When Wanda first immigrated, well, fled, she had no clue what to do or where she was going half the time. Her father spoke several languages so she knew English of course, as did her twin Pietro, but it was completely different than the English spoken in America and people liked to point it out. She had found her solace in writing and she wrote in whatever language she felt like. In those early years she learned two new languages, both taught to her by her father. At first he had been excited about her interest and more than happy to teach her but as time went on he became worried. Pietro had no problems making friends; he was always the more outgoing of the two, but she remained stuck.
Then one day she was in the library mumbling to herself in her native tongue- Slovak- when someone told her to go back to her own country. She had a number of responses on the tip of her tongue but someone else interrupted in a language she didn’t understand. “You too,” the person had snapped, glaring at a short guy with long, braided black hair.
He tilted his chin up in defiance, eyes bright with anger, “oh, I am in my country. But I figured if we were speaking the language of Americans everyone would know Cherokee,” he says harshly. The person had paled just a little and walked fast in the opposite direction, clearly embarrassed. That was the start of a beautiful relationship with one Steve Rogers, who was outspoken on every social issue he could get his hands on and he wasn’t afraid to yell about it either. Wanda appreciated his bravery because it was something she lacked most days. Her father loved him but then he was loud and abrasive too so they had a lot in common.
Steve wrote as well, usually involving something off the long list of social issues that he was invested in, and that was how she got into poetry. Counter culture had never really held interest to her mostly because she was certain she wouldn’t fit in there either. But when Steve introduced her to his friends they were all a little different too and they all had hell to pay for it in their own ways. Rhodey was a black man in a predominantly white neighborhood, his boyfriend Tony spent most of his life playing girl until he figured out why, exactly, he didn’t think he was like other girls, Sam was in the same boat as Rhodey, Bucky was Jewish, and Peggy was bisexual. But it was the stunning red head with the slight Russian accent who called to Natalie, Natasha, and Natalia that caught her attention and not just because she was the prettiest person Wanda had ever seen up until that point.
The first time she saw Natasha she was trying to wrestle Tony for some chip crumbs mostly unsuccessfully. To be fair she probably would have done just fine if Clint hadn’t come along, discovered the crumbs, and walked off with them. He remained completely oblivious to the fight occurring behind him due to his being deaf and by the time Tony and Natasha noticed Clint had already tipped the bowl up and eaten the crumbs. Wanda snickered at the devastated look Natasha and Tony had shared before the two went back to fighting with each other over who was going to kick Clint’s ass. Natasha ends up winning the battle, sitting on Tony while he flailed his limbs underneath of her complaining about being crushed. Natasha wiggled around a little for good measure and Tony continued to whine and cry about it.
*
Her father had always been pretty light on rules, probably because he hated them, so when she tells him that she’s going to a protest with a friend he doesn’t care- at least not about the protest bit. “A friend?” he asks, looking surprised. She’d be offended if the surprise wasn’t so warranted.
“Yeah, Steve, did I not mention him?” she asks. She was certain she mentioned him to someone and there weren’t exactly a large amount of options considering she had no friends outside Steve’s friend group.
“To me, yeah. Is he cute?” Pietro asks from the doorway to the kitchen, grinning.
“I suppose he’s cute. He has nice hair,” she says. She wasn’t particularly fond of men in the sexuality department though every once and while one would attract her. It was girls that she found attractive and when most of the guys her age were either pretending they were in a gangster film or a pretentious art film she figured she was entitled to finding women genuinely more compelling and attractive. And she found that they actually listened to her opinions and thoughts rather than trying to explain how she felt back to her as if she was blind to how her own emotions worked. Steve had informed her that that was ‘mansplaining’ and she found the term useful. Despite Steve’s being an active listener, though, she didn’t find him all that titillating. Objectively speaking he was plenty attractive with his tawny skin, high cheekbones, and warm brown eyes but he wasn’t her type. Plus she was fairly certain that he was at least half in love with Peggy.
Her comment about Steve’s hair earns her a laugh from her father, “Pietro, she’s a lesbian. Decide if you find the guy hot yourself,” he says, shocking Wanda. “What? Don’t look so surprised, you never have shown an interest in men. It isn’t difficult to figure out your into women when you practically dislocate your head from your shoulders to stare at women you find pretty. You should work on subtlety,” he tells her.
