Porch Swing
Fifteen minutes has never felt so long. It’s also never felt so short, Wanda muses, smiling to herself over her mug of tea.
Time is weird magic. It keeps pulling her home, through means she can’t always explain or even understand. But home is waiting. Or home is coming.
Wanda laughs at herself a little bit for the melodrama. Of course Vision feels like home, but she’s supposed to be acting like this is a first date. Because it is, sort of.
Vision called her a little over a week ago. It’s absurd, isn’t it? After an alien invasion, death, multiversally significant magic, resurrection, more death, and more resurrection, their reunion is still something as mundane as making a phone call to a kind-of-ex.
When it’s all stripped back, they’re just two people who love each other. Everything else is just circumstance.
Anyway, they talked about their time apart and all of the gut-wrenching logistics of it all, and at the end of the call, Vision proposed a single date. He wanted to try to be normal, he’d said. Just two people trying again.
So now, nine days later, Wanda waits beside her garden.
Admittedly, she wouldn’t usually host an actual first date at her very remote woodland cabin, but she makes an exception because it’s Vision and because she wants to see him as himself—his whole self, without any of the smoothed edges either of them try to maintain in public. (And, like, she’s probably got at least three people looking to kill her at the moment, but she forgets that for right now because that’s not what tonight is about.)
Tonight, Wanda experiences nervousness that feels more like butterflies than abject terror. She can’t help but smile. She’s waiting outside on a picnic blanket and giggling to herself like a teenager falling in love for the first time. She’s early because she’s too excited to wait and she hopes that maybe he is, too.
Eleven more minutes. Wanda fiddles with her sleeve and thinks about their first first date, all those years ago. It was hardly a date, though it still felt special. They practically went from best friends to romantic partners by accident. One day, Vision was coming over for a routine TV night. The next day, they couldn’t ignore the urge to kiss.
After that, they had lots of dates. Sweet dates, thrilling dates, sexy dates, extravagant dates—neither of them were particularly shy about planning something special.
But a lot has changed and they’ve both lost so much, so Wanda wonders what tonight might bring them. They agreed to keep things simple. Wanda has a blanket to watch the stars. Vision might have a surprise or he might not. Either way, she’s pretty sure it’s going to be perfect.
Again, she laughs at herself. She tries to get in the mindset of a first date, since they agreed that that’s what this is. Slow, exploratory, sweet. Wanda can do that.
With six minutes left, she hears the low whirring and subsequent soft thud that tells her Vision has landed nearby. She smiles because he’s early.
As the quiet crunch of autumn leaves get nearer, her heart lurches. It’s been so long. He’s not her husband anymore, but maybe he could be.
“Hello,” Vision says as he approaches. He’s in his white skin because she asked him to come as himself. He’s wearing a deep blue cable-knit sweater and black pants because he’s still the same person she fell in love with all those years ago. He’s carrying a bouquet of flowers and she grins.
“Hi,” Wanda exhales contentedly. She’s not sure whether or not to stand up and hug him. She wants to, but she also wants the electric tension that comes with wondering when they’ll touch for the first time.
She pats the blanket beside her instead of running into his arms. He sits cross-legged and looks at her, his mouth curled into a soft, glowing smile.
“These are for you,” Vision says, handing her the bouquet, though his eyes never leave her face.
“Thank you,” Wanda replies. She steals a glance down and nearly starts crying when she sees the iridescent petals, carefully arranged and reflecting the deep pinks and oranges of the sunset surrounding them.
These are the same flowers she picked for him when she took him to visit Sokovia for the first time.
“It’s so wonderful to see you, Wanda,” he sighs and rests his chin in his palm, gazing at her.
“You, too, Vision. You look… incredible.”
She means it, too. He still blushes golden, though it’s a bit more subdued with his stark white skin. Though his features are a bit harsher, his eyes and his smile are just as soft as they always have been. He has more lines on his skin, and not just the regular vibranium ridges. It feels like a miracle to see him get older.
“You look wonderful,” he sighs, smiling. Wanda blushes this time.
She watched him open and then close his mouth, seemingly turning something over in his mind before talking. She wants to hear every thought that passes through his beautiful brain. She wants to watch his mouth move, even if it’s gibberish.
“How has your day been treating you thus far?”
“Pretty good,” she nods. “Absolutely fantastic now that you’re here. How about you?”
