#wandanat

[mayareblogs]

horny for the first time in a few days imagining myself sandwiched between wandanat of all things

[imjustagirlwhosbored]

A bad day

Part 1

Summary: Reader is having a really bad day, luckily her girlfriends are here to save the day.

Pairing: Teacher Wanda Maximoff x Teacher Natasha Romanoff x Student reader

Tags/warnings: sh, panic attack, hurt comfort, age gap - reader is 18, Wanda is 26, Natasha is 30

Word count: 2.2k

Author's Note: Hi, I finished the first part of my first fic today and I really excited about it so I'm going to post it here.😊

As soon as I woke up, I knew today was going to be a bad day.....actually, a terrible day.

A TERRIBLE day.

To be honest, for the last six months, I've had these days more often than not.

It sucks. And it's really really exhausting, but i'm kinda used to it.

But there are two things that make it better: my best friend Kate and my girlfriends Wanda and Natasha. They literally saved my life, but they don't need to know that (for now).

As every morning, I made my coffee just the way I like: half a cup of water, two teaspoons of coffee (sometimes three if I feel like it), one teaspoon of sugar (again, sometimes one and a half if I feel like it), five ice cubes (don't judge, I love my iced coffee), and I top it up with a splash of milk.

I don't understand how Americans can call their milkshake with a little bit of coffee "coffee" 'cause what the hell is that.

Sorry not sorry. (No offense if you're american)

As always, my mom is already at work.

My dad moved away when I was eleven. There was a lot of fighting between them and honestly, I'm glad it ended.

Let's say it wasn't the most pleasant thing to hear them screaming and breaking things, mostly plates.

I don't have a very good relationship with my parents. It ended when i was 14, but let's not talk about that.

I have a really good relationship with my big sister (well, my only sister). In fact I love my sister. But since she moved away, we sadly haven't had much time to see each other.

Anyway, right now's not the time to get emotional.

I'm almost late to school, like always.

My first class is Spanish with Ms. Vidal. She's young and she's kind, unlike some other teachers, but she won't put up with my tardiness forever.

But I hope she still likes me because you don't want her as your enemy.

I made it to the bus station just as the bus arrives and took a ride to school. The bus was almost empty, as always. I sat by the window in the third row from the back.

It's my FAVORITE seat. I always sit there when it's available.

I put on my earbuds and played my favorite songs.

I usually listen to kinda sad songs in the morning/evening, not necessarily because i'm sad, it's just kind of magical. It has a totally different vibe.

The ride is not long, just about 10 minutes, but it's still long enough for the thoughts to come into my head.

The thoughts started getting louder.

You're tired.

You're always tired.

How long are you going to keep pretending?

You're not normal.

You're not enough.

You're useless.

I HATE THIS.

The days when the thoughts won't go away until I do the one thing I swore I'd never do again.

I made it to school ten minutes before the first class began.

When I got to the classroom, Kate was already sitting in our usual spot - the last row by the window.

She smiled at me the second she noticed me.

"Hi y/n/n"

"Hi Katie, i missed you," I said as I hugged her.

After we let go, she looked at me, her smile turning into a frown.

"Honey, did you sleep well today?"

"Not really, but it wasn't that bad."

That's the thing about Kate, she always notices the smallest things.

People think she's just the extroverted girl with rich parents, but in fact, she's a really good friend.

Kate didn't have time to do anything else because the bell rang, signaling the start of class.

Spanish was good and we didn't even get homework.

Ms. Vidal spent the whole lesson explaining some grammar that would be boring coming from anyone else, but she has this way of making everything sound interesting.

She's a really good teacher. She actually cares about her students, not just about grades.

She always ask how we are, and if she sees that someone is sad or something, she asks what's wrong.

I answered a few questions, partly because I knew the answer and partly because I'm in love with her smile (don't tell Wanda and Nat please).

Maybe alao to show her that I actually pay attention.

When the bell rang, everyone immediately started packing their things, no homework was basically a miracle, so they didn't want to risk it.

As I walked out, she said:

"See you tomorrow, hopefully on time again."

Isn't she the funniest?

My second class today is Math with Ms. Harkness.

She's not as kind as Ms. Vidal, but she likes me because I'm not completely hopeless at math like others.

Actually I'm really good at math, but it's kinda boring.

Also, Kate has three different classes now, so that's really annoying.

After the second class, when Ms. Harkness assigned us a three-page homework assignment, my day just got even worse.

Three pages.

Three.

Pages.

I stared at the paper like it had personally offended me.

Math isn't hard for me, in fact it's pretty easy.

But homework? I hate homework.

One thing about me - I always forgot that I have homework, like, I'm not even joking.

That is probably the reason I hate homeworks, 'cause I always remember about it in the evening, when I'm already lying in bed.

Well, what can I say? Everyone has something they're not good at.

For me, it's remembering my homework.

Ms. Harkness noticed me staring at the assignment.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No," I said quickly. "Just appreciating how much you care about our free time."

A few people laughed, making me smile.

"Very funny."

Ha, like she wasn't smiling too.

Anyway next is English with Mr. Stark, boring like always, then History with Mr. Banner.

English was like always.