“I… well actually I’m more bisexual, I just have a preference for women. Men tend to be disgusting,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
“Hey, we aren’t that bad!” Pietro says, mock offended.
“Your friends think that sitting on each other’s faces and farting into their friends’ mouths is an acceptable form of entertainment,” she points out.
Pietro opens his mouth and then closes it, “you know what, you’ve got a point there. But us clean men aren’t that bad.”
“Good luck finding one of those,” her dad chimes in with a sharp grin, “because Pietro seems to have forgotten he was in on that farting action too.”
“See? Disgusting. At least when I am disgusting I keep it to myself,” she says. Pietro probably would have responded but Steve knocks at the door then, interrupting their argument. She goes over to the door and lets him in, ignoring Pietro when he buzzes to her side to get a good look at Steve.
“Hey, I’m Pietro,” he says, all but shoving her out of the way to do it.
She shakes her head and hip checks him out of the doorway, “that is my horn dog of a brother, ignore him,” she says to Steve, who raises an eyebrow in question.
“No, don’t ignore me,” Pietro says from behind Wanda.
Steve grins, “I’m sure we’ll meet another time,” he says, “but we better get going. God knows if Bucky’s beater of a car will even make it.”
“If you get arrested take note of the badge number!” her father calls after her, poking his head back into the kitchen to make sure she knew he was serious. She nods and takes off out the door, towards the car that looked pretty decrepit.
“Hey,” Bucky says to her when she climbs in the back with Steve, “I don’t know if we formally met. Anyways I’m Bucky, and this is my significant annoyance Sam,” he gestures to the guy beside him.
Sam looks offended, “excuse you? Who are you calling an annoyance, you’re the annoyance!” he says and they start bickering back and forth like their lives depended on it.
“Don’t mind them, this is just how they show love,” Steve tells her as Sam and Bucky delve into some truly creative insult swaps. She raises an eyebrow at him in question as Sam calls Bucky a ‘clitsquiggle’, whatever that was. Too be fair Bucky’s return insult was something like ‘shit stained asshole in a hat’ or at least that’s what Wanda thought she heard but sometimes English speakers spoke too fast and she lost words. Either way Bucky was very creative. “Everyone in the friend group shows love a little weird. Tony gives people tech, Nat sends memes, Bucky makes us some awesome Jewish foods, Sam and Rhodey give good advice, Peggy punches people for you, and Clint eats all your food,” he explains.
“And what you do?” she asks with a grin.
He grins back, “I invite people to protests.”
*
Wanda, in the interest in following her father’s advice, tries not to blatantly stare at Natasha but it was hard when she was hilarious and compassionate in addition to being attractive. Clint and Natasha play off one another though she has no clue what Clint is saying. He spoke only in sign language and everyone else seemed to know what was going on but her. Tony finally takes pity on her and starts translating, which leads to her laughing way too hard at Clint’s ridiculous jokes. After ten minutes of laughing so hard her stomach hurt she decides that she needs to learn sign language so she could get Clint’s jokes directly from the source.
Natasha is just as amusing though sometimes she speaks a bit fast or uses a piece of jargon or slang that Wanda doesn’t understand, but she picks up on most of the jokes regardless. But the time they finish their food and talking it’s dark outside and probably cold. Sweater season is in full swing and she was happy that she brought her jacket along despite being too warm earlier. She doesn’t intend on having someone walk her home- she grew up in a war torn area, dark allies weren’t exactly frightening to someone who has had to run screaming from bombs dropping- but when Natasha offers she sure as hell wasn’t saying no.
“Where are you from, exactly, your accent sound familiar but not, if that makes sense,” she says. Her head is tilted to the side and she doesn’t ask in a weird way like most people did.
“Slovakia. I miss it sometimes, the view was better before… you’ve seen the news,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. She still missed her home though- she wasn’t certain she could ever get comfortable in a country that never let her forget that she is foreign.
“Damnit, Clint was right. I thought Czech but he guessed Slovak so I guess I owe him ten dollars. I’ll get him a date with Coulson instead, have you met him yet? Watching the two pine after each other is painful,” Natasha tells her with a pleasant grin.