“The same as you,” he chuckles.
There’s a tension that Wanda feels simmering between them, as though the air is on the brink of bursting. She feels electric. She feels abnormal.
“Vis, we don’t… we don’t have to do small talk,” she says after a pause. “I know we agreed this is a first date, but I’m still… me.”
“Hm,” Vision grins. “You know, I’ve been imagining this day for so long, and… well, I’m at a loss for words, I think.”
Vision pushes his sleeves up and she feels her jaw drop a little bit at the mere sight of his forearms. She wants him to show a lot more skin.
“We don’t have to talk,” Wanda whispers. She lies down and looks up at the sky. “Come watch the stars come out.”
He nods and lies down on his back beside her, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s quiet enough that Wanda can hear him breathe. There’s something nostalgic about the silence, in a way. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It means that somewhere in her brain or her body or her soul or whatever else keeps miracles like hope alive, Wanda trusts that they have time.
She turns her head to the side, wondering how the sky might look reflected in his body now. Instead, Wanda finds Vision looking right back at her.
“Hello,” he whispers.
“Hi,” she exhales.
“I’ve missed you terribly.”
“Stop missing me, then,” Wanda replies, finally reaching for his hand. His eyes flutter shut as he laces his fingers with hers, and she feels like some piece of her is coming alive again.
“I adore how simple that is.”
“We can be simple, if we want. We can just be here with each other.”
“There is nothing in the world I’d rather do.”
“Me, neither.”
Vision inches closer. Wanda follows suit until their shoulders touch. She feels lighter than she has in a long time. She feels like she belongs somewhere—like she belongs right here, quiet beside him.
After the sunset darkens into a deep night sky, Wanda’s breathing slows. Vision feels like home, and Wanda feels like a long weary traveler, safe for the first time in years.
Slowly, her body lets go of itself.
***
With a cold breeze and the sound of rustling leaves, Wanda blinks and finds her cheek pressed against Vision’s chest, his hand firm against her back. Her leg is thrown over his hips and her arm rests on his chest, with a hand curled up to cup his cheek.
Vision smells the same, like something sweet and woodsy and just a little bit like clean laundry. God, she missed that.
Wanda looks up at him and smiles softly.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“No need to apologize,” Vision coos. “I’m quite enjoying just holding you.”
“God, what time is it?” Wanda stretches and rubs her eyes, registering that she can see him better than she should be able to in the pitch black of the remote Sokovian nights.
“Twelve past five.”
“In the morning?! Fuck.”
“Again, I’ve been enjoying myself.”
“Wow,” she sighs, settling back into his body. “I haven’t slept that well in… years, really. And on the damn ground, no less.”
“Mm, I’m sorry to hear you haven’t been sleeping well.”
“You make my body calm.”
“As do you, for me,” Vision smiles. “I feel rested in a way I was beginning to fear was impossible for my new body.”
“I’m glad I could help with that,” she grins, nuzzling the side of his face. With a giggle, she realizes they still haven’t so much as kissed, though she must have clung to him while she slept.
Vision gasps under his breath as she tilts her head to kiss his cheek, and Wanda feels a low, warm electric current through every molecule of her body.
“Come inside?” Wanda whispers.
“Please.”
She nods and pulls herself off of him, deciding that, as much as he makes her feel rested on the hard ground, she’d like to kiss him properly in the comfort of her home.
With the blanket tucked under her arm and the flowers tucked under his, Wanda offers Vision her hand and he takes it, following as she tugs him toward the porch.
But a sliver of pink sky pushes through the horizon, and Wanda pauses. There’s something so intimate and grounded about it. After everything, Wanda is watching the sunrise with a man she loves.
“Hold on,” she says, guiding him toward her porch swing. Wanda sits and pats the bench beside her. Vision smiles and sits, offering an arm around her shoulders.
“Sorry,” she laughs. “I’d like to take you to bed, but this is just… beautiful. Like you. Um. Sorry, that was cheesy.”
“We have time,” Vision replies. He plants a kiss on her cheek and she blooms. “I would like to spend it with you as though we have forever.”
“Okay,” Wanda says, heart fluttering from the press of his lips against her cheek.
They wait there for a few minutes, watching the sky turn itself over to a new day. Wanda can’t help but think about time and how it pushes and pulls and changes. Somehow, they’re getting another chance. She thinks maybe it’ll be forever this time.