Mr. Stark was making funny jokes and trying to teach us something, but in the end, he's jst telling us storytimes and suddenly the bell is ringing.

History is the exact opposite of English.

Mr. Banner is talking, half the class is listening, and the other half is trying not to fall asleep.

Honestly, I'm usually the other half.

Then the next class is Chemistry with Mr. Rogers.

Chemistry is the last class before lunch.

That's pretty much the only positive thing about it.

And it's not even about chemistry, it's just Mr. Rogers.

I HATE him.

He's so annoying, and he's always picking on me.

For example, the whole class isn't wearing protective gear, but he only notices me, or the boys in the front are talking loudly, but he tells me off for doodling in my notebook.

And once, some guy sent me a note, and he gave ME detention!

Uhhh.

Just thinking about him drives me crazy!

Anyway, I better get to class on time before he gives me detention AGAIN.

As I walked into the class, Mr. Rogers was already there.

Instantly, my mood dropped even more.

Hopefully, today's class will be fine.

Chemistry was very unexpectedly not that bad, but now it's time for lunch.

I went to my locker and saw Kate already waiting for me.

We talked about everything that happened in class as we headed to the cafeteria.

"OMG finallyyyy, I'm so hungry!" Kate said before she started eating her sandwich.

After a few seconds, she noticed I wasn't eating anything.

"Aren't you gonna eat anything?"

"No, I forgot to pack my lunch, and seeing the things they sell here, i'd rather make something home. Besides, I'm not even hungry."

She looked at me a little concerned.

"Well, I hope you at least had breakfast."

"Yeah, of course, Katie. Stop worrying so much and hurry up, we have Health Education soon."

"Ah, I see how it is. We have 20 minutes 'till the next class, you just want to see Wanda."

"Umm, maybe."

"Okay, I'm gonna hurry just because I love you."

We got to the class 10 minutes early. Wanda, or Ms. Maximoff, was already there. As soon as she saw me, she looked concerned. I avoided her gaze the whole class.

The bad thoughts were getting louder and louder.

It didn't help that today's class was about sleep habits. Wanda kept throwing me worried glances every few minutes, of course she knew that I didn't slept last night.

I couldn't focus on anything.

As she talked, students were taking notes, but all I could do was stare at the paper in front of me.

It was like I wasn't even in my body.

It felt like I was looking at my body from far away.

Suddenly, my chest felt really tight.

It felt like the room was getting smaller, like it was closing in on me.

I panicked.

My breathing was getting harder.

The only thing in my head was:

I can't breathe.

I CAN'T breathe.

Kate immediately noticed something was wrong. She took my hand and placed it on her stomach.

"You need to breathe honey, follow my breathing," she whispered calmly.

Why do I have to be such a mess?

A burden to everybody, like my mother always says.

I saw Wanda looking my way.

She raised an eyebrow, and I could see worry in her eyes, but she kept taking to the class like nothing was happening.

And this time, I was very grateful for that.

After fifteen minutes, my breathing was back to normal, but the thoughts were even louder now and I couldn't take it anymore.

So I made a decision.

A bad decision.

I have to do it.

There's no other way to stop the thoughts.

I need to do IT.

After the class ended, Wanda wanted to talk to me, but berofe she could tell me to stay, I quickly hurried out of the class.

Kate was right behind me.

"Are you okay y/n/n?"

"Yes, Katie. It was just a long day, don't worry about me, please."

I looked at her with pleading eyes.

"Okay, but seriously?"

"I swear. It was just a long day, nothing more."

"Come give me a hug." She said with a smile.

We were hugging when we heard:

"Hey, that's my girlfriend, don't steal her from me."

"Hi baby, I missed you," said Kate as she hugged Yelena.

"Hi Lena, how was your trip?" I asked as I hugged her too.

"Yeah, it was nice seeing mom after a while. She was a little sad that Tasha didn't come, but it was nice."

"Well, we should head to the gym. I don't want to see Romanoff's face if I'm late," I laughed.

"Hey don't laugh, she likes you," Kate pointed at me, "and you're her sister," Kate pointed at Yelena, "but she's not gonna be nice to me."

"Hey, don't try to pull those cards, you know very well that she's not gonna be nice to any of us if we're late," Yelena said.

"Well, that's why I'm saying we should go."

”Go ahead, I'll just use the restroom real quick,” I told them eagerly.

Kate looked at me skeptically, like she wanted to say something.

Then she sighed deeply.

”Okay, but don't take too long, you know how Romanoff is when you're late, i'm scared for you," she said as they headed to the gym.

I quickly went to the restroom, eager to finally relieve myself. I knew it wasn't a healthy coping mechanism, but right now I didn't give a fuck.

I just fucking need to do IT.

I checked all the stalls, then went to the last one and locked the door.

I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall.

I pulled a razor blade out of the front pocket of my jeans, pulled my jeans down just enough, to reveal my thighs.

My thighs, full of scars, some of them old, some newer.

For second all I felt was guilt.

Guilt that I did it so many times, guilt that i'm about to do it again, but then the thoughts came back and the guilt was forgotten.

I took the razor and started.

One cut.

Two cuts.

Three.

Four.

Five.

ENOUGH.

I tried not to cut too deep so I wouldn't bleed, but a few of them started bleeding anyway.

