Untitled

Therapists had always warned you that you were too arrogant… maybe they were right after all.

“Keep your hands up, (L/N),” the agent behind you barked, though her voice wavered slightly under the pressure. “D-don’t make any sudden moves.”

Your hands remained in the air, staring straight ahead at the carnage around you.

Yeah… this was not the plan at all.

-X-

Six Hours Earlier

“Here you go, cousin,” Remy grinned, tossing you the keys of a pontoon boat. “She’s got a full tank and two cans in the under, long as ya smart ‘bout travelin’ the coast.”

Grinning, you wrapped him up in a hug, breathing in the only family you had left.

Remy wasn’t actually your cousin, but he was closest thing you’d ever had to a cousin growing up. Your parents had been best friends, once upon a time, and you’d spent much of your life with him. Seeing him again, after everything, was everything to you.

You hadn’t warned him you were coming — couldn’t, obviously — but he hadn’t been fazed in the slightest by your arrival. He was just happy to see you alive and not in a four-by-four holding cell.

“Next time ya come an’ see me, maybe don’ bring Feds to my door, ya hear?” he chuckled, clapping you gently on the back.

“…be safe, cousin. I don’ want to be at your funeral yet.”

You swallowed once, nodding against his shoulder before pulling away, bringing Wanda into your side.

“We should go, before anyone around here gets smart,” you murmured, kissing her temple as you led her towards the boat.

“Oh, there’s a radio on the boat,” Remy called out casually. “Tuned in for… whatever you might need.”

He offered a wink before heading back into his cabin, the door closing softly behind him.

Hopping up onto the boat, you helped Wanda step onto the rocking platform, setting the bags aside, and dropped into a seat as you pulled out the map.

“Alright, so if we’re smart, we can drive this entire coast,” you dragged your finger along the paper, “and park this monstrosity in Texas before anyone catches on. From there, we take a car and head for Nevada.”

Wanda nodded, her head resting on your shoulder, her floppy hat that she was determined made her look like a tourist smacking just below your ear.

“…only two more days to go,” she whispered, the words hopeful and exhausted in equal measure.

“Two more,” you echoed in promise, kissing the top of her head before you stood, taking the captain’s seat.

-X-

Three Hours Ago

The radio screeched to life just after you passed into St. Mary’s.

Officer One: “caller told dispatch she was certain she saw (L/N) and Maximoff talking to a man before he gave them the keys to a pontoon.”

Officer Two: “was the man identified and did he give his statement to the officers on scene?”

Officer One: “yeah, the man was identified as Remy LeBeau. He said he didn’t know the women. They saw his sign to buy his boat and bought it, in cash.”

Officer Two: “do we believe him?”

Officer One: “officers onsite found no reason to discredit him, but they are planning to keep an eye on him in case they come back.”

Officer Two: “alright, then have every officer trained in the bayous to start hunting. They couldn’t have gotten far and they aren’t from around here. I doubt it’ll be hard to find them. Hell, maybe the gators will do our jobs for us.”

You lowered the volume on the radio, staring out at the water ahead.

“Sounds like we’re going to have to ditch the boat sooner than we hoped,” you exhaled, running a hand over your face. “Shit.”

Wanda stood beside you, her hand on your shoulder as she kept watch around you.

“We knew it’d be a possibility, detka,” she sighed. “Let’s just get as far as we can and we’ll ground it somewhere when we have no other choice.”

-X-

Two Hours Ago

You’d spent the last hour in a tense silence, both of you waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wanda was stress-eating gummy worms, a habit you found adorable, even when you were incredibly stressed out.

Like right now.

The sun was beginning to set over the water, a blessing and a curse if you were being honest. A blessing because it made you harder to see; a curse because alligators. The last thing either of you needed was to come face to face with the socially acceptable dinosaurs.

A mile ahead of you, there was something…

“Is there… lights flashing up there?” you asked, squinting.

Wanda’s hand tightened on your shoulder. “Those are police boats… they’ve formed a barricade up ahead.”

Hissing through your teeth in frustration, you began to veer off towards the bank, hoping it didn’t look as suspicious as it felt.

(Newsflash, it definitely looked suspicious.)

The engine sputtered and ground as it headed for shallow water, an unfortunate noise in the stillness of the evening. The night birds and creatures of the bayou scattered as the machine came to a grinding halt against the muck, but you didn’t have time to consider it much. There was too much to do and too few miles between the officers and yourselves.

Wanda had already repacked the backpack by the time the engine cut off, slinging it over her shoulder, a pistol in her hand.

“We don’t stay long enough to let them catch us,” she said seriously as you grabbed the police radio and your pistol from under the steering wheel.

“Agreed. But,” your hand lifted, cupping her jaw as you met her gaze. “If they catch me, you run. Don’t wait. Don’t save me. Run and don’t look back.”

It was meant to sound like a command; it was more a plea.

“Promise me, Wanda,” you begged, pressing your forehead against hers. “Please.”

Her eyes were wide and shiny with tears, but she forced a dry swallow and nodded. “I will…”

You both knew it was a lie, but you appreciated her effort anyways. Your mouth crashed into hers, and you kissed her like it might be the last time.

-X-

Now

Your hands were settled across the back of your head, fingers laced together as you forced your breathing to stay even.

“Y’know, agent,” you called backwards calmly. “Your partner is alligator food, it’s dark as the ace of spades out here, and it’s just you and me. Must we continue this charade? How about this: you let me go, I leave you to collect your partner’s extremities – whatever you can find – and I’ll be on my way.”

“W-where’s Maximoff?” the agent demanded, and you could hear the way her hand trembled even as she pointed the gun at you.

“I don’t know,” you answered truthfully, a soft smile on your lips. “Hopefully far, far away from here.”

-X-

Fifty Minutes Ago

Trekking through the muck of a bayou at sunset was nowhere near your top ten favorite date activities. Mud was caked to your boots, every time a twig snapped, you immediately assumed it was an alligator, and you were hungry.  

A bad combination all the way around.

There had been a number of times you’d thought the two of you had found a way back to the main road, only to be forced back into the darkness when the flashlights of the Louisiana Patrol swept across the area.

You were nearing another edge when –

“Hey! You two! Stop!” a stern voice called out from behind you.

Glancing at Wanda, your gaze was steady, even as your pulse raced.

“Go. Run. Do not stop and do not look back,” you whispered, kissing her temple. “…I love you, Wanda Maximoff.”

You shoved the bag into her arms before bolting deeper into the trees, leading them away from her.

-X-

Now

“Y-you just abandoned her? Out here?” the agent sounded disgusted and furious with you. “You really are a sick, cold bastard, aren’t you? Sacrificing her to save your own skin.”

You spun on your heel, glaring at the agent. “Don’t act like you know a goddamn thing about what I’d do for that woman.”

The agent’s finger tightened around the trigger, her eyes wild and panicked. “D-don’t move any closer!”

