Chapter 11
Wanda is on her way to yoga a few days later, walking with her head down, her headphones in her ears, when she bumps into a solid chest outside of the theater.
“I’m so sorry!” she gasps out as she tilts her head upwards. The sun beams into her eyes, backlighting the person in front of her.
“It’s fine,” a familiar voice rumbles. “No harm, no foul.”
“Vision?” Wanda squints and takes a step to the right to see him in full. “What are you doing here?”
Vision is in a pair of crisp khakis and a blue sweater, his eyes catching the sunlight until they glow with blue fire. His sweater strains against his biceps and she feels a jolt of annoyance as she stares at his arms.
Seriously, does the man not own one shirt the correct size?
As she meets his gaze head on, she hears a voice that sounds suspiciously like Natasha’s in the back of her head hissing: he thinks you’re hot.
Wanda silently orders the voice to kindly shut up.
“I work here,” Vision answers her.
“No, I mean,” Wanda pulls her headphones out of her ears, feeling flustered. “Sorry, that was a dumb question.”
Her sweatshirt is feeling uncomfortably stiff around her neck and she tugs at it, hoping to find some relief from the tightness that is building in her shoulders.
“Where are you heading?” Vision asks her kindly. “Off to get some lunch?”
“Oh, um,” Wanda says. “To yoga actually.”
Vision’s brow creases. “Why?” he asks.
“Why?” Wanda tilts her head.
“Yes, why?” he says. “Why are you spending your lunch break going to yoga?”
“Because it’s my break and I can do whatever I want with it?” she answers testily.
He isn’t cowed by her snappish tone. “Do you like yoga?” he asks.
She blinks taken off guard. “Not really, no,” she admits. “Monica swears by it, but I can’t say I really enjoy it.”
“Then why are you going?” he wonders.
An excellent question.
She shrugs. “Just in a restless mood today,” she says breezily. “I want to keep moving.”
Vision opens his mouth to respond when they both hear someone calling her name across the plaza.
“Wanda!”
Wanda sees Vision’s face morph into an unpleasant expression, as though he’d just smelled something particularly nasty and she turns her head.
A familiar figure is crossing the cobblestones to where she and Vision are standing, the cool fall breeze ruffling his hair until it breaks from its casual style to float around his forehead.
“Hank!” Wanda is surprised. “Hank Pym?”
“The one and only,” he’s in a dark blue suit today, a silvery tie loosened around his neck. His eyes are twinkling as he looks down at her.
“What are you doing here?” Wanda asks. “I haven’t seen you in almost a week!”
Vision is shifting uncomfortably, his feet seeming to long to provide him with a quick exit. Wanda can feel the tension radiating off his body and suddenly remembers why he must feel so uncomfortable.
Hard to look someone in the eye when you’ve ruined his career, she thinks.
Hank, however, is smiling, as though he is enjoying Vision’s discomfort. “I had to go out of town for a few days for business, but now I’m back and I’m determined to sweep you off to lunch, do you have any plans?”
“Oh,” Wanda says. “Well, I was heading to a yoga class, but-.”
“Great!” Hank grins, winding an arm through her elbow. “My treat.”
“Oh, but-,” Wanda bites her lower lip shooting Vision a side look as Hank tugs her away.
Vision plants himself in front of Hank, his eyes flashing. “She doesn’t want to go with you, Pym,” he says.
“Ah,” Hank says. “So, Vision Shade can speak, I was getting worried.”
“She’s going to yoga,” Vision tells him firmly, ignoring the jab.
“She’s clearly hungry and needs lunch,” Hank says.
“She can speak for herself,” Wanda pipes up, annoyance tricking through her veins.
The two men ignore her. “Let her go, Pym,” Vision says.
“Or what?” Hank asks challengingly. “Your daddy isn’t here to hide behind.”
Vision’s face flushes a dark red and he takes a menacing step towards Hank, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater as he moves.
“Okay, woah,” Wanda maneuvers herself in between the two men, placing a hand on each of their chests. “Back it up.”
Neither man moves so she gives them both a push until they reluctantly step away. “You’re acting like children,” she informs them both.
“He started it,” they say at the same time, glaring daggers at the other.