Fuck.

That's the last thing I needed right now.

How ironic, right?

Now I'm really glad I put those band-aids in my backpack, just in case something happened.

I quickly took care of the cuts.

When I was done, I looked at the time.

FUCK.

The next class starts at 1:45 p.m. It's 1:40 p.m. now.

I ran - literally ran - to the gym, and I made it just in time.

Lucky me.

I was feeling a little dizzy, but I figured it was because of the running.

Natasha, or Ms. Romanoff, was in a good mood today.

That's a good sign.

Maybe she won't make us run laps today.

Okay, now I'm just lying to myself.

Of course she made us run laps.

I'm starting to feel even more dizzy.

I probably should have eaten something before class.

Fucking hell.

My head is pounding.

I'm starting to feel lightheaded.

My vision is getting darker.

Oh no, no, no, no, please, not now.

The last thing I saw was the worried face of my girlfriend.

[kalxtkiri]

Nothing’s Gonna hurt you, baby

WandaNat x child reader

Tags: Hurt/comfort

Summary: Natasha is tasked with getting you into bed, Wanda and Natasha get you to sleep, but you wake them up later in need of comfort

Written: May 7th 2026

WC: 1079

Wanda and Natasha were infiltrating an abandoned widows nest when they found you. Scared, alone, and way too skinny for a kid your age. They took you back to the compound with them, and after two weeks of fighting tooth and nail with everyone on the team, it was decided that you would stay there with them.

That was over three months ago now, and you were thriving…For the most part. You were feisty, mentally still trapped in that widow's nest.

You were just five years old, and already the world had shown you how cruel it was.

Natasha and Wanda decided that they would be the ones to take care of you – Well, you did. They were the first faces you saw after months of solitude, and with your past, men weren’t exactly on the table.

It was 10pm now, Natasha was assigned bedtime duty. She’d managed to get you into pajamas, but after that you’d started putting up a fight. Now you were in the living room, standing against the TV stand in the dark, a dirty stuffed animal clutched to your chest as you glared at her from across the room.

Natasha stood against the doorframe – The only exit in the room. Her arms were crossed, and the faintest hint of a smile curled her lips.

“You’re tired, malyshka, just come to bed” She said quietly, raising her eyebrows at you.

You hugged your bunny tighter, stomping your foot. “No!”

Natasha only laughed, pushing herself off the doorframe and walking over to you. She crouched down in front of you, gaze sweeping over your form. She wasn’t good at this – The whole parenting thing. Especially not with a little one like you.

“You know, bunny needs to sleep too…” She started, pressing her lips together trying to gauge your reaction “Don’t you think he looks a bit sleepy?”

You huffed, your eyebrows unfurrowing. Natasha could see the gears turning in your head. Then, much to her surprise, you nodded.

She smiled, standing up “Okay” Her hand reached down for yours, waiting patiently for you to take it. When you did she gave it a gentle squeeze, walking you towards your bedroom.

You didn’t make it there, just as Natasha opened the door, you took off running, bare feet slapping the polished floors with the force of a baby elephant.

She dropped her head, defeated. Wanda never said it would be this hard. She followed you, walking down the hallway listening for your footsteps.

You were in the common room when she found you. Frozen in the archway. Everyone was there, watching a movie. Though most of their attention was on the little one standing in front of them.

“There you are,” Natasha murmured, reaching down to try and take your hand again.

You turned, wrapping your arms around her thighs and squeezing. Hard enough she almost lost her balance.

None of the avengers said anything, some of them looked uncomfortable – The last time they had an interaction like this when Wanda nor Natasha was present you’d had a meltdown and threw some hands.

Natasha picked you up, her arms holding you close against her. Your hands clutched the fabric of your shirt, your face buried in the crook of her neck.

She didn’t say anything to the team, leaving without a word and taking you back to your room. She made a stop in the kitchen, preparing you a bottle. Your room was warmer than the rest of the building, and fluorescent lamps lit the area around your bed.

“Alright, detka” Natasha murmured as she peeled you off, setting you down on the bed “Lets get you tucked in,”

She threw the blanket over your legs, waiting for you to lay down.

“Bottle” You said, reaching out for it.

Natasha looked at the bottle in her hand, handing it to you silently. You glared at her as you drank, laying yourself down, and pulling the blanket up to your waist.

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the air vent and the sound of the bottle squeaking. Then, the door creaked open, you shot up, your entire body tensing.

“It’s okay” Natasha muttered, already knowing who was there, she placed her hand on your arm “It’s just Wanda, you can lay back down”

You didn’t listen, waiting until Wanda spoke – You had to make sure it was really her, and not someone else in disguise.

“How’s it going?” Wanda said softly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Natasha gave her a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Wanda smiled, tucking the blanket around your legs.

“Were you good for Natty?” She asked, reaching up to adjust your bunny, which was tucked closely to your side.

“We ran around a little bit” Natasha said when you didn’t respond.

“You must be pretty tired now, huh?” Wanda cooed at you.

You nodded.

Natasha and Wanda stayed by your side until you fell asleep, leaving to go to their own bedroom right across from yours.

You slept for most of the night, a rare occurrence. It was 6am when their bedroom door creaked open and you came in, tears streaming down your face.