Wanda frowns, “isn’t Clint deaf? How could he judge my accent better than you? And no, I haven’t met a Coulson though I will be sure to watch Clint pine by stealing more food than normal and pretending its flirting.” It was an easy trait of Clint’s to pick up, his taking food from people he was more comfortable with. Natasha basically had to beat him off of her food but Tony mostly didn’t have to worry about Clint eating all his fries. She wondered about that but she supposed she’d learn with enough time around them all.
“He can see the way your mouth moves when you talk, he’s actually really good at guessing accents. I barely even have a Russian accent anymore and he knew right away. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks his method of flirting is subpar. Clearly he needs lessons from an expert,” Natasha says.
“And what would an expert do?” Wanda asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Offer to walk someone home,” Natasha tells her. Wanda turns bright red with a mix of flattery and embarrassment but the attention isn’t unwelcome.
*
She watches a group of teens clearly caught in their emo phase from across the coffee shop half amused because they were going to be embarrassed of their ‘roar means I love you in dinosaur’ shirts in a year and half impressed with their ability to make their hair that large. When she went through that phase she never did manage to learn how to get her hair to have so much volume. “Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort,” someone whispers into her ear and she turns to find Natasha grinning at her. She looks back to the teens and starts laughing at Natasha’s ridiculous joke.
“I remember those days. Steve thought he’d look good with one of those emo haircuts and we are glad he grew out his hair. He looked horrible,” Natasha tells her.
Wanda tries, and fails, to imagine Steve rocking an overgrown side bang and fails miserably. “When I was that age I had lavender hair,” she admits somewhat reluctantly.
“Tony was blonde and he somehow made his hair huge. Rhodey is a patient man, putting up with that shit until Tony realized he looked like a twat with bleached hair. You can bond with Clint over lavender though, purple is his favorite color so he spent a lot of his emo days with various shades of purple in his blonde.” Natasha looks greatly amused, spilling all of her friends’ secrets from their emo days and Wanda sort of wishes she had a group of friends to embarrass too. All she had was Pietro, who was still very embarrassing, but he knew all of her secrets too so she was stuck in a secrecy pact.
“And what embarrassing hairstyles came out of your emo days?” she asks.
Natasha ducks her head, “oh, I didn’t do the emo thing. Instead I went through a highly embarrassing Russian Mob Wife phase. There was a lot of fuzzy hats and regrets,” she says, looking as embarrassed as she sounded. Wanda throws back her head and laughs at the image of Natasha looking overly serious with a replica pelt wrapped around her head.
“Oh that makes me feel so much better about my embarrassing purple hair phase. At least I didn’t wear fur hats. Though I am curious if you adopted the mob wife persona too,” she says, leaning forward curiously.
“Oh god,” Natasha says, laying her head down on the table. “Lets not ever talk about my weird phases at fourteen ever again. It has been almost four years and I’m applying to college now, I’m mature. Or at least more mature than I was then. Too be fair that doesn’t really require much more maturing, I was pretty stupid.” She shudders at the memory of her youth and Wanda snorts.
“Can’t be worse than Steve’s emo bangs,” she says, earning a laugh from Natasha.
“They were so bad, seriously, Facebook stalk him sometime. And don’t tell him I told you about those pictures, he will fight me and it would be awkward for him to loose.” Natasha ends up looking up the pictures for her and the side bang was worse than she had anticipated. She laughs and Natasha goes through the rest of her friend group too, shaming them all properly until she accidentally hands over a picture of Tony with a truly atrocious outfit on that had her rocking a very furry white hat. After Wanda nearly spits out her coffee laughing at Natasha’s Russian mob wife fashion she figures it was time to stop embarrassing her friends.
“If you show anyone this I will hurt you, but this is by far the worst picture of me ever taken,” she says and hands over her phone. Natasha looks at the picture and starts giggle snorting at Wanda sporting badly faded purple hair, a Jack Skellington hat, and a very bad filter with the caption ‘misunderstood’.
“I no longer feel bad about my Russian mob wife phase when you actually walked around like this,” Natasha tells her, snickering.
“I still love that hat and you can’t shame me because I never looked like a bloody Q-Tip,” she says. Natasha looks deeply offended at the comment and smacks her arm from across the table.
“I did not look a bloody Q-Tip,” she mumbles, sulking. She scrolls back though her pictures, still scowling, “I lied, I do look like a fucking bloody Q-Tip. Props to Tony for being nice enough to never tell me that even though he was like the fashion police.”