“I didn’t move towards you at all, you dumb bitch,” you sneered, a cold smirk tugging at your lips. “I turned around. There was no forward momentum.”

You tilted your head.

“…this is your first major moment in the field, isn’t it? Pointing your service weapon at a criminal. I bet you’ve never fired it at a live person before, have you?”

In the fading light, you could see how bad her hand was shaking.

“Come now, love. Put it down and let me walk away. It’ll be better for us both.”

You took one step forward, a twig snapping under your boot, and the agent jerked backwards, finger clamping down on the trigger –

Boom!

Both of you stared wide-eyed at each other, the sound of the gunshot ringing between you, before your gaze flickered down towards the blood beginning to blossom.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

"oh bunny.. where are you? you know mommy doesn't like it when you run from her. come out now."

wanda hums, your breathing quickens as you continue running through the dark, dense woods. how did she already manage to catch up to you? you could've sworn she was fast asleep when you left the cabin.. whatever, that doesn't matter now. you continued making your way into the forest, and when you're sure wanda was far enough for you to catch your breath, you sigh and lean against a tree, panting heavily.

wanda was right though; the last few times you tried to run away, she caught you within an hour, spanking you harshly after dragging you back to the cabin to make sure you weren't hurt.

you can still clearly remember how it felt. the way the rings on her fingers added to the sting.. the way you got wetter—no. you shouldn't be thinking about that.. atleast not while you’re literally trying to escape her. you let out a deep breath, one you didn't even realise you were holding. you relaxed your muscles, your head falling back against the hard wood and your eyes flutter shut on their own accord. yeah, this was nice. maybe you should stay a minute to catch your breath.

you felt a sudden pressure on your throat and your eyes dart open. your breath hitches when you see wanda standing in front of you, a displeased expression on her face that sends a sudden shiver up your spine and a jolt to your core.

"caught you. dumb bunny, you thought you could run from mommy forever?” wanda tuts, before she continues “i'll always catch you in the end. just too stupid to think straight” she added a little more pressure onto your neck as she spoke. “now, its time to come home, yeah?" wanda cooed, her voice sickly sweet.

building up your courage, you managed to find your voice to shout.

"no! i'm not—don't call me that! i'm not going back to that..” you suddenly as you look around in fear, “..that god forsaken place again!”

a deafening silence filled the atmosphere, one where you silently begged for the ground to swallow you whole. wanda's expression hardens, and so does her grip on your throat. a strangled gasp left your lips as your hand comes up to wrap around wanda's wrist, looking up at her wide-eyed.

"you're exhausting my patience, bunny. if you're not going to cooperate, i'm gonna have to take things into my own hands.” she warned. “and trust me.. you wouldn’t like that; so im giving you a choice. either you come back with me,” she stops, “or i'm gonna have to make you," wanda growls, her sokovian accent bleeding into her words. fuck. she's definitely pissed.

you swallow thickly, before weakly responding with a quiet ‘f-follow you' that seemed to please wanda. she finally releases her grip on your throat, moving her hand to grab your wrist as you two make your way back to the cabin in awkward silence.

"t-twenty five, thank you mommy!" you cried out, your ass all red and bruised, a quiet clatter being heard as wanda placed the paddle down.

"good bunny.. now drink. you know why mommy does this, don't you? it's for your own good."

you part your lips obediently as wanda tips the shot glass into your mouth, the liquid burning down your already-raw throat, a sharp cough leaving your throat involuntarily.

a small sound escapes your lips when you feel her fingers trail down to your lace-covered pussy, where your arouse was dripping down your inner thighs, and onto wanda's lap.

"oh my, you got so worked up over a few spanks, bunny... let mommy take care of you, okay?" you nodded absentmindedly, muttering out something incoherent that sounded like a 'yes, mommy’

wanda loved how mushy your brain gets after every time she "punishes" you. i mean.. was this really a punishment? you did enjoy it, didn't you?

wanda gently lays you onto the bed, biting her bottom lip at the sight of your nipples, barely covered by the white lace of your bra and the damp spot on your matching panties. she pulls your underwear off as she pushed the cups of your bra up, admiring your semi-hard nipples. she takes one into her mouth and uses her free hand to pinch and twist at your other nipple while you whine.

wanda finally pushes your panties aside and parts your folds, watching as you clench around nothing, your hips jutting up when wanda suddenly spits on your pussy.

a loud moan sounds through the room when wanda suddenly pushes two fingers into your wet heat, the friction almost unexistent as they easily slide in. she curls her fingers just right until they reached that spongey spot in you that makes your back arch off the bed and lets you see stars.

at the same time, wanda kissed and bit at your neck, as you let out a breathily moan.

"mommy—mommy, im close!" you whine loudly. your sounds spur wanda on. she leans down and sucks your clit like a woman starved. her tongue flicking over your sensitive nub as she continues pounding your tight pussy with three fingers. it wasn’t long till your orgasm crashed over you, a string of curses bouncing off the walls as you gush around wanda's fingers, gasping out a 'too much’, trying to push her fingers out of you. wanda didn’t like that. her hand comes down to slap your used pussy, a stranged sound leaving your throat.

"no. mommy's not done yet. you'll take it though, won't you? mommy's just so worked up after your little performance." wanda says sharply, her voice a sickly sweet tone that makes your brain mushier. you whine when wanda walks out the room, but the second she walks back in wearing nothing but a harness with a 9-inch strap attached to it, your complaints die down, and your breath hitches. wanda crawls onto the bed above you, her hand slowly pumping the strap as she groans and mutters sokovian praises.

when wanda finally lines the strap up with your pussy, she immediately pushes it in, which makes you cry out loudly, your hands moving to claw at her back and tangle in her hair. she sets a rough and fast pace, her free hand grabbing both your hands down above your head, using her magic to restrain them together before she uses her other hand to grab at your breasts, groping them and pulling your nipples.

as you get closer to your second orgasm of the night, you pussy clenches around wanda's strap, making it harder to move in you, but wanda still manages to keep the rough pace, hitting the spongey spot in you that makes you see stars over and over again.

"yeah? you're close, bunny? you wanna cum all over mommy's cock? cum for me, bunny. now."

right as wanda says 'now', her thumb starts rubbing at your clit, the dual sensations tipping you over the edge again as you gush around her cock.

wanda finally pulls out and the sudden emptiness makes you whimper. she releases your hands before conjuring a damp towel and gently patting at your overstimulated pussy and your thighs.

"you were such a good girl for mommy, bunny. shh, it's okay, you can sleep. i got you, we'll wash up later."

The last strike of the cane landed on your backside and you couldn't help but let out a breath of relief. 

You didn’t move, your breaths coming out in shallow gasps as you tried to regain some sort of a composure. 

“Good?” Asked Wanda as she moved to take the cuffs off of your wrists. They cuffed your arms behind your back at the beginning of the scene but by now you could barely feel anything, your limbs numb from no movement. 