Natasha woke up first, reaching over Wanda to turn on the bedside lamp, waking her up in the process.

“Hey, detka,” Natasha said, rubbing her eyes “Feeling okay?”

You didn’t respond, crawling into the bed in between the two women, soft whimpers escaping you as you cried.

Wanda reached up, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

You jerked away, curling into Natasha's side. She wrapped an arm around you, looking at Wanda with wide eyes. ‘It’s okay, you’re safe with us” She whispered, rubbing your back. Wanda shuffled closer, tugging the blanket up over you.

“We’ve got you, baby” She said against your ear, nails trailing up and down your arm. “Nothing is going to hurt you, just breathe”

You pressed yourself harder against Natasha, like you were trying to merge your body with hers.

“Shhhh” Wanda cooed, glancing briefly up to Natasha when you began to calm down.

“We’re right here, little one” Natasha murmured “Not going anywhere”

It took you a few minutes to fully calm down, Wanda kept trailing her fingertips over your skin, and Natasha held you through all of it.

You fell asleep pressed between them, feeling warm, safe, and loved – Things you would never have to question again.

[imjustagirlwhosbored]

Hi, i'm writing a fic and I wanted to ask you, do you like reading fics where it's someone x reader, because I don't know if I should go with y/n or original character. Right now going with y/n, but please let me know🫶🏻🫶🏻

Which one do you like more??

y/n

original character

Voting ended onJul 1

[neptnest]

No (at last)

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff & Female Reader

Words: 5,200+

Summary: A love kept since sixteen. A party. A letter written after.

Tags|Warnings: No Happy Ending, Unrequited Love, Internalized Hopelessness, One-Sided Pining, Quiet Devastation, Unrequited Wanda Maximoff/R, Grief, Introspection

Note: This story is written primarily from R's first-person perspective, though there are also sections written from second and third-person perspective.

masterlist

I understood you—that is, Wanda Maximoff—before I understood what it was doing to me. And once I did, there was no taking it back.

I want it to settle somewhere in your chest, the way it settled in mine.

You've always been good at reading people. Better than anyone I've known. You could walk into a room and within an hour you'd have mapped the fault lines of every relationship in it—identified who was performing and who was quietly falling apart, who wanted to leave and who was so terrified of staying that they'd built their entire personality around making it look like a choice. She could see the shape of a person the way other people see furniture: without having to try, without being able to look away once you had. It wasn't cruelty. It wasn't even intention. It was just how you were built. You took things apart the way some people breathe.

I used to admire it. I want you to know that. When we were younger—back when everything felt provisional and the world was still mostly something that happened to other people—that quality felt like a gift you were offering me: the experience of being seen completely and not found wanting. You understood the things about me I'd never said out loud, and you didn't do anything unkind with that understanding. I've known how rare that is since I was sixteen years old, which is how long I've known you.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm writing this because I've decided to leave, and I think you deserve to know why. The one I've been carrying around for longer than I can honestly calculate anymore, revising in my head on subway platforms and in the shower and in the dead hours of three in the morning when your brain decides it's time to do inventory on everything you've been avoiding.

You may not realize it, but I have decided to walk away from our friendship, from your life. I don't think we'll meet again after this—not never, maybe, but not in any way that will resemble what we've been to each other. So these are my parting words. They might not even reach you. You might read the first paragraph and put this down and call me and I'll let it go to voicemail, and eventually the letter will end up at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, and maybe years from now you'll find it when you're looking for something else and you'll read it through and understand it differently than you would have if you'd read it now. That's okay. That's fine. I'm writing it anyway, because I've learned—from watching you, maybe—that some things need to be said out loud even when no one is listening. Even when the saying is mostly for yourself.

So. Let me tell you what I saw.

I.

It was Monica's place, that first night. Late November—one of those gatherings that starts as dinner and becomes something longer, the kind of evening where the wine runs out and someone opens something else and the candles get low and the conversations splinter off into corners and no one quite wants to be the first to leave because leaving would mean acknowledging that the night has an end. The windows had fogged over from all the bodies inside, the air close and warm with wine and conversation. Outside, the first real cold of the year had finally arrived, and the city was doing what it always does in November: pretending to be fine about it.

You were there because Monica knew you through her old job, the one she'd left the previous spring. She was there because Monica had known her since they were both nineteen and muddling through their first year of college in a city neither of them was from. I was there because I had been a fixture in Monica's life for six years by then, which meant I was at everything—every dinner, every birthday, every housewarming, every gathering that needed someone reliable and sociable and good at making newcomers feel welcome. I was there because that has always been my particular talent: being present in rooms where I am not the point.

I noticed her—that is, the notorious Natasha Romanoff—before you did. I want to be clear about that, not because it matters in any consequential sense, but because it's true and I've been imprecise about so many things for so long that I want this letter, at least, to be accurate wherever it can be.

She was sitting on the floor near the bookshelf—she'd gravitated there sometime in the first hour, away from the cluster of people around the kitchen island—with her back against the wall and a glass of red wine balanced on her knee. She was talking to someone I didn't know—one of Monica's brother's people, I think—and she had her head tilted at that particular angle that means someone is actually listening rather than just waiting. She had a way of occupying space that was almost defiant in its ease. No performance in it, no self-consciousness about having chosen the floor when everyone else was standing. A little scattered in her energy—the way genuinely interesting people often are, like her attention was always simultaneously somewhere else and entirely present, like she was the only person in the room who was doing two things at once and neither of them was performing.