“With that hair, and wearing that weird space aged crop top? He really needs to take a look at those laws because they are not strict enough.”
“To be fair he has kind of done that and he does way better with men’s fashion. Less room for space-aged errors,” Natasha says and Wanda laughs.
*
Tony squints at Peggy’s shoes, “that color?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“With the hair you had two years ago you have no place to judge Peggy’s shoes,” Wanda tells him.
He looks deeply offended, “who shoed you what I was doing when I was fourteen!”
“Not me,” Natasha says, looking away much like a guilty dog would.
“How dare!” Tony says and curiously he stops there. Everyone laughs so there was obviously some significance but it was lost on Wanda. All she heard was an incomplete sentence. She accepts that it was probably one of those English things that was lost on her, probably one of those new trends of slang. There was always something new and it always changed up just when she picked up the last bit of slang.
“Your hair was terrible though, sorry,” another red head Wanda didn’t know says.
“Oh, like your black hair was any better. You can’t judge me for my hair when you had strawberry blonde roots with black hair. And you left them there for like weeks,” Tony says, squinting suspiciously at the red head.
“Sometimes we make bad life choices, like that period of time you tried to grow facial hair before it would grow in properly and you looked like you had a perpetually dirty face,” The red head says, nose in the air. They all crack up, much to Tony’s annoyance, and Wanda decides she likes the redhead.
“I like my face hair,” Tony says, touching his face self-consciously.
“It looks fine now, but for awhile you looked like a baby that just ate chocolate,” Natasha says.
“You know what, I never did like your Russian mob wife phase and I thought those fuzzy hats made you look like you had a giant cotton ball on your head but I never told you that because I like you,” Tony says, copying the other red head’s actions and sticking his nose in the air. “And Peggy, your shoes look like turds with buckles.”
“Hey, I didn’t insult your admittedly very bad face hair, they did. And my shoes are perfectly- oh; they do look like turds with buckles. I’m wearing them anyways because they’re comfortable,” Peggy says primly.
“A bit off base,” Wanda says, “but if this is a girls night, why is Tony here?” she asks. She’d been surprised to see him but for all she knew there was an actual reason. Everyone sort of stares at her for a moment in shock and she silently prays she didn’t accidentally offend her entire friend group for asking what she thought was a valid question.
Then Tony up and hugs her, “thank you!” he says enthusiastically.
She awkwardly pats his back, frowning, “you’re welcome?” she asks more than states.
“No one ever questions why I show up to these things because, well, technically I’m a vagina owner so. Thanks for actually treating me like a guy,” Tony says.
“Oh, well, you’re welcome,” she says. Not that it had been a hardship, it was just odd to invite a guy to girls’ night vagina or not.
“We can kick Tony out after he pays for the food, who’s with me?” Natasha says.
“That’s mean!” Wanda reprimands.
“He informed me that my shoes look like turds with buckles instead of leaving me with blissful ignorance, he owes me coffee,” Peggy says, “then you can go and make a boys club.”
“‘Kay but I like girls club. What’s the point of life if you can’t be sparkly? Guys have a weird vendetta against sparkles and girls just know how to live, okay? Why do I have to give up sparkles to be manly? I’ll damn well like sparkles and be a man. A sparkly man,” he says rebelliously.
“So Edward Cullen?” Wanda asks, earning a sharp laugh from Natasha and the rest of the group.
“I said sparkly man, not a homicidal stalker that literally watches you in your sleep. Big difference.”
“Sure,” Nat says sarcastically, getting another round of laughter.
*
“Brisket?” Bucky asks, handing her a plastic container he pulled seemingly from nowhere.
“Oh, I love brisket. Though you’re going to have to do better than my dad,” she says. It was one of three things that he could cook with any sort of decency. The other two things were chicken fingers and anything microwavable. Wanda couldn’t cook whatsoever either so Pietro had to pick up the slack in order for them to live off something other than takeout that they couldn’t afford.
Bucky pulls the container back, “is it real brisket or some bullshit knockoff od Jewish food?” he asks, eyes narrowing.
“You and my dad would get along, he dislikes knockoff Jewish foods too. And yes, he’s Jewish and he knows how to do it right,” she says.