“Jesus,” Wanda can feel a headache gathering at her temples. “I’m going to yoga, try not to get blood near the fountain, children play there.”
She turns to leave when Hank speaks, his face apologetic. “Wait,” he says. “Can I at least walk with you to where you’re headed? I promise to behave.”
Wanda sighs. “The yoga studio is on 59th street.”
“Great,” Hank offers her his arm and after a moment, she slides her palm into the crook of his elbow.
There is warm pressure on her free hand and she turns to see Vision Shade holding her wrist lightly in his hand. “Don’t go with him,” he says.
Wanda creases her eyebrows at him. “Why?”
“I-,” he opens his mouth uselessly. “I can’t tell you.”
She huffs out a breath. “Then I’m going,” she twists her wrist from his warm fingers. “See you in rehearsal.”
Hank leads her away, but right before they turn the corner, she peeks behind her and sees Vision standing in the same spot, watching them walk away.
“I don’t like that man,” Hank says as they walk.
“He was just being nice,” Wanda says.
Hank snorts at that, but stays silent. Wanda can feel the tension leaving him, the muscle under her fingertips relaxing as the warm sun cuts a path through the buildings to touch their cheeks gently.
They walk a few paces before Hank asks. “What did you mean ‘see you in rehearsal’?”
“Oh,” Wanda rolls her shoulder experimentally, the tendons sore. “I was shortlisted for one of his pieces.”
“Wanda!” Hank turns to her, his face so open and excited that she momentarily forgets her annoyance at him. “That’s incredible, congratulations!” he sweeps her in a huge hug, right on the street, and she squeals as her feet lift off the concrete. “What piece is it for?”
Wanda waits until he’s placed her back on the sidewalk before answering. “The balcony pas from Romeo and Juliet,” she says.
Hank is silent for a tenth of a second before a boom laugh escapes his mouth, startling a group of pigeons poking around their feet. The birds take off into the sky, the sunlight catching their wings. “What?”
“The balcony pas de deux?” she repeats, confused by his reaction.
“From Romeo and Juliet?”
“The one and only,” Wanda says.
“And Vision is choreographing?”
“Yes?”
Hank lets out a snort, covering his mouth with his hand. “Sorry,” he manages. “I’m not laughing at you, it’s just too good.”
“What are you talking about?” Wanda faces him with her hands on her hips.
“Just ask him about 1986,” Hank says. “He’ll know what I’m talking about.”
“Will he?” Wanda asks. “You’re being very cryptic.”
“Trust me,” Hank smiles at her. “It’ll be a good laugh.”
“Okay,” Wanda says hesitantly, though after watching the two men interact, she has a feeling bringing Hank up in conversation with Vision won’t end well.
She and Vision might have reached a shaky peace, but she still isn’t sure if the man even likes her. The last thing she wants to do is blow that truce to smithereens.
They arrive in front of the tiny yoga studio, a large fern with a tiny sign tapped into its pot of soil announcing the studio’s existence on the second floor of the building.
“Okay,” Wanda says. “This is me.”
Hank twists her around so she’s facing him, close enough to smell his cologne. “’Parting is such sweet sorrow’,” he says dramatically.
Despite herself, Wanda giggles. “’That I shall say good night till it be morrow’,” she replies.
Hank places a hand over his heart. “And she knows Shakespeare,” he says. “How did I get so lucky?”
Wanda just rolls her eyes and pushes him playfully away, watching as he staggers dramatically and blows her a kiss.
She bats it from the sky and twists on her heel to enter the yoga studio. Despite herself, she can’t help the rapid pace of her heart at Hank’s ridiculous theatrics. He might be a bit of an enigma but she can’t help but feel ridiculously flattered that someone like him would want to give her the time of day.
Unfortunately, the feeling of buoyancy doesn’t last long.
Wanda hadn’t been kidding when she said she hated yoga. The studios were usually dark, with an unfortunate proclivity to smell like BO and incense and every instructor tended to yell when she tried to glimpse a peek of herself in the mirrors.
Why have mirrors if you don’t want people to look in them? she regularly complains to Pepper. People are natural narcissists; they’re going to look if there’s a mirror.
Today she’s running slightly late to the class, thanks to the childish antics of Vision and Hank and the only spot in the studio is the one right in front.