Then you came in from the kitchen, and you found a spot along the far wall, and I watched—because watching is what I do, especially in rooms where I'm not the point—the exact moment you found her. Between you and her—that is, Wanda Maximoff and Natasha Romanoff. Looking back now, I understand that there was never any room—not for me, not for anyone—from the very beginning.

You didn't do anything obvious. You never do. But I've been reading you for long enough to know the particular quality of your attention when it catches on something—the way you go very still, the way everything else in the room becomes slightly less real. You stopped performing your own ease. You just looked.

She kept her distance from everything she wanted. You had started to wonder, even then, in those first two hours, if that distance included you. I could see the question forming in you before you'd have been able to articulate it, before you'd have even admitted to yourself that you were asking it.

What you did, for the rest of that evening, was figure her out. Not her history—you didn't know any of that yet—but the structure of her, the architecture underneath. You identified the way she'd lean toward a conversation and then pull back right at the edge of full engagement, like she'd remembered something she wasn't supposed to forget. You noticed the way she laughed a little too quickly at things that weren't quite funny—not fake laughter, exactly, but laughter that was half a beat ahead of where it should have been. You watched her touch the small front pocket of her bag twice without taking anything out of it. You clocked the way she avoided the eyes of anyone who seemed to want too much from her, while holding steady the gaze of anyone who seemed safely indifferent.

You catalogued all of it. Filed it away without meaning to. That's what you do—you understand, and then you can't stop, and then you can't un-understand, and then you are simply in possession of someone whether you wanted to be or not.

By the time the night ended, I think you already knew you were in trouble. You wouldn't have called it that yet—you were probably calling it interesting, or complicated, or some other word that keeps the real word at arm's length. But the way you said goodbye to her—brief, careful, not quite meeting her eyes, a hug that lasted two seconds too long—told me everything.

I've thought about that night a lot, in the months since. I've thought about what would have happened if I'd said something. If I'd pulled you aside on the walk to the subway and said: I can see what's happening, and I want you to know that I see it, and I think you should be careful. But that's not a version of events that belongs in this letter, because it's not a version of events that happened. What happened is that I said nothing. I walked with you to the subway entrance and hugged you goodnight and took the train home and sat with my coat still on for a while before I managed to do anything else. And I told myself I said nothing because it wasn't my place.

---

She had a tiny toy ring. Plastic, pale pink, the kind that comes in a bag of a hundred for children's birthday parties and gets forgotten in the bottom of a favor bag. She kept it in the small front pocket of her bag—the one that's really only big enough for a lip balm or a Metro Card—and every so often, during a lull in conversation or a moment between things, her hand would drift to it and her fingers would close around it for just a second, and then she'd let go. Like a person who keeps touching a bruise to confirm it's still there.

She never talked about it. You never asked.

I noticed that you never asked, and I thought I understood why. For someone who takes everything apart, who builds intimacy out of understanding, leaving something unexamined is not an accident—it's a decision. You knew, on some level, that there are things that cannot be unlearned once you know them. Whatever the ring meant, you had decided you weren't ready to find out.

I know how to take things apart, you told me once, in a different context—about your work, about a project that had gone sideways, about why you were good at some things and why that goodness sometimes exhausted you. I don't know what to do when I don't want to.

I don't think you knew, when you said it, that you were also talking about her. But you were. You were already talking about her.

II.

It took until February for the two of you to become something that didn't have a name. I watched it happen in increments, the way ice forms—not all at once but through accumulation, each degree impossible to notice until suddenly the surface has changed and you're not sure when it happened or whether you could have stopped it if you'd known.

The signs were in the texture of ordinary things. The way your phone became a secret you kept badly, suddenly present in your hands in a different way, as if it had become the location of something important. The way you'd mention her in conversation and then catch yourself, execute a slight redirect, talk about something else instead, which told me more than straightforward mention would have, because you were usually so fluent about what you disclosed and what you didn't, so practiced at the calibrated reveal. With her, you lost that fluency. She made you clumsy in ways you hadn't been in years, in ways that looked, from the outside, like hope.

You kept coming back to the scene of the damage. I don't know how else to describe those months, the winter into early spring: a recurring return to something that was already hurting you, not from self-punishment or self-destruction but from a more fundamental inability to locate the wound precisely enough to stay away from it. She would pull back, that retreat of hers, the one you'd already learned to read—the slightly cooler messages, the plans that didn't quite materialize, the conversational distance that opened up without announcement. And you would give her the space she seemed to be asking for. And then something would happen—a text at midnight, a gathering at Monica's that somehow always contained the two of you, a collision in that overlap zone of shared friends and shared city that felt inevitable no matter how much space either of you tried to maintain—and you'd be back at the edge of it, looking down.