“Yes.” You answered robotically.  

You didn’t enjoy it much, the cane. It left a sting that forced tears that had nothing to do with pleasure, but every ‘Color?’ was answered with ‘Green’.

You were far too afraid that if you told them you didn’t enjoy something they would end the arrangement and you would be left without an income. An income that you desperately needed to get by. Rent, tuition, food, none of that would pay itself. 

“I’m gonna go grab some lotion for her.” Muttered Natasha as she eyed you, unsure if you were just recovering from the intense canning or if something was genuinely wrong. 

Natasha and Wanda were good dominants, asked all the right questions, negotiated everything, though their care was more on the impersonal side. You were not their girlfriend or a wife. You were simply someone they paid for a good time. To be their little toy for the weekend and then go home. 

Every move, every word, every decision told you you were simply a person providing a service and nothing more. You were okay with that, that was what you signed up for after all. And they did pay you well, each sunday ending with a generous transaction. 

You only saw them through the weekend. They were far too busy with their company during the week and liked to keep their weekday evenings free for relaxation while you were left juggling school and your two other jobs throughout the day. 

You felt the mattress dip by your side as Wanda slowly stroked your hair. “I hope these are not sad tears.” She murmured. 

You shook your head immediately. “I liked it.” 

You did not. You wanted to stop before it even started. 

It was them who introduced you to the world of BDSM, though they weren’t really aware of it. You told them you were experienced. 

It wasn't like you hated everything. Being tied up was nice, especially when they edged you or overstimulated you. The paddle was fun too, hurting just enough to make you crave more, while slick covered the inside of your thighs. Being called a ‘good girl’ made you squirm and your hips buck more than anything else. You truly found a lot of it enjoyable, but there were certain aspects of it that made you want to hide away and cry, but you often found yourself saying ‘yes’ and ‘green’ even when your body yelled at you to say ‘stop’. This was a job after all. You were hired to be their submissive. To fulfil their needs as dominants. 

So when Natasha suggested the cane you said yes, just like always. You were here to please them, that’s what they were paying you for. The least you could do was say yes. 

“Got the lotion.” Said Natasha as she approached you and sat down on your other side. You heard her open the cap and squeeze some of it onto her palm, the sound more sharp than normal. “This is going to sting a bit.” She muttered. 

You gave her a small nod, just to show her you heard her, though the second her palm touched your aggravated skin you hissed sharply. Natasha was quick to pull her hand away. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, just stings.” You murmured, your voice strained. 

She only hesitated for a second, before her hand reached out again. “I know, the lotion will help. I promise.” 

The initial contact felt like being burned by fire, but you powered through and soon you were able to settle into the touch. The sting didn't immediately disappear, but it dulled enough to not make you whimper in pain. 

They gave you a few more minutes to rest, Wanda helped you roll onto your back and sit up, while Natasha handed you a bottle of water. They both watched carefully as you drank most of it, your mouth feeling like it was filled with sand. 

“Let’s get you to bed.” Said Wanda moments later as she helped you stand up. They had a special room where they did scenes, where they completely took you apart. Once everything was over they would always lead you to their guest room, while they quietly retreated to their own master bedroom. The simple gesture always left you feeling dirty, almost as if you weren’t worth their bed, but you knew the rules. This was strictly just sex, they were not looking for a companionship. 

Wanda helped you lay down when you reached the bed, while Natasha placed another bottle of water on the nightstand. “We’ll be in the bedroom if you need anything. Sleep well.” Said Wanda, her voice lowering. 

All I need is the money. 

“Good night.” You murmured as they closed the door to the guest room and the darkness engulfed you. You desperately tried to shake off the feeling of abandonment. You couldn't understand why you felt so down and shaken, you’ve done scenes you hadn’t really enjoyed that much before, but you were always fine. Why was this so different? 

Whatever. Nothing a bit of sleep won’t fix.  

You closed your eyes, hoping to will the sting away. The money you would receive tomorrow would make it all worth it. Even if you felt like a disgusting, used piece of toy. 

You hadn’t felt this disgusted with yourself since this arrangement started. That first night with them leaving you to question all your morals but you truly had no choice. 

______________

The end of your junior year was approaching quickly and with that the last tuition payment as well. You had it all under control, until you didn’t. 

The past three years were spent running between school in the morning, waitressing in the evening and bartending during the night. It was a lot and you barely had enough time to breathe, but you managed to pay the bills that needed to be paid, though you were often left with barely enough money to afford food. Sometimes all you had left was 20$, and sometimes you managed to save enough to feel like royalty, though you guessed actual royalty felt much different than you did. 

And then it all came crashing down on you in February. Your landlord unexpectedly raised the rent, which meant you had to pick up even more shifts. That was somehow manageable, but then your laptop broke down. And that was truly your downfall. You were in university, you needed a laptop to survive, but the repair cost so much you didn’t have enough for the upcoming tuition installment. 

You paid what you could, leaving a small amount of money in your bank account to afford some food, and promised yourself you would make up for it next month. The next month was the same, and your balance showed you were still almost one full tuition payment short. 

You worked hard to pay it off, and yet, when May arrived and it was time to pay the rest of the tuition off you were more than 2000$ short. 

Then one monday you received an email. Your hands shook and your heart stopped beating for a second as you saw the title. 

Final Notice: Outstanding Tuition Balance

You hesitated for a second before you opened it, wishing you could just pretend it didn't exist, but you knew that was not how life worked. You simply couldn’t run away from it. 

Tears gathered in your eyes as you opened the email. You couldn’t even read the whole message but the most important information stood out clearly. 

Outstanding balance of 4500$.

Failure to meet the deadline might result in a suspension of enrolment. 

By Monday, 25th of May, 1:00 PM. 

You had less than 7 days to get over 2000$. No amount of extra shifts was ever going to solve this, but you still tried asking. Both of your bosses turned you down, claiming there were no extra shifts to give. 

You tried asking for an extension too, claiming it was an extraordinary issue and that by September everything would be paid off. They turned you down too. 

The emergency loan didn’t work out either. 

You could drop out, that would technically make the problem disappear, but you didn’t want to give up now. You had one more year to get through and then you would finally be out of this mess. 

Just when it seemed like this would be the only way to get out of this situation, you overheard two girls talking in the lecture hall while you waited for your morning lecture to start. 

“Ugh, there’s this cute handbag I want to get, but I can’t fucking afford it.” Whined one of the girls. The sound made you wince, you could already tell what type of person she was and it made you despise her before even talking to her. 

“Show me.” Gasped the other girl, curious to see what it could possibly look like. The first girl swiftly pulled out her phone, the webpage with the handback already loaded as she turned the screen towards her friend. 

“It’s so cute though.” Dreamed the other girl, her eyes shining with adoration. 

“Yeah, look at the price.” Scoffed the first girl, the unhappiness clearly written across her face.  

