Avengers Verses Xmen? Not Quite

The bar is dank, dirty, a testament to the lack of regulations and health inspectors in this part of the great white north that it’s still open. The kind of place, where, if you looked at the lives of the man currently sitting by the bar, and the man just coming through the door, you would expect the two of them to meet. The one by the bar, hand curled around an ancient tumbler, mouth tasting of cheap whiskey, his dark hair wet and speckled with as yet not-melted snowflakes.
He doesn’t look up as the hefty weight of another settles beside his elbow.
“Drowning your sorrows, pretty boy?”
Grant’s head snaps up, his eyes going wide at the man beside him. And what a man he is, draped in wild furs that only add more bulk to what clearly an impressive frame of muscle, and Grant’s eyes travel up, up, up, to the man’s face. Chiseled chin, golden eyes that flicker in the dim light of the bar, a smile pulled wide over sharp fangs. The smile grows at Grant stares up at him, and he feels a strange twist in his belly, fights the urge to sink off the chair and to his knees.
“Looking for them, sir.”
It slips out, but the man’s eyes lit up, and Grant finds himself smiling back. There’s a darkness in those eyes, more than Garrett’s ever had, more enticing than Skye’s jaded hope. The smile on the man’s face matches his, despite fangs and all. He rapidly slaps a bill down on the counter, never mind that he hasn’t finished his drink, and the man’s arm curls around his waist in a possessive hold as they make rapidly for the door.
They’re barely in the parking lot before Grant’s being shoved back against the wall, his wrists caught between firm hands, his back arched up so their chests meet, and then the man is kissing him, hard, and he tastes like beer and woodsmoke and blood, and Grant is groaning up into the kiss, and it’s better than anything else, and the man smirks when he pulls away. Grant’s breathless, but the man just tugs on his wrists, and says, “come on. My place isn’t far.”
He tries to gather his senses as he’s lead through the thickly falling snow.
“What’s your name?”
“Victor,” comes the grunt of a reply, and Victor turns his head down, his great mane of blond hair turning white under the snowfall, eyes piercing as they look at Grant. And he can see now that they’re not just odd coloured, or shaped by the bad lighting in the bar, they’re golden, and look like a cat’s, with the strange pupils, and he wants to ask if it’s the same thing as Skye and Cal, but he doesn’t. “You, pretty boy?”
“Grant.”
Victor traces a hand along his cheek, and he can feel the pricking of a sharp claw over his lips, and his eyes try to track the finger, but Victor is chuckling and his attention keeps getting pulled back to those wild gold eyes. “Nice name. Gonna make you scream mine later.”
He bites back a whimper of want.
“Ooh,” Victor leans in, and they’ve stopped walking, but Grant’s too distracted to ask if they should keep going. He hardly feels the snow or the cold, only the press of Victor’s warm body against his, and the tightness of his jeans, and Victor’s hand cupping him, pressing back against his groin. “You like that, do you, pretty boy? You want something dirty and rough, don’t you? Want me to make you mine.”
“Yes.”
It comes out in a breathless huff, and Victor gives his erection another squeeze through his jeans, and then is pulling away, and there’s motel behind him, as dingy looking at the bar had been, and they stumble through the snowstorm to the door.