I kept being there when you did. That was my role in the ecology of those months: I was the person you came back to in between. I was just the one who answered when you called at eleven on a Wednesday, not quite frantic, just needing to talk. Who met you for coffee on Sunday mornings when the week had been hard and you needed somewhere to put it. Who let you work through whatever you needed to work through without asking for much in return—without asking, specifically, for any acknowledgment that being the place you came to deposit things was also something I was doing, that it cost me something, that I had my own weather I was dealing with at the same time.

I told myself this was friendship. I was genuinely, impressively good at telling myself that.

You need to pull back, I thought, every time. Emotionally distance yourself before it becomes irreversible. You need to. Before it becomes something you can't undo. I thought it as a kind of silent prescription I was handing out to you without your knowledge, the advice of a person who cared about you and could see something you couldn't. That's how I framed it to myself. That framing was not entirely honest, which I think you've probably figured out already.

The reason I never said it out loud was not entirely about you. It was also—maybe it was mostly—about me. Because if I told you to pull back, you might actually do it. And if you did, the particular intimacy of those months would dissolve: the late calls, the Sunday mornings, the specific quality of your attention when you were working through something difficult and I was the person you'd chosen to work through it with. That intimacy had become something I depended on in ways I had not named to myself. I had been sitting in the warmth of it and telling myself I was just being a good friend, just being present, just being the kind of person who shows up, and I had been doing this for long enough that the warmth had started to feel like mine, like something I was entitled to.

So I said nothing. I kept showing up. I told myself it was kindness and let myself believe it for as long as I could.

---

The night she said it to you, you told me about it afterward. I wasn't there. You didn't give me much—I think that night you didn't want to understand it yet, which for you is its own kind of rare—and what I have is only what you gave me the next morning.

You were at her apartment. Late, a weeknight in the middle of February, the kind of night when the city is doing its colorless winter thing and staying inside feels like the only reasonable response to existing. The details you gave me were minimal—you were sitting with her, it was late, the quality of the evening had shifted into something that felt, you said, like the edge of something. And then she looked at you. And she asked: Will you die with me?

You didn't answer her. You sat with it, and she sat with it, and eventually the moment moved past itself the way those moments do.

You didn't say much about it that night. The next morning you showed up at my door earlier than I expected, without texting first, which you almost never do. You sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee you kept forgetting to drink, and your voice was very even and careful, the voice you use when you're saying something true that you've been waiting to be able to say: I love her as a woman. Just like that. Plainly, without drama—like the words had been there for a long time and you'd finally decided to use them. The only person who knows what happened is the only person I can't be careful around.

I had watched you love people before. For over a decade I had watched you love people, and they had all been men, and I had understood what that meant for me, and I had made my peace with it, or told myself I had. And now you were sitting across from me saying this, and I didn't know, in that moment, whether what I felt was grief or something closer to the particular cruelty of hope arriving too late.

I said, I know.

You looked up.

I mean— I said. I know. That makes sense. It's okay. And then I redirected the conversation, because the alternative was continuing, and I could not continue. Not without saying things I wasn't prepared to say. Not without the conversation becoming about me, which felt—in that moment, watching you finally be honest about something that had been costing you so much—like the most selfish possible response.

So I changed the subject. And you let me. And we talked about other things for another hour, and when you left I washed both cups and stood at the sink for a while, the water going cold against my hands.

Ah—I had thought, sitting across from you with my coffee going cold—*someone should tell her she's too selfish and spoiled. Everything she does is just to satisfy herself. It's not an action born from genuinely considering the people around her.* I thought it with a clarity that felt, for just a moment, like righteousness, and then I felt the shape of it and recognized it for what it was: not an accurate assessment of her character but the specific cruelty that rises up in you when you're in pain and need somewhere to put it that isn't yourself.

Because the truth, which I knew even then, is that she wasn't being cruel. She was being damaged, which is a different thing, and she was being the kind of selfish that people are when they've learned that wanting things openly is a liability. She kept her distance from everything she wanted because some previous version of her life had taught her that distance was the only protection worth having. I knew that. I just needed, for thirty seconds, to believe otherwise.

III.

Monica's birthday. June, the second week of it, the kind of evening that felt like the city had stopped holding its breath. I'd walked over in just a light shirt, the June air warm against my arms, and there was something in that lightness—nothing between me and the evening—that I didn't know yet how to read. The windows at Monica's were open wide, the warm air moving through them, and the street sounds came in with the breeze.

I'd been there an hour by the time you arrived. I'd had one glass of wine and was working on a second and talking to Monica's coworker about something I have no memory of now, which tells you how present I was in that conversation. I was doing the thing I'd been doing these past months: being present in a room, managing the surface of myself, waiting without knowing exactly what I was waiting for.

You came in and found Monica and hugged her and got a drink and started working the room the way you do, easy and warm, making people feel located in a conversation rather than just near one. I watched you from across the room for a few minutes before you noticed me, which gave me time to look at you clearly, without the performance of normalcy we'd both been maintaining. You looked tired. I knew you, and you looked like someone who had been carrying something for a long time without putting it down.

She was there, of course. She'd been there when I arrived—sitting on the floor, naturally, this time near the window rather than the bookshelf, because that's where the good light was. Cross-legged, her bag open beside her with its accumulated geography of receipts and charger cables and the notebook she always had and rarely seemed to write in.