She maneuvers her way through a maze of mats and bodies in downward facing dog to unroll her mat in the front.
Her instructor for the day, a man named Sam, gives her an annoyed look and bumps up the thermostat, announcing that they would be releasing their inner demons with sweat. Wanda is no stranger to sweat, but having sweat flooding out of every pore while being told to align her chakras to find inner peace is not the way she wants to spend her lunch break.
But in her head, she sees Agnes’s hollowly sympathetic face whispering you seem to have put on some weight, and she pushes her frustrations to the furthest corner of her brain, determined to only focus on her body.
However, as the class moves on, she can feel each muscle lengthening in a way that she hasn’t experienced in a long time. She knows she looks like an enormous mess, but Sam has thankfully covered every mirror in the studio with large tapestries of mandalas, so Wanda can’t self-correct her body even when the urge arises.
It’s a miserable forty-five-minute class, but at least it’s less miserable than she initially expected.
At the end of the class, she takes a quick shower in the studio’s locker room, not wanting to show up to Vision’s rehearsal smelling like a dirty sock and she’s tying her sneakers on her feet when a woman with curly red hair and bored expression pokes her head into the locker room. “Are you Wanda Maximoff?” the woman asks.
“Yes,” Wanda says hesitantly. “Why?”
“This was left for you at the front desk,” the woman shoves a brown paper bag at Wanda and quickly leaves the locker room.
Wanda opens the bag, confusion sweeping down her spine.
Inside, there is a container of strawberries, a bottle of water, and a cup of what smells like French onion soup.
Wanda’s stomach gives an almighty gurgle and she shushes it.
On top of the soup is a napkin with a note scrawled in blue pen that reads:
Lunch is on me even if we can’t eat together. Congrats again on the casting.
-H.P.
A little zing travels down Wanda’s spine and she tries to drown it in her soup, but the warmth of it carries her all the way to rehearsal.
***
For the past few days, Vision has been allowing one girl a day to rehearse Juliet, a courtesy that does not go unappreciated by Wanda. In many rehearsals, whoever is not the principle dancer is usually shoved to the back, forced to mark the steps.
It doesn’t eliminate the competition between the four women by any means, but Wanda feels as though Vision is trying his best to help them all have an equal chance to show him what she’s capable of remembering and how fast a study she is when it comes to choreography.
Wanda is surprised that her hands are trembling as she enters the studio, the first to arrive as usual. Today is her day to dance Juliet and since she’s the last of the girls to dance, most of the piece has already been choreographed, which adds to her nerves. If this is the one time she has to prove to Vision that she deserves Juliet, then she can’t afford to get a step wrong.
She warms up quickly before dropping her headphones in her ears and queuing up the music on her phone. At first, she marks through the steps, walking the lines and the sequences that Juliet takes, but as the music swells, she feels an overwhelming need to dance with it, to move her body in time with the violins, to fly.
She lifts her foot into an arabesque, sweeping it into a pique turn, rotating her whole body on the tips of her right toes. She does a tiny leap, a glissade, where the right foot brushes out and lands almost instantaneously, the left foot following the pattern obediently. She marks the lift where Steve would lift her above his head, and the waltzes out of his imaginary arms to upstage left.
She races downstage, performing a grand jeté, her legs caught in a split midair, her body twisting just so to allow the audience to catch a glimpse of her face, before she folds herself in half, marking another lift in time with the music.
She’s vaguely aware that she’s passed where Vision stopped choreographing, but Wanda continues to move, improving her own steps.
There are moments when she dances, where Wanda thinks she ceases to exist. She becomes a vessel for the music to flow through; a worshipful beacon with each fingertip and each pointed toe.
She pirouettes and pas de chats and promenades and imagines, with each movement, a starry sky above and a secret romance perfuming the air.
The music fades slowly and sweetly and Wanda fades with it, lowering her feet back down to the ground, taking stock of her surroundings for the first time.
She sees herself first, a girl in a mirror staring back at her, her cheeks flushed pink, her long red hair falling down her back, and her turquoise leotard patchy with sweat.
She sees him second, leaning against the doorway, both arms crossed over his chest, his luminescent blue eyes showing surprise and an unknown emotion that she’s not sure she wants to unpack.