“You know you’re allowed to leave, Wanda?”
She looks up, eyes going wild with startled fear, her hand coming away from the glass of the window. Rodney is there, and that she hadn’t heard him coming up behind her is a testament to how used to the others she’s become. When the team first began training, she couldn’t avoid hearing the encroaching pressure of their thoughts. She’s so attuned to them now that they can come up to her without her connecting that they are coming towards her.
“I’m sorry,” she asks him, frowning at the question. “I don’t understand. I know I am not a prisoner.”
He chuckles, and it’s dry, and shakes his head. "No, but you’re also not stuck here because you signed on as an Avenger. You and Vision, you’re the only two who never leave. You should go on a shopping trip, hit up the sights in New York, go stay with Tony in the Tower for a week.”
She frowns still, and Rodney claps her on the shoulder with a squeeze of his broad hands, and leaves her with a flick of, “just consider it,” over his shoulder.
And three days later she is standing in front of the Stark Tower, having left her bags in the guest room assigned to her by a gleeful Tony, and grips the shawl around her shoulders with a tight squeeze, and looks down at the map provided on her phone. She hurries along the busy streets, ducking her way through the crowds with the practice of having pickpocketed her way through market days in the square back home, and tries not to glance at her phone too often.
The path along the river brings gentle quiet, interrupted in spots by the laughter of kayakers out on the water, or cheers of running children, or the harsh barking of dogs. Wanda leans against the railing, looking out across the smelly water to the other half of the city, and smiles. She pulls her phone out of her pocket, starts texting to Rodney about how good of an idea this was, when a voice from behind says, “well, well, well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
She spins around, feels her phone slip from her hands and crash to the water below, and she’s too busy staring at the men leaning over her to stop it. Her breath is coming hard and quick her her lungs, and there’s red flaring around her fingertips, and the blond monstrosity chuckles darkly when the other one, slimmer and shorter and with hair as dark as the smile on his face, smirks.
“Come now, Miss Maximoff, surely you knew Hydra would come after you at some point. You really can’t believe we’d let you get away, now did you.”
And it’s the same voice that spoke the first words, and her eyes shift from brown to red, and she may have her back to the cold metal railing, and they’re stepping in closer, but when she jerks her fingers, they still, and the red light of her power flashes around her in a circle. “I will not,” she puts venom in her voice, lets the anger of it all wash over her, spill out through her lips as she directs the words to man who had spoken. “Go back to those monsters.”
And everything she’d been startled into fearing when she had heard those first words comes real when his face lits up, and his eyes have slipped from dark to insane, and she feels the bubble of his ravenous thoughts about her, like the darkness spilling out from his body. “Oh, but you will. You’re ours, and you’re going to do what we say.”
The other man, so tall she would fear him even on his own, without the situation with the other to compound it, has gone very, very still, and there’s a block around his mind that she can’t read past, a wall of instinct and growls and thoughts that are older than she is, twisted memories that form a shield around the truth of his mind. But when the dark man makes to grab her, actually gets his hand around her upper arm and tugs, the blond steps forward, yanks him by the scruff of his neck back, and goes further away than they had started.
“No,” he says, in a harsh tone that fills the space around them. “Change of plans, Grant.”
The smaller man is squirming in his arms, and trying to reach for the bulge of his gun at his waist, and his hand gets slapped away from it like an errant child. “But she’s ours,” and though his words are so close to a pathetic whine, his lips curl around the last one, as his eyes settle on hers, all dark and claiming, raking over her body as if he can see through her clothes and likes what is there. She makes herself closer off from the possessive curl of his thoughts, for there’s a terrible darkness in there, one she can’t bare to touch again. “Ours, Victor, think of all that we ca-”
The blond throws the other away, across the pavement, and the man hits the side of the boat house with a dull crack of bricks, and goes still.
He turns his eyes on her, and though the line of gold across his pupils is dark, he does not make a step towards her, or raise a clawed hand. Instead, he slouches, bending his knees until they are looking eye to eye, and he’s no taller than she is, and he curls his fingers in front of him like an invitation. “I’m sorry,” his words are a deep rumble in the early morning air. “This is not how I wanted to find you.”
She bits her lip, and lets the red light flow around her as she reaches for his hand, letting it curl around his mind. As her fingers touch his, the wall she had felt slips, and she can see him. See the curl of thoughts, the jumbled mess of instinct and pride, the way he can smell the air and the city and her, and she sighs, softly, her eyes gleaming with tears. She can feel the bond, tethering the blond to the unconscious man, and the protective curl of his thoughts towards both of them, and how true his regret it.
“You have done nothing,” and she feels more than hears the intake of breath, the pleasure that washes over his mind at her words, “you did not think was right at the time.”
There is a still soft moment, before his hands cup around her fingers, and she steps in towards him, and his hand wraps gently around her waist, leaving her plenty of space to run, even as she curls in against his touch.
“No,” she feels the heavy muscle of his chest as she leans her head against it, and the weight of his arms around her, and it’s safe, and warm, and comforting, blowing away all the remains of her fear. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to make up for.”

She lies across the couch, knees tucked up against her body, curled under the thick blanket of furs, her head in Victor’s laps. His claws scratch lightly against her scalp as he runs his hands through her hair, his touch ever gentle, ever soft. She’s seen the memories, flitting across his thoughts, of how rough he was with Grant, how cruel, but she knows it was nothing the man did not himself want, and she feels safe in Victor’s arms, like she has not since Pietro died.
There is a knock at the door, and they both lift their heads in unison to see Coulson stepping in, Doctor Streiten behind him.
“It’s done,” the doctor says, and there’s a weight lifting off of Wanda’s chest, and she gives a gentle smile. “He’ll be unconscious for a few more hours, but the process is complete.”
Victor’s hand lifts her chin, and she moves into his lap, wrapping her arms around him, uncaring that Coulson is staring at her in disbelief. “It’s over, Wanda. It’s done.” Victor’s words settle in her mind, and she lets him brush tears from her cheeks, and there’s a wetness on his face too, and she ignores it for burying her face against his shoulder, the smell of woodsmoke strong from his hair, and cries.
“It’s for the best,” he says in her ear, as his nose nuzzles at her hair, and she only hiccups, and lets more tears fall onto his shoulder.
“He won’t remember us.”
“It’s okay, sweet one. He’s still ours. And we protect what is ours.”
“Even if he has be someone new?”
“Even then. Even then.”