Her friend gasped as she handed her the phone back. “Oh shit girl, that’s worth at least like one kidney.” 

The first girl whined again, the sound cutting through your head. “I know! Fuck it, I need to get myself a sugar daddy. That would solve everything.” 

They both laughed, obviously understanding it was just a harmless joke, but to you it sounded like salvation. 

The idea disgusted you. You were a lesbian, and having to interact with a man that you were not interested in at all left a bad taste in your mouth but you were desperate. 

Maybe we could just talk. Some of them just want dinner and that’s it, right?

You had less than 5 days left, you had to do something. 

That night you searched through the internet. Most of the websites felt much like a scam or straight up like a prostitution website but then you came across the one that would change everything for you. 

SugarDatingNYC

You clicked on it and you were surprised to see the simple, professional design. It seemed more like a corporate webpage rather than a place where one could pay someone for their time. 

The initial link only showed the basics. How it worked. Verification. Rules.

You didn’t see anyone’s profile. You needed your own profile for that. 

You didn’t immediately clink the ‘Sign Up’ button. You couldn’t believe you let yourself get to this point. There was nothing wrong with sex work, if that was what one wanted to do then good for them. But this was not the future you envisioned for yourself. Having to sell yourself just to afford basic necessities. 

You stared at the screen blankly for a few minutes, but your desperation won in the end. You did not want to be kicked out of the school. 

You signed up, but left your profile blank, your profile picture empty. You did not want anyone to see you on a webpage like this. You told yourself you would just look through to see who was on it, how much money they were offering for what type of stuff. 

Some just wanted to text, some wanted pictures, some wanted actual dinners. The money was nice but nowhere near enough compared to what you really needed. 

Then you looked at the profiles of people who wanted something more, something physical, and that’s when you found prices that would actually solve your issue, but the thought made you nauseous. Most of them were men, the profiles filled with sleazy photos and creepy descriptions, the language making you wince. 

No, you did not want to be a slave that would serve her master or a sex toy that would do anything for her daddy. 

No money was worth this. 

And then you stumbled upon their profile. Natasha and Wanda. A Married couple, both dominant, looking for a submissive, women only. Their profile was clean, professional, and it felt like finding a needle in a haystack. 

They wanted a dinner first, to discuss preferences and boundaries, promising a generous compensation. 1500$. It wasn’t enough but it was better than nothing and their profile was the only one that did not make you want to curl into a corner and cry. 

Your fingers hovered above the keyboard, wondering what you should write. Each message left unfinished before you deleted it. Frustrated, you put the phone away, deciding to let it be for now. 

The next morning you woke up even more drained than usual. School, work, another work, all of it passed with you barely noticing, your brain working on autopilot. Soon you were in the same place as yesterday, laying in bed and staring at that damn webpage. You found their profile again.

You pondered, but then you finally made the decision. You truly needed the money and there really was no time to waste. It didn’t matter to you that you weren’t a submissive. Or at least you weren’t aware of it. You weren’t totally clueless, you knew one side had control and the other didn’t, you knew people liked being tied up, liked being hit, but you’ve never tried it before so you couldn’t really tell if that was something you were into. It didn’t matter though. If they wanted a submissive, they would get one. 

You redid your profile, added a picture, a description, perfectly tailored the profile to what they wanted, adjusting the language over and over again to match their tone. 

And then you messaged them, your hands shaking with nerves. 

Hi, I really like your profile. Would you be up for a meet up? I’m available any time. 

You didn’t expect a quick response, after all it was middle of the night, and perhaps they didn’t even visit the website that often. You put the phone away as your heart beat dramatically. You couldn’t believe you’ve done this. You closed your eyes and tried to sleep, but your current situation left you feeling restless. It wasn’t until your alarm was almost about to go off that your brain finally decided to quiet down. 

You checked the webpage the second you opened your eyes and you couldn’t tell if you were relieved or disappointed to find your message unanswered. They hadn’t seen it yet, which was a good sign, it at least meant they hadn't completely dismissed you, but it left you feeling uneasy. 

It was during the second lecture of the day, while the lecturer was setting up his presentation for the class that you decided to check the webpage again. Your eyes widened when you saw you got 2 new messages. 

Tonight, 8PM. Here’s the address. 

The second message was an address of a restaurant, which you immediately looked up. It was luxurious and expensive, located in a part of the city you don’t venture in accidentally. Clearly meant for wealthy people to visit.  

You were a bit startled to see there was no hello or an introduction, just a simple instruction with time and place. What if they’re serial killers? 

You shook the unwanted thoughts away and typed back.

I’ll be there. 

Your shift at the bar was supposed to start at 9 PM, there was no way you would be able to make it. You opened the chat with your boss and messaged him that you wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. 

_____________

“You think we should text her back?” Asked Wanda as she stared at the opened chat in Natasha’s phone. 

Natasha just shrugged her shoulders as she answered indifferently. “We can try. What do we have to lose?” 

“She seems eager.” Murmured Wanda thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, she probably wants the money.” Chuckled Natasha. She knew what the girls on these sorts of apps wanted. Easy money to buy luxurious stuff. It wasn’t like it bothered her, but she did find it humorous at times. 

“Let’s just meet up with her tonight, the worst that can happen is that she won’t show up.” Argued Natasha. 

“Okay.” Sighed Wanda, the excitement missing in her voice. 

They had a happy marriage, some would argue that it was too happy. They loved each other dearly and were more than enough for one another. But over the years their sexual desires grew, what started as a very vanilla sex slowly evolved into more kinkier stuff. However, that’s when they realized one important factor. Neither of them were truly submissive. Both of them could relinquish power every now and then, but the simple truth was that both women simply enjoyed being dominant more. 

It wasn’t a marriage ending type of issue for them, but they both secretly hoped for some sort of a solution. 

Neither of them expected for that solution to arrive so soon. 

They were hanging out with some of their friends, everyone in the circle having known each other for years at this point, which meant that no topic was too sensitive to discuss. 

It started off calmly, everyone simply catching up on what they’ve been up to lately, eating dinner and sharing wine. 

It was later that evening that the conversation turned into a very intense sexual discussion, each friend spilling one confession after another. Wanda and Natasha kept quiet, not revealing much about their own sexual escapades, since they preferred to keep that private. 

That didn’t last long as suddenly one friend turned to the married couple and bluntly asked. “So, who’s the dominant one?”

Both women stared in shock, not really sure what to say. “Uh, I mean, we both are?” Answered Wanda, her voice hesitant. 

“What do you mean?” Asked another friend, placing her elbows on the table as she stared at them intensely, smirk adoring her face. She was always the one that loved winding people up, and she was thoroughly enjoying this moment. 

“Well, we can both sub, but we both prefer being on the dominant side.” Answered Wanda again, a bit more sheepish. 

“So how does that work then?”