She yanks her headphones out of her ears. “Hello,” she sounds breathless.
His lips quirk. “Hello,” he answers.
He doesn’t say anything else, so Wanda shuffles her feet and clears her throat before going to her dance bag for some water.
“Hell of a warm up,” Vison comments casually as he steps fully into the studio.
Wanda coughs, water dribbling down her chin. “Sorry?”
“Looked like Romeo and Juliet until the end,” Vision drops to the floor to tie on his dance sneakers.
“It was,” Wanda says.
“And the end?”
She shrugs. “Just trying something out.”
“Was that a press lift after the pirouette?” Vision looks mildly curious.
“It was,” she says.
“How did you get into it?” he asks.
“Um,” she chews on her lip. “I think I did two glissades and maybe a brisé?”
“Like this?” he steps all the way to stage right and performs two perfect glissades, his feet sliding noiselessly across the floor before beating his feet in a brisé.
“Almost,” Wanda crosses over to him. “I think it was glissade, brisé, glissade, then the lift. It worked better with the music.”
“Show me?” Vision connects his phone to the speaker. “Please?”
“Uh,” Wanda nods, feeling nervous. “Okay.”
She waits for him to find the right place in the music before exploding into a glissade. “And then lift,” she says when she reaches the spot where Romeo would be.
“Can we do the lift?” Vision asks. “To see how it times out?”
“Uh, sure,” Wanda crosses back upstage while he rewinds the music back.
Her hands feel uncomfortably sweaty and she wipes them surreptitiously on her thighs while she waits for the lead into the glissade.
She hears the musical intro and races through each step, Vision getting closer and closer until suddenly his large hands are spanning her waist and he’s pressing her above his head and she’s arching back, her hands floating through the air.
For the first time since Agnes told her she’d gained weight, Wanda doesn’t feel heavy.
It’s a heady feeling and she doesn’t want it to end, but she feels Vision’s fingers shifting on her ribs as he brings her down to the ground.
“Like that?” he asks. A chunk of his blond hair has fallen forward onto his forehead and Wanda has to lock her fingers behind her back to keep from pushing it out of his face.
“Yes, exactly,” she confirms.
“I like it,” he grins.
She’s caught off guard by his smile, it touches every part of his face, until his eyes are glittering. “Me too,” she says.
He suddenly twists his head and sighs. “You can come in now,” he calls at the studio door.
Wanda leans around him to see Natasha, Steve, Mary, and Julie standing in a cluster, their feet just outside the studio entrance.
Natasha shoots Wanda a very obvious wink as she drops her bag to the floor, peeling off her sweatpants gracefully.
“Right, okay,” Vision claps his hands and Wanda steps away from him back to her bag. “Once you’re warm, Steve, we’re going to try to finish this thing today.”
***
The rehearsal goes much faster than Wanda expected, and thanks to her impromptu choreography session with Vision, she finds that her nerves have all but vanished in the wake of learning new material.
In fact, she’s feeling so excellent that it doesn’t register in her head at first when she hears Vision says: “okay, now about the kiss.”
Steve looks over at her, an awkward smile caught on his face.
“What?” she asks him and then Vision’s words click into place. “What?” she turns to Vision.
He’s looking reluctantly amused. “A kiss, Wanda. You two need to kiss.”
“Why?” she blurts and then feels a blush creeping along her cheeks. Of course, they’d need to kiss, it’s Romeo and Juliet.
Besides, it’s not like she’s never kissed anyone before.
It’s not like she’s never kissed anyone for stage purposes before.
Honestly, stage kisses had quickly become no big deal, as they are all business and usually involve a lot of counting in her head to make sure she breaks the kiss at the appropriate time with the music.
It’s not the kissing that makes her flush, it’s the fact that Vision is standing right there, watching her kiss someone.
She doesn’t want to think about the reason why that makes her cheeks pink.
“Okay,” she says bravely. “When do you want the kiss?”
Vision blinks. “After the press lift,” he says. “I want you to run from him and I want Steve to grab your hand,” he motions for them to do so, counting out the beats as they move. “Great!” Vision says brightly. “Now, Wanda, turn slowly around to look at him and Steve, drop her hand and look at each other for four beats. Then, Steve, slowly walk towards her and,” Vison stops and chews on his cheek. “And lift her up on pointe to eliminate the height difference, and kiss her.”
