Happy birthday, lark-cale!
May 4 - “You say you’d be the best fuck I’ll ever have? Prove it.” Grant Ward/Wanda, for @lark-cale
A very happy birthday to one of my earliest and best friends in fandom!
“He’s impossible!” Wanda claimed, flopping down into a chair and scowling at the ceiling. “If he was a woman, he’d be, what do you call it, high-maintenance.”
Natasha couldn’t help but laugh at that. “It’s the way Grant was trained, Wanda. Very similar to the way I was. He doesn’t know any other way to treat a woman than that.”
“I do not understand,” Wanda leaned forward, brow furrowing.
“There’s a saying which sums it up. ‘Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen.’ I was trained that way. Catch a man’s interest and then go cold; soon he will be slavering after you like a panting dog.” Natasha shrugged elegantly. “Grant doesn’t know how to stop playing the game.” She tapped a perfectly manicured fingertip on her lips thoughtfully. “Perhaps - well, he is your soulmate. Perhaps you could turn it around on him.”
“Help me?” Wanda begged, and Natasha smiled.
She’d tired of him already. He knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, considering how damaged he was, how little idea he had of how to actually live in the real world, but considering she was his soulmate, well - he’d hoped for more. Had hoped she’d want him to stick around.
He was packing his stuff into the one small duffel bag he planned to take with him when a slight sound at the door of the room made him look around.
“Where are you going?” Wanda stood watching him, arms folded.
“You don’t want me here,” Grant shrugged, turning back to stuffing his rolled-up socks in the duffel.
The door clicked closed and he assumed she’d left. Until she sat down on the bed, grabbed the duffel and tossed it back into the closet.
“I want you here. I just want the Grant Ward who doesn’t plan to play silly games with me. Natasha says it’s how you were trained. These last few days, I have been giving you a taste of your own medicine, and look how you have reacted.”
He froze, thinking back. She was quite right; all she’d been doing was mirroring his own behaviour. With a groan, he sat down beside her on the bed and put his hands over his eyes.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Wanda. I told you at the outset that I don’t know how to have any kind of normal relationship…”
“Me neither,” she shrugged, “so we make it up as we go along, eh? But I think that only works if we can be honest with each other. About how we feel.”
Uncovering his eyes, Grant looked down at her. Her eyes were a lucid, lambent green as she gazed up at him, leaning back on his pillow, dark hair spilling across the white sheets.
“Honesty’s the one thing I was trained never to give,” he confessed plainly.
“I know. I know all about the training you were given, Grant.” Her fingers moved, and he realised he was staring at them, at the way her black-tipped nails shone, reflecting the light as she began to unbutton the blouse she was wearing. “How to pleasure a woman, how to make her feel as though no other man will ever do.”
“I’ll be the best you ever have,” Grant said, no arrogance, just a simple statement of fact.
Smirking at his open-mouthed gape as she pulled the blouse open to reveal she was wearing nothing beneath, Wanda leaned forward and said “You say you’d be the best fuck I’ll ever have? Prove it.”
He gulped, unable to tear his eyes from her breasts. He’d seen plenty before, but Wanda was different. She was his soulmate.
“Very sure.” Reaching out, she took one of his hands in hers, threading her tiny slender fingers through his large, capable, callused ones. “And then, once we bond, we’ll both know the truth. That so long as we have each other, we’ll never have to be alone again.”