“Thank god, I thought I was going to have to disown you for a second,” Bucky says, dropping down on the floor beside her and handing her the brisket. Sam shows up a few minutes later and joins them. He quickly starts a mission to steal Wanda’s brisket but she was hard pressed to give it up and when Natasha finally shows up to end the squabbling she’s got her mouth stuffed with her arms outstretched in an attempt to keep Sam, who was trying unsuccessfully to reach the food, away from it. Of course she had to show up at that moment.
“Bucky, beat your significant annoyance off poor Wanda. And I’m going to be here for another couple hours to practice for that damn recital so if you want to stick around alright, but you might as well get coffee or something,” she says, hand on her hip. She looked pretty in her slim tights and leotard and she was so distracted by the sight that Sam manages to steal the container with the last bit of brisket in it. She makes a sad noise as Sam stuffs the last couple bites in his mouth, the damn vulture.
“Can we watch you dance?” Bucky asks, looking hopeful.
Natasha pretends to think about it and then sighs, “fine. Lets go, Coulson’s waiting.” Wanda perks up, curious to meet this Coulson person considering Clint didn’t stop signing about the guy. They all follow after her and pile into the corner of the large dance room to watch Natasha and Coulson, who appeared to be her dance partner, work.
Their dancing was stunning. They started out slow and steady, traditional to ballet Wanda thinks, but as the dance progresses things get faster and more chaotic. She thinks they’re incorporating dance moves from other styles and maybe like… what looked to her like martial arts but it works somehow.
“I will never figure out how they manage to pull something like this together without looking ridiculous,” Sam says, shaking his head. Wanda had no clue either; by all means she wouldn’t assume the human body could even do those things, let alone that people could make that kind of flexibility and movement look pretty.
“It looks so soothing,” Bucky says, grinning with a glazed look on his face.
“I wish he looked at my ass like that,” Sam mumbles.
Across the room Coulson laughs, “he does, you just don’t see it because you’re facing in the opposite direction.”
“He has fucking super hearing I swear,” Sam says in a low voice.
“It’s a gift,” Coulson adds, looking pleased with himself when Sam frowns.
*
Natasha tries, and fails, to teach Wanda how to dance. Instead of managing to look at least a little like she was moving her body to a rhythm Wanda trips on her own feet and smacks face first into the floor, busting her nose. “Oh god, I am so-” Natasha snort giggles, “so sorry oh my god are you okay?” she asks, still giggling.
“No,” Wanda whines, pressing her sweater sleeve to her poor nose.
“You should kiss it better,” Steve suggests, laughing along with everyone else in the room.
“Yeah,” Tony throws in, “but like a little lower than her nose. Because you might hurt her nose more and that would suck. So kiss her mouth,” he says entirely unsubtly.
Clint signs something, raising an eyebrow. Wanda thinks she catches a ‘d’ but she’s still very shaky in sign language at the moment. “Okay I know I’m not subtle Clint, but I’m also dense and we know Natasha is worse. Wanda wrote her literal love poetry in Russian and we had to reaffirm that Wanda like liked her, okay? I’m just trying to help,” he says, completely unrepentant. Clint shakes his head and signs something back with a small smile.
“I agree with Clint,” Steve says, “you are way more dense than Nat. But back to the matter at hand, kissing Wanda’s wounds better,” Steve says. They all turn back to them expectantly and they stare back.
“Stop staring, I’m a nervous kisser. Don’t you judge me Rogers, you’re a nervous pooper so you get it,” Natasha says. Wanda bursts out laughing, ignoring the pain in her nose and earning a smile from Natasha.
“I’m not nervous when I have to go, last week I destroyed a bathroom in NYU. Some poor bastard walked in, took a single sniff, gagged and walked back out,” Steve says. He shakes his head solemnly, his brown eyes wide with the horror of the memory.
“That was you?” Tony asks, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
“It was you who walked in? Sorry man, but the toilet was calling,” Steve says and he looks sorry too. That was probably the first time she has ever witnessed Steve look like he felt bad for something too.
“I don’t know what happened to your ass, but you need to never do that again, for the sake of humanity. That bathroom still reeks,” Tony says. Clint signs something and Tony responds only by nodding slowly, the two shaking a rare moment with each other.
“At least your breaking my face trying to flirt by dancing wasn’t as bad as Steve’s ass explosion,” Wanda points out. Natasha throws back her head and laughs, her whole body shaking with it for a few moments before collecting herself some and leaning forward, pressing her lips to Wanda’s carefully.