“It works just fine, thanks for asking.” Clipped Natasha, clearly getting tired of being interrogated about something so personal. 

“Oh, come on Nat. Don’t be so uptight.” Teased another woman, but Natasha was quick to bite back. “I’m not uptight. This is just none of your business.” 

“It works fine, but if neither of us are up for subbing then we’re just sort of stuck. We still have fun but it just feels unbalanced sometimes. It's becoming a bit more frequent, but it’s okay.” Answered Wanda quickly but honestly, hoping to close the topic. 

“Get a sugar baby then, someone who would sub for you. People will do just about anything, if you offer them enough money.” A different friend answered indifferently, throwing the information at them so casually as if she was discussing the weather. 

“But we don’t want to open our marriage.” Argued Wanda, disgust clearly written across her face. Natasha’s face was no different, clearly not thrilled about the idea. 

“Then don’t. Open your bedroom. Keep it professional, just a simple transaction. They come over, you guys fuck and they leave. No need for any romance.” Shrugged the same friend.

“I don’t know, that doesn’t feel right.” Murmured Wanda as she looked away, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious. 

“Give it some thought, hm? There are many websites meant exactly for this. This isn’t an unsolvable issue.” Said the friend as she offered them an honest smile, her look free of judgement. 

Natasha and Wanda didn’t open the topic that night again once they got home, choosing to let it sit for a bit. It was days later that Wanda decided to bring it up again, approaching her wife and confessing she was willing to give it a try if it was strictly a sex only arrangement. Nothing more.  

They had a thorough conversation about it, clearly laying down boundaries and what they both expected from it. And after that, they started doing their research, looking over different websites to use, neither of them were completely comfortable with it, but they figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. 

They searched through many websites, but none of them felt right enough until they found that specific one. It seemed professional, or at least as professional as it could be and they both quickly agreed to set up their profile there. 

They chose to keep it simple, only sharing what was necessary, there was nothing sexual to it, nothing suggestive, the whole profile looking close to a CV. 

And then…nothing. 

They didn’t reach out to anyone. The idea of reaching out to young girls and offering them money for sexual services felt predatory to them. So they just had their profile there, finding new messages from a few people every now and then, but none of it ever really worked out. 

It wasn’t like either of them was really disappointed, since neither of them truly believed it would work out. So they just left the profile there, deciding to just check if there was anything new every now and then. 

And then they found you, or rather, you found them. 

Were you, perhaps, going to be the solution to their problem? 

_______________

You almost backed out about 10 times before you finally got on a train to go to the restaurant. You couldn’t believe you were doing this. What would your younger self think? 

Your leg bounced uncontrollably the whole way there, and you kept considering just getting out of the train and leaving, but you needed the money. 

It’s fine. It’s just a conversation tonight. I don’t have to do anything with them. 

The walk from the station to the restaurant felt endless and too quick at the same time. You became increasingly more anxious the closer you got, your hands shaking in their pockets and your breathing laboured.

You showed up to the restaurant exactly 10 minutes early, wanting to appear professional, or as professional as you could be in a situation like this. 

You weren’t surprised to already see the married couple sitting by the table, recognizing them from the picture on their profile. They both seemed like the type to arrive at places early. You weren’t sure if you were glad to show up after them or not, approaching them felt weird, but sitting there and having them approach you would feel weird too. 

You walked closer carefully, internally trying to convince yourself to not run away. You kept walking until you stood directly in front of them, their eyes raised as they sensed a new presence and you suddenly felt even more shy at their intense stares. You hid your arms behind your back, not wanting them to see the intense tremor. 

“Hi, I-, I’m the one from the website. It’s nice to meet you.” You said, your voice shaking, as you tried to sound as polite as possible. 

“Hello. I’m Wanda.” Said the first woman and then nodded her head towards the empty chair to your left. “Sit down.” 

Your eyes darted to the other woman who simply offered. “Natasha.” 

You nodded as you pulled the chair back and sat down, it was then that you allowed yourself to look around and admire the restaurant’s interior. It felt and looked expensive, and you could tell the only thing you would be able to afford here would be a cup of water. Maybe not even that. 

“I-, uh, I don’t really know where to start-” You murmured frantically, wanting to fill the silence but Wanda was quick to interrupt you. “That’s okay. Let’s just keep it simple, hm? Choose something to eat, our treat.” 

Her voice was melodic, and so soft you found yourself nodding without even realizing it. You picked up the menu carefully and scanned what was inside. You weren’t surprised to see that you didn’t know the majority of the dishes, everything expensive and way over the top for a regular person. 

“Wine?” Asked Natasha when the waitress brought the bottle to the table.

“Sure.” You nodded absentmindedly. Alcohol was probably what you needed. 

“Did you choose something?” Asked Wanda after a few minutes and you nodded shyly as you showed her what you wanted. She offered you a gentle nod in response as she smiled. 

No one said anything while you waited for the waitress to come get your orders and you were desperate to fill the awkward silence. Though it seemed like you were the only one who felt the awkward atmosphere because the two older women seemed entirely at ease, almost as if this was no different than just a casual dinner with a friend they hadn’t seen in a while. 

Natasha ordered for all of you once the waitress got to your table, Wanda only making an occasional comment with few adjustments, while you sat quietly, playing anxiously with your fingers in your lap. 

Once the waitress left Natasha cleared her throat and spoke, her voice low. “So, what do you want out of this?” 

“I just-, I want money.” You murmured as you winced internally, shame washing over your whole body. 

I sound like a slut. 

“That we can do.” Chuckled Wanda, and her little teasing comment eased something in you.

Maybe you didn’t need to feel so ashamed. They were here for the same thing, they wanted this too. 

“Look, I know this is weird. Believe me, this isn’t what we typically do on a friday evening either, but this is just a conversation, okay? No pressure, we just talk and see where it goes.” Said Wanda, her lips pulled into a tiny but genuine smile. 

“Okay.” You nodded, unable to not return the smile. 

They didn’t ask you much about who you were or why exactly you were doing this, all they wanted to know was that you were all on the same page. They asked you if you had any experiences with BDSM and you nodded immediately, wanting them to believe you were the perfect fit. 

You continued the conversation as you ate, though most of it consisted of them explaining what they wanted from this while you nodded along. They didn’t go into great detail, mostly just clarifying that this was a sex only arrangement to them, it was to remain absolutely discreet, that you were to see no one else during this arrangement for safety purposes and that each night spent together would end with a payment of 3000$. 

Your eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when you heard how much money they would pay you. That would be more than enough to pay off the tuition. 

“Are you still interested?” Asked Natasha as she raised her eyebrows at you, not being able to hide her smirk.  

“Very.” You nodded immediately, earning yourself a chuckle from her. 

Wanda clasped her hands together, closing the conversation. “Well, for now, I think we talked enough. Would you like to come over tomorrow? We can discuss this in more detail, find some common ground and sign a contract.” 

