cum, “and nothing where it matters.”
Before he could muster a word of apology, she moved. It was a blur of pale limbs and controlled fury. She shoved him backward onto the mattress. He landed with a grunt, his still-hard, oversensitive cock jutting up from his body, glistening and wet. She crawled over him, a predator claiming its ground, her knees pinning his hips to the bed.
“Wanda, wait, I—”
She silenced him by seizing his wrists in her hands, slamming them down onto the pillow above his head. Her strength was enhanced, impossible to break. She didn’t need magic for this; just the ruthless leverage of her body and will. He was pinned, utterly helpless beneath her.
With her other hand, she reached between her own legs. He watched, hypnotized, as her fingers parted herself, glistening with arousal. She positioned herself above him, her green eyes locking onto his with an icy intensity. She guided him inside.
The sensation was overwhelming. Wet, blazing heat engulfed him, a tight, gripping sheath that made his already-spent body arch off the bed. She took him in slowly, inch by devastating inch, a low hiss escaping her lips as she sank down onto him, filling herself completely.
“There,” she breathed, her voice trembling now with a different kind of need. “Now you’re where you belong.”
She began to move. Not with tenderness, but with a relentless, driving rhythm. Her thighs, strong from a life of combat and survival, clamped around his hips. She crossed her ankles at the small of his back, locking him in a vise-like grip, taking all control of the pace.
He was a tool. A receptacle. She used him with a single-minded focus, riding him with hard, deep strokes that stole the breath from his lungs. Each descent was a punishment and a promise, the slap of skin on skin loud in the quiet room.
Her breasts swayed above him, marked with faint red lines from his earlier frantic touches. Her face was a mask of concentrated effort, her lips parted, her brow furrowed. She was chasing something, working some frustration out through the brutal joining of their bodies.
“You think your little piece of paper means anything?” she grunted, driving down onto him, squeezing him internally with a fierce, muscular clench. “You think their rules can hold me? Can hold this?”
He could only groan, a mix of overstimulation and a raw, building arousal that was reigniting despite his shame. Her wetness coated him, the sounds filthy and obscene. She owned this, owned him, and the terrifying part was the part of him that wanted to be owned.
She leaned forward, her hair forming a sweaty curtain around their faces, her pace never faltering. Her mouth found his, not in a kiss, but in a shared, gasping exhalation. “Come inside me,” she demanded against his lips, her voice a raw command. “You don’t get to finish on the sheets. You finish in me. Now.”
The words, the possession, the punishing rhythm of her hips—it detonated the second climax he didn’t know he had in him. It was deeper, more wrenching than the first. A wave of pure, submissive release.
He cried out, a strangled sound, as his body convulsed under hers. He pulsed inside her, deep, his orgasm torn from him by her will and her relentless motion. She rode him through every spasm, milking him, her own movements becoming jagged and frantic until she finally shuddered, a sharp, silent cry on her lips as she collapsed onto his chest.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant hum of the city. The neon continued its silent cycle across their tangled, sweaty bodies. Sen’s arms were free now, but he didn’t move them. He kept them around her, feeling the frantic beat of her heart against his. He was still inside her, softening, anchored.
Her face was buried in the crook of his neck. He felt, more than heard, the damp heat of a single, stifled sob against his skin.
It wasn't about the sex. It was about the airport, the raft, the cage, the loss. It was about two people with too much power and too many broken pieces, trying to fit the sharp edges together in the only way they knew how.
He held her, and she let him. Outside, a siren wailed, fading into the distance. The world with its Accords and its battles was still there, waiting. But for now, in this small, messy room, there was only this silent, shattered truce written in sweat and surrender.