She was listening to someone talk when I first looked at her—actually listening, with the quality of attention she had when she was genuinely interested in something, not the managed half-presence she deployed when she was being polite. She had a glass of wine on the floor beside her and her hair was doing the thing it did when it had mostly dried from a shower but not entirely, slightly unresolved, slightly undecided. She looked, I thought, like someone who had made peace with something recently, or was in the process of it.

Then something in the conversation shifted. Something made her laugh—a real one, not the early kind that came before the feeling—and when the laugh settled she looked up, across the room, and found you.

She sat cross-legged, propped her elbows on her knees, tilted her head into her palm for support, and simply smiled. That's what I saw: the moment that smile arrived. Small, unguarded, a little tired around the edges, carrying something she didn't usually let show. Not aimed at the room. Aimed at you.

That smile of hers—it landed on you differently than anything else had, and I felt it from across the room. I know because I was watching your face when it happened. I know because I have been watching your face since we were teenagers and I have learned, by now, to read the things you don't say. The slight change in how you were holding yourself. The way the careful management you'd been performing all evening fell away for just a second, like a coat slipping off a shoulder. You were looking at her the way people look at things they've been trying not to want.

I was standing by the kitchen doorway with a drink I'd stopped tasting, and I felt—not dramatically, not the way it happens in films—I felt the entire shape of the next several years assemble itself in my chest. The returns and the retreats. Myself at the edges of it, answering on Wednesdays, coffee on Sundays, the person who is always there and always useful and never, ever the point.

I could see exactly how much longer I could do that before it cost me something I would not be able to recover.

I put my glass down on the counter behind me. Carefully. Without making a sound.

I thought: no.

Not a big thought. Not announced by any internal weather that would have been visible from the outside. Just a small, private, completely final no—the kind that comes after you've already been saying yes for so long that the no arrives almost as a relief. The way you might close a window you've been leaving open for months out of habit rather than desire, and feel the room become warmer.

I stayed for the rest of the party. I said the right things to the right people. I helped Monica carry dishes to the kitchen at the end of the night and told her it was a wonderful birthday and meant it. I found you in the hallway on the way out and hugged you and said get home safe in the voice I'd been using with you for most of my life—warm, unremarkable, giving nothing away—and then I walked down the stairs and out into the June air, and I stood on the sidewalk for a while, and I started writing this letter in my head.

---

You may not realize it. You're the least oblivious person I know, and you missed this—because that's how you love, completely, to the exclusion of much else. I've known that about you since we were too young to know much of anything.

I've loved you like that too. For most of my life. Since before I had the vocabulary for it—since before I understood what it meant that your name was always the first thing I thought of when something happened, good or bad. I called it friendship because friendship was a container I knew how to carry. The other thing—the thing I'm apparently only able to name in a letter I'm writing to leave behind—didn't have a shape I trusted myself to hold. And then you sat across from me and said I love her as a woman, and I understood, for the first time, that I had been waiting for something that was never going to arrive in the form I'd imagined. Not because of who you are. Because it was always going to be someone else.

So: I'm leaving. Quietly, without drama, without a conversation that neither of us would get through intact. I'm going to become harder to reach. You'll notice eventually—sooner than I'd like, maybe, because you notice things—and by then I'll be far enough out that the momentum will carry me the rest of the way. There won't be a scene. I'm not capable of a scene right now, and I don't think it would serve either of us.

I want you to know that this has nothing to do with whether she's right for you. That's not a question I have any standing to answer. What I know is this: emotionally distance yourself from her before it's too late, I kept thinking—and then I realized I was thinking it about myself. Not her. I was the one who needed to pull back before it became irreversible. I waited too long. But here I am.

I want you to know that I hope she lets herself have you. I mean that. I've watched her keep her distance from everything she wants these past months, and I've understood it, because I've been doing a version of the same thing—and I know how much it costs, and I know that the price of keeping everything safely at arm's length is that nothing is ever fully yours. The price of keeping everything at arm’s length. You've been paying it too, these months. I've watched you pay it. But I've said what I needed to say. For whatever that's worth.

Take care of yourself. I mean that—eat when you're hungry, sleep, let her see the parts of you that aren't figured out. I think—I genuinely think—that the version of you that doesn't have everything under control is the one she's been trying to get to this entire time. The one she asked about, in February, in her apartment, in the only language she had available.

I hope you give it to her. I never could—not with you—but I think you can. I think that's why it was always going to be you.

These are my parting words.

❅

There had been a signature at the bottom. The ink had run—a drop had fallen, without warning—spreading through the letters until they dissolved. You had seen it happening. You pressed your fingers to it gently, smoothing rather than saving, and when you lifted them the signature was gone. You sat with it for a moment, the illegible place where your name had been. You had more to lose than you'd let yourself know, and you had known it, somewhere, for a very long time. You folded the letter into thirds and left it on the table.

You placed a coffee mug on top of it—the one you always reached for—as if paper might otherwise drift away.

You stood in the doorway for a moment after setting it down. The youlf of too many books. The desk by the window where you worked late on projects that paid too little. The radiator that had knocked persistently all winter and had finally, sometime in the spring, gone quiet. You'd been happy here. That was the thing you hadn't expected to feel, standing in the doorway with your bag on your shoulder: mostly happy. Mostly grateful. The grief already beginning the way it does, slowly, before anything is technically over.