“I-, yeah, sure. That works.” You said as you took a sip of the wine, both surprised and relieved to see this moving along so fast. The sooner this happened, the sooner you would get the money. If they kept their promise you would still get money tonight, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay off everything. 

With that Natasha stood up to go pay, while Wanda led you outside and made sure to exchange your phone numbers, reminding you to send them your bank account number as well. 

Wanda immediately replied to your message with an address. “This is our place. Be there tomorrow at 8 PM, okay?” 

“Of course.” You nodded politely, which made Wanda give you a gentle smile. “Perfect! It was nice meeting you.” 

“See you tomorrow.” Said Natasha as she returned, her hand moving to rest on Wanda’s lower back. They looked good together, almost as if they were from the front page of some expensive magazine. 

“See ya.” You said as you waved your hand awkwardly and quickly turned around in the direction of the train station, desperately needing to escape. 

There wasn’t anything wrong with them, they didn’t make you feel uncomfortable. They were professional but polite. It was the idea of this arrangement that made you feel uneasy. 

You will feel even more uneasy when you get kicked out of the school. 

You watched the people pass you by as you stood at the platform, waiting for your train to arrive. You wondered quietly what they were up to tonight, whether they’ve also done something they never thought they would have to do. 

You felt your anxiety rise any time someone glanced your way, feeling like everyone could see right through you. 

They know what you did. They know your dirty little secret. 

You barely registered the train arriving or getting on it, your body suddenly working on autopilot. It was only half way through the journey that you finally woke up from whatever trance you were in, the sound of a new notification on your phone waking you up. You pulled it out of your pocket, wanting to check what it was. 

The color drained from your face when you saw. Wanda transferred the money. 1500$ just like that. 

You released a shaky breath, finally feeling like that weight was lifting off of your shoulders. And as you left the train station and pressed your card against the gate to pay for your ride you realized that dread didn’t fill you, the sound of the money leaving your bank account not leaving you shaken for once. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

______________

You stared in awe as your uber dropped you off in front of their house. Normally you wouldn't spend your money on an uber, choosing to save that money instead, but when you looked up a way to get there you were horrified to find out you would have to walk for about an hour after getting off of the train, the whole journey taking close to 2 hours, while the uber would only take about 30 minutes. The neighbourhood was apparently so high end that there was no public transport going there, everyone simply drove. 

You thanked the driver and got out, slowly making your way to their front door. You felt smaller and smaller as you approached their house. You briefly wondered if only the two of them lived there. You understood the want for luxurious things and that people liked to treat themselves when they could afford it, but a house of this size was simply ridiculous. It could easily house at least a dozen people, probably even more. 

You stood in front of the door for a few moments, debating if you should text them you were here or ring the bell. You chose the latter, feeling like it was a bit more polite. 

There was no response for a while, and you wondered if you should ring the bell again, but just as you were about to reach out the door opened swiftly, revealing Wanda.

“Well, hello there.” She greeted you with a smile adoring her face.

“Hi.” You replied, feeling shy under her intense gaze. 

“Come on, come inside.” She said as she stepped aside to let you in, revealing the enormous hallway decorated with furniture and numerous paintings.

You couldn’t hide the look of amazement, which Wanda noticed as she gave you an amused smile. “You like it?”

“It’s breathtaking.” You sighed. It felt surreal to stand in a place like this.

“Well, thank you. We are very proud of this place.” Said Wanda as she led you deeper into the house. There was a massive living room to your right and an even bigger kitchen to your left. That was where she led you, while Natasha was already waiting there.

“Hi.” You greeted her quietly, her presence a bit more intimidating than that of her wife. 

“Hello.” She replied promptly as she stood up and went to open one of the cupboards. “How are you?” 

“Good.” You murmured as your fingers fidgeted with the hem of your sleeves. You felt unsure of yourself. You felt like you didn’t belong in this place and you weren’t sure if you should sit down or wait for them to tell you something.

“Nervous?” She asked teasingly as she glanced at you over her shoulder.

You let out a tiny chuckle as you nodded, your hands dropping to your side. “A bit.”

“I would offer you some wine, but I think it’s better if we’re all sober for this conversation. So, how about some water?” She asked as she turned to you completely, holding three glasses in her hands, waiting for your answer.

“Water works.” You murmured as you stood still and watched her place the glasses on the table that separated you. A jug filled with water already placed in the middle. 

She sat down then, staring at you expectantly.

“Sit down.” Said Wanda suddenly as she pulled away one of the chairs from the table before circling it, choosing to sit next to her wife. 

You felt as if you were in the middle of a job interview. When you thought about it that was basically what it was. You were applying for a job, hoping they would choose you.

“So, we discussed the money last night. That still stands if you agree.” Said Wanda as poured some water in a cup, placing it in front of you.

“Yeah, yeah. That's fine.” You nodded immediately. 

“We also discussed how we expected this arrangement to work. That hasn’t changed. But what we would like to go through now is exactly what we want to do within this arrangement.” Continued Natasha, to which you only gave a small nod, showing her you were listening.

“You said you’ve had experiences in BDSM before, right?” She questioned.

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“So, what have you tried so far?” Asked Wanda and you wavered momentarily. You couldn’t back out now, so you scattered your brain for some specific activities you could tell them you engaged in. 

“Uh, well, tying up, spanking…just the usual stuff.” You murmured, hoping to hide your cluelessness behind shyness. 

“It is okay if you haven’t tried something yet. Each scene will be discussed beforehand to ensure we all know what’s going to happen and if we’re all okay with that.” Wanda replied, sensing your uneasiness.

Natasha suddenly pulled out a stack of papers, picking a specific one and handing it to you. 

“This is a list of our preferences, what is okay and what is absolutely off the table. Take a second to look at it and then we can discuss.” Said Natasha, her tone suddenly turning strict.

You nodded as you grabbed the paper and quickly scanned its contents.

Hard limits and Preferences.

You went through the hard limits first. The list wasn’t long but it mostly contained kinks on the more extreme side. 

Age play, anything involving bodily fluids, knife play, breath play, rape play.

You were relieved to see those written in there, knowing that you would have a hard time engaging in these things if that was what they wanted from you.

Then you scanned the preferences. That list was longer. Much, much longer. Some of the things written in there scared you, but you plastered on a polite smile and looked up at them. 

“Seems okay.” You tell them, feigning confidence. 

“How do those hard limits seem to you?” Asked Wanda, her voice taking on a softer tone. 

“I-, uh, it’s okay. I don’t like any of that either.” You answered quickly.

“Anything on the other side that is a hard limit for you?” Natasha asked, her tone stern. 

“No.” You answered immediately. It’s been going well so far, you didn’t want them to throw you out now.

They both raised their eyebrows at that, clearly not convinced that you would be into the exact same things as them.

“I mean, I haven’t done all of it, but I’m willing to try.” You stuttered, feeling shy under their intense stares.