“For how many beats?” Steve asks.
“Sorry?” Vision says.
“How many counts am I kissing her?”
“Oh,” Vision looks at Wanda. “Two counts of eight and then pull away and run to the balcony.”
“Two counts of eight?” Steve looks a little horrified.
“Yes,” Vision nods, resetting the music. “Start from the lift, please.”
Steve shoots Wanda a look and she just shrugs her shoulders delicately.
Yes, it will be a bit of an awkward experience, kissing Steve, but at least she knows he brushes his teeth regularly.
They walk through the movements, Steve’s face coming closer and closer to hers before his mouth drops to her lips.
It’s moist and boring, but not completely unpleasant. Wanda focuses on counting the beats in her head while she tries to seem enthusiastic but when she pulls away from Steve, she can see Vision frowning.
“No, no,” Vision shakes his head at them and Steve releases Wanda with frustration. “You look like you’re about to be sick, Steve. She’s the love of your life, not a dead fish.”
“You try kissing someone who’s basically a little sister,” Steve mutters.
“It’s called acting,” Vision says with frustration. “Here, I’ll show you.”
Steve stays next to Wanda, both blinking at Vision with confusion. It’s not until Vision has crossed to where Steve stands, that Wanda understands what Vision means.
Oh.
Steve steps away from Wanda to the front of the studio, crossing his arms.
“Right,” Vision says briskly. “Let’s take it from the lift again.”
Wanda gawks at him for half a second.
“The press lift, Wanda,” Vision says crisply. “We don’t have all day!”
That snaps Wanda into movement, she steps into position and waits for the music to begin.
It tinkles from the speakers and she feels Vision’s hands span her waist, lifting her above his head. When he places her on the ground she runs away from him, and he chases her, his body large and warm behind her, and she feels a tremor run through her that has nothing to do with the movement.
She allows her hand to be caught and feels the barest pull as Vision navigates her around to look at him. He drops her hand and they stare at each other. A steely sort of resolve drops over Vision’s face as he steps closer to her in time with the music before his hands grasp her hips and lift her up to the tips of her pointe shoes.
Vision is taller than even Steve, so on her pointes she still only comes up to about his nose. She can smell the spicy scent of his cologne and the barest whiff of coffee on his breath as they stand face to face, and she can feel her heart rate rocketing in her chest as she sees his head ducking lower and lower. There is half a second of delicious anticipation as he holds eye contact with her, his pupils blown wide in his blue eyes, and on a crash of music, seals his mouth over hers.
Wanda feels her whole being stutter to a stop. She forgets the dance, she forgets the choreography, she forgets that Steve is standing ten feet away, his mouth hanging open.
She drapes her arms over Vision’s shoulders as he moves his mouth expertly against hers, sliding his hand into her hair.
Then, as the music swells, he pulls slightly away from her and it’s only by the grace of all of her training that Wanda’s body remembers what her brain can’t. She twirls under his arm, barely catching her breath as she lets go of his hand, racing back to where the balcony would be, her heart thundering in her ears.
The music stops and the only sound Wanda can hear is her lungs gulping at the air.
God, he can kiss, the unwelcome thought flies through her brain as a delicious shiver runs down her spine.
She does her best to compose her face into a neutral mask before turning around to see that Vision has moved to stand next to Steve. He looks remarkably unruffled, bumping Steve’s shoulder gently. “See?” he says to Steve.
“Oh, I definitely see,” Steve says.
Wanda narrows his eyes at him, hearing the double entendre that Vision clearly misses.
“Great,” Vision claps him on the shoulder. “Then let’s do the whole dance from the top, and you can show me what you’ve got.”
Steve nods and strides back to his opening spot, stopping to help Wanda climb up to the chair balcony. “I can’t promise I’ll be as good as all that, sweetheart,” he murmurs in her ear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wanda hisses back pertly.
He just winks at her and she resists the urge to stick out her tongue like a child.
But as she straightens, smoothing out a nonexistent wrinkle in her leotard, she catches Vision’s eyes and blushes a dark pink, cutting her gaze away as the music begins anew.