You turned off the lamp and went out.

ᱬ

Wanda Maximoff didn't find the letter until Sunday.

She came the way she always did—no text first, just the walk over, the assumption of coffee and an open door. Three days after Monica's birthday, almost noon, the June light pale and unhurried. She'd been out late the night before, at the other apartment, the one where things were always almost-decided and never quite, where she kept arriving and leaving without anything resolving.

The door was unlocked, the way you sometimes left it when she was expecting her. But the apartment was empty. No sounds from the kitchen, no coat on the hook by the door. Just the quiet, and the light through the windows, and on the kitchen table, three folded pages under a coffee mug she'd left behind.

Wanda read it standing up, which you only understood afterward from the ache in your feet.

Then she sat down and read it again.

Wanda stayed on a chair for a long time after the second reading, not reading anymore, just holding the pages. She had understood everything about everyone for as long as she could remember, and she had missed this. It had been right there, for most of her life, and she had missed it. Outside, the city made its Sunday sounds: a delivery truck idling somewhere on the block, children's voices from the direction of the park.

She thought about calling you—the one who had written this, the one who was no longer on the other side of the unlocked door. She held her phone for a while and considered it, considered what she would say if you picked up, whether you would pick up, what the right thing was. There wasn't a right thing. Wanda knew that. And then she understood—she couldn't help it, she couldn't stop understanding—that calling would be the thing you'd asked her not to do. She could give you this instead: she could be careful with you, the way you had always been careful with her.

Wanda put the letter on the table. She put her phone down beside it. She sat with it for a while—the letter, the mug, the room that was no longer yours—and let it be something she couldn't figure out alone. Then she picked up your phone and looked at the other name—the one that had been at the center of everything all these months— and she held it for a moment. The feeling was still there, with nowhere left to put it. Her closest friend had always been the one she brought things to, when she didn't know what else to do with them. Then Wanda set the phone back down without doing anything with it.

The light moved across the floor the way it does on Sundays, slowly, without urgency. Somewhere in the building, a door closed. Somewhere outside, the children had moved on.

masterlist

[hotforolderwomen6]

Okay would you lovelies rather have a Wandanat Fourth of July fic? Or just a Wandanat lake day fic…or both?

[written-in-chaos]

Who are your favorite fanfic writers?

Ooohhh this is so tough, my favourite fic writers are all from like years ago! I’ll list a few I can remember/had written down:

@missmonsters2

@maximotts

@wellsayhelloaagin

@8bitscarlet

@recyclablewipes

@randomshyperson

@redvelvetnat

@captains-simp

@ladyylesbian

@may-fanfic

@sweetromanova

@loveisanimaginarydagger3000

@maximons

@wandaromanova

And gone but never forgotten:

twilight-99-tm ( @nats-firefly now?)

temptationsbrew

vancityfire13

rebeliz777

nermalina

I haven’t been able to read a lot recently with life being so busy! I’ll mention a couple of active accounts:

@iwantlizziebad

@verainviolet

@wandanatsbee

@just-aake

But there are so many others I have listed waiting to read!

[softlymaximoff]

Just a little thought 👀

Natasha behind you, Wanda in front. Your back against Nat’s chest, her hands loosely tracing patterns over your nipples. “So sensitive” her voice dropping into that low calibre you’ve gotten to know so well. A strangled whine leaves your lips as she kisses your sweet spot. Wanda laying flat in front of you admiring your slick, head on one of your thighs while one of her hands traces a similar pattern to Natasha’s, except shes inches away from where you need her most. They’d pulled three orgasms out of you already and you were wrecked. Or so you thought.

“Is our pretty girl still needy?” Wanda cooed as she casually slipped her index and middle finger just past your folds. Not enough to give you what you wanted, just enough for your hips to jerk away from her hands. “Ah-uh, Mommy isn’t done yet. Mommy hasn’t finished admiring your pretty pussy” she raised an eyebrow and brought her fingers to her lips. “You always taste so sweet” she hummed around her fingers and Natasha had a bright idea to bring her hand at the base of your throat. Not squeezing, just heavy.

“Can’t escape now” she grinned and instinctively you tipped your head back, resting it on her shoulder behind you. “Good girl” she murmured and if you were paying any attention, you would have seen the way she nodded her head towards Wanda. “I wonder how pretty you’d sound if Mommy pressed right here” she barely let you register her words before her thumb meticulously rolled over your clit. Automatically your thighs tried to squeeze shut but with Wanda’s head in the way and Natasha’s hand now at the base of your jaw, you mewled out some form of sound.

“Behave” Natasha reminded you and you shut your eyes at Wanda’s new game. She’d taken the liberty of your thighs closing and sucked on your clit. “Mommy— I can’t— please” you don’t even know what you were asking. Did you want her to stop? To keep going? Your brain was in shambles and they knew it. “Mommy just wants one more. I know you can do it” she mumbled between your thighs and you took a deep breath in trying to regulate yourself. “Let Mommy explore” Natasha whispered as her teeth grazed your jaw, marking you with a nice purple bruise at the base of your jawline.