“All of it?” Asked Natasha, obviously trying to catch you out in a lie, but you weren’t going to give up that easily. 

“Yes.” You nodded confidently.

“Well, okay.” She muttered as she picked up another paper, this one carried the same title but the rest remained plain. “Write your hard limits and preferences here for us.” 

Fuck. You did not remember everything they had written in there.

The hard limits one was easy, the list short enough to be memorized in that short amount of time but you wouldn’t be able to write down an exact copy of their preferences.

You wrote as much as you could and handed the paper back to them. They both went through it carefully before placing it next to their own list. 

“Hm, almost an exact match, you only left out a few things.” Murmured Natasha as she raised her eyebrows. She proceeded to read aloud those that you left out but you already prepared an answer. “I haven’t tried those, but I want to.”

Wanda gave you a soft smile as she spoke. “Let’s put those under soft limits, hm? We can start with what you already know and then we can move on to something new if you feel up to it.”

I don’t know any of it.

“Okay.” You murmured.

Natasha cleared her throat as she began speaking again. “Now safe words. We use the traffic lights system. Green for keep going. Yellow for slow down or I need a break. Red for stop. Do you use anything else or would you like to use those?” 

“No, those are fine.” You said immediately. 

“We will have non-verbal safe words in place too. In case you cannot speak. We can do taps or squeezes or you can raise your fingers. One for green, two for yellow and three for red. It’s important that you remember this, but we will make sure to always remind you before any scene starts and there will be regular check-ins during the scenes too.” Wanda added, staring at you intensely.

You gave them a small nod but Natasha’s stern voice quickly interrupted you. “Words.”

Your eyes widened momentarily, slightly taken back. Strangely enough, it made warmth bloom in your stomach, your hips shifting unconsciously. “I-, yes, sure. I understand.”

The talk continued, words like aftercare and subspace thrown around but you didn’t pay that much attention anymore, robotically nodding and agreeing to everything. 

Then they talked about the scheduling. You were to come over every Friday at 8 PM, do a scene and then leave. The same on Saturday, while Sunday and the rest of the weekdays were to remain free for both sides. This meant you would have to cancel your waitressing shifts those days, the times simply not working out but you were okay with that. The amount they would pay you would more than make up for it. 

And then the last step. Signing the contract.

“This is mostly just a technicality. Just something to make sure that all sides are safe and that we all have something to fall on.” Clarified Wanda, but your hand still shook slightly as you held the pen in your fingers. You couldn’t mess up now. 

You read through it swiftly, not really caring what was in it but not wanting to appear careless in front of them. And then you signed it. 

“Well, that’s that.” Said Natasha as she took the paper from you, putting it on top of the other papers. 

“Are you up for a scene tonight?” Wanda asked suddenly, which earned her an immediate nod from you. 

“Are you sure?” She asked, wanting to make sure you weren’t lying, but you weren’t going to butch. You nodded again, trying to appear more sure of yourself. “Absolutely.” 

“Alright then, let’s go upstairs.” Said Natasha as she stood up abruptly, her voice carrying a hint of finality. 

They both walked towards the grand staircase and you immediately followed after them like a lost puppy. You weren’t surprised to see the numerous doors once you reached the upper floor, none of them open, quietly hiding what was behind. You all walked all the way until the end of the hallway and then stopped abruptly as Natasha pulled out a key from her pocket. 

“This is where all our scenes will take place.” Said Natasha as she finally unlocked the door, letting you step in first. You were speechless at the sight. The whole room was red and black, filled with various instruments and furniture, but you could tell each and every one of them served its purpose. Some of them looked like torture devices rather than something that was supposed to bring pleasure. A shiver ran through you at the thought of some of these things being used on you. 

You felt Wanda gently squeeze your shoulder, her voice low, but not judgemental. “Still want to keep going?” 

“Yeah…” You murmured. 

I want to run away.

“Okay. I promise we'll keep it simple tonight.” Replied Wanda as she led you to the middle of the room, stopping right in front of the enormous bed. There was no duvet or blanket on it, only two red satin pillows, the mattress made of leather as well.

She stood directly in front of you, while her fingers grabbed the hem of your shirt, but she made no move to take it off yet. 

You looked up at her expectantly, but she only gave you a small smile. “Can I take it off?” 

Your head moved before you could register it, frantically nodding in agreement, but that wasn’t enough for her. “Use your words.”

“I-, yeah, you can take it off.” You murmured, growing impatient, but that seemed to be enough for her as she began to undress you and soon you stood completely naked in front of her. She stepped slightly to the side, letting Natasha see you properly as well. 

It felt strange to stand naked in front of them, while they both remained completely clothed, the action leaving you to feel weirdly exposed and vulnerable. You had to fight the urge to hide, especially when you saw Natasha sitting down in a chair and looking at you so casually. 

It made you nervous, but more than that, it made you feel humiliated. Humiliated to admit that you liked it, slick slowly but surely covering the insides of your thighs. 

“Color?” Wanda asked carefully, stopping for a second to observe you. You gave her a small smile as you spoke. “Green.” 

She nodded in acknowledgement, but her eyes were already turning darker with mischief. “I’ll start first, just with my fingers and my mouth. Gotta get you ready for Natasha.” 

You nodded wordlessly, the blunt language making you blush. It was unbelievable how they could talk about something so sexual and dirty so casually, almost as if they were discussing what they would have for dinner. 

Wanda inched closer to you, which instinctively made you back up, your knees bending once they hit the bed, making you sit down clumsily. 

“Lay back.” You laid down slowly, looking up at Wanda with nervous eyes.

“Thighs apart.” She ordered again, her tone turning more stern as she continued speaking. Your thighs parted automatically, wanting to please her. 

“Good girl.” Your heart stopped beating for a moment, your breath catching in your throat. You liked that more than you thought you would.

“Now make sure they stay there.” She added as she settled between your thighs, her lips beginning to pepper small kisses along the inside of your thighs. You squirmed a bit, finding it a bit ticklish, but your movements were quickly stopped when Wanda decided to bite down on the flesh, wordlessly warning you. It hurt, but it also made your pussy clench around nothing, making a small whine leave your lips. 

Suddenly you felt a single finger drag through your folds, ending at your clit, which made your hips buckle. “Hm, so wet already.” Mused Wanda, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying yourself. 

She teasingly pressed her finger against your clit, while she kept kissing and biting your thighs mindlessly. You tried to bite back your moans, feeling embarrassed about being so around when nothing even happened yet. 

“Don’t hold back. I want to hear it.” Said Wanda as she raised her head, beginning to slowly circle your clit, which made a moan come out of your mouth. Wanda smiled triumphantly. “That’s it.”  

Your head began to spin, and thoughts were becoming harder to string together. You’ve never felt anything like this before. 

You felt the bed dip by your side and you turned your head, finding Natasha sitting next to you, her legs crossed and face blank, though you could see a hint of something dangerously devilish in her eyes. 

Wanda stopped stroking your clit after a few moments, instead moving her thumb downwards before suddenly dipping it in your pussy. You yelped in surprise, your walls immediately squeezing around her thumb. 

“God, she’s soaked.” Murmured Wanda in awe as she looked up at Natasha. 

“I can see.” Mused Natasha, her fingers going to your nipples, mindlessly playing with them. 

Apparently Wanda was done playing around, because she pulled out her thumb only to push her index and middle finger in as her mouth latched onto your clit. Your back arched at the unexpected wave of pleasure, while moans spilled from your mouth. 

“That’s it. Good girl.” Murmured Natasha while her fingers kept softly pinching your nipples. 

Wanda kept switching between sucking on your clit and circling it with her tongue, while her fingers kept pressing against your g-spot. You could barely hold yourself together, the pleasure turning your brain into a soup. 

You weren’t sure how much time had passed but you felt your pussy clench around Wanda’s fingers more and more as your moans kept getting louder. You knew what it meant. You were close, you were going to cum. 

All of a sudden, Wanda’s fingers stopped, her mouth pulling away from your clit and your eyes snapped open, tears threatening to spill. 

“I-, please, no…” You whined, your hips shifting over and over, despite Wanda trying to hold you still. 

“Are you begging?” Chuckled Natasha as her fingers unexpectedly pinched your nipple much harder than before, making you whine more.

“I-, uh, yeah…” You murmured, blush rising along your cheeks. 

“Well, then you need to do a better job than that, because you’re not convincing so far.” Said Natasha, which made you pout and your brain drift, which Wanda caught immediately. “Hey, color?”

“Green. I’m green. Just wanna cum.” You whined desperately as your hips buckled uncontrollably.  

“Well, you need to wait then. We like to take our time.” Said Wanda as she pulled her whole body away, her fingers slipping from your pussy, leaving you empty and desperate. She settled on your side instead, while Natasha stood up abruptly. 

“You’ve taken a strap before, right?” She asked, waiting for a response.

“Yes.” 

No. You’ve only ever taken fingers. 

Natasha nodded bluntly as she opened one of the draws, pulling out a strap and a harness, the sight making your mouth water and your pussy clench. You wondered if it was going to hurt, anxiety washing over you all of a sudden. You could only hope your face didn’t give it away, as you had absolutely no strength to hide it. 

She pulled the harness up and secured it swiftly, her movements clearly impatient. You looked up at Wanda, who stroked your hair, letting your poor, sensitive nipples rest. 

You felt Natasha kneel between your thighs, and you looked back at her. She held the strap in her palm and slowly but firmly stroked it against your clit, not putting in yet.  

“Color?” She asked and you were quick to answer. “Green.” 

She slowly started to put it in, bit by bit, letting you adjust to the size. You held your breath as you felt the sting of your pussy being stretched uncomfortably, but Natasha suddenly stopped and instead stroked your clit, which made you moan and your hips buck, forcing the strap deeper. 

She kept stroking your clit as she started to push it all the way inside and then stilled once it was all in, letting you adjust. Your legs squirmed as waves of pleasure kept washing over you. 

She started to pull out, but when she was about halfway out she pushed back in, slowly starting to fuck into you, her movements slow but deep. She got rougher as few moments passed, slowly starting to fuck you faster, but it was still relatively slow. Definitely nowhere near enough to make you cum, just enough to be pleasurable and to make your head feel like it was empty. 

But then suddenly her movements got faster, her hips slamming into you at an impossible speed, her thumb harshly stroking your clit. It made your eyes roll into the back of your skull, and you could tell you were close again. 

You let out a small scream mixed with a moan, choking out. “I-, fuck! I’m gonna cum!” 

Natasha’s eyes turned dark as she sternly clipped back. “No.” 

You let out a desperate whimper. “Please…” 

She sped up even more. “Ask me nicely.” 

“Ple-, fuck! Please, please can I cum?” You whined, almost screaming. 

She didn’t grant you an answer immediately, wanting to torture you just for a moment longer, enjoying that look of desperation in your eyes. She sped up her movements instead. And just when one single tear finally fell from your eye she spoke.  

“Cum.” Ordered Natasha, and you could’ve sworn you passed out in that moment. Your pussy kept pulsing for what felt like an eternity and a mix of moans and whimpers kept leaving your mouth. Your hips kept bucking uncontrollably while Natasha kept stroking your clit, her strap buried deep in you, hoping to prolong your orgasm. 

It was only when your whines increased in pitch that she finally stopped moving her finger along your clit, noticing you were becoming overstimulated. She gave you a few moments to calm down before mumbling something about pulling out, but you paid her no mind. 

Moments passed, but your breaths kept coming out laboured, while your mind remained empty. All you felt was someone draping a blanket over you and a hand gently stroking your hair. 

Suddenly Wanda spoke as she helped you raise your head, an object made of plastic pressing against your lips. “Have some water.” You drank eagerly, feeling like you hadn’t had water in ages. You briefly noticed that Natasha wasn’t in the room with you, but your head was too fuzzy to question her whereabouts. 

“That’s enough.” Said Wanda as she pulled the bottle away from your mouth, satisfied to see you drank more than a half and laid your head back on the mattress, her hand resuming its previous movement.

Once you woke up from the haze of the orgasm you remembered. Have sex and leave. 

You looked up at Natasha once she came back into the room, feeling the shyness return. “Could you hand me my phone, please? I need to order myself an uber.” 

She nodded and wordlessly picked up your phone from the chair where Wanda placed it along with your clothes. “Here you go.” 

“Thanks.” You murmured as you opened the app, finding a driver nearby and pressing ‘order’.

“It should be here in about 20 minutes.” You mumbled as you closed your eyes, suddenly feeling exhaustion wash over you. 

“Okay.” Replied Wanda as she mindlessly stroked your hair. You felt Natasha place something into your palm once you put your phone down. You opened your eyes briefly, wondering what it was. 

“Chocolate. It will make you feel better.” She explained as she stood up again, unable to stay still apparently. 

You let yourself rest for a bit, but when the app showed you your driver would arrive in 10 minutes you moved to get ready. Wanda handed you your clothes, and you began to dress yourself, which proved to be more difficult than expected since your limbs felt like jelly. 

They both walked down with you, Natasha joining you from one of the other rooms on the upper floor. Probably a bathroom. 

Natasha held the door open for you, while Wanda handed you your coat. “We’ll see you on Friday." Said Wanda as she watched you step outside, patiently waiting for your exit. 

“See ya.” You said as you turned around, your uber waiting for you at the bottom of the driveway. 

__________

They paid you so much money that you had enough to go get an actual bag of groceries for the first time in the past 3 years, but as you cooked in your very modest kitchen you felt completely numb. 

I had sex for money. 

You couldn’t even finish the food you made for yourself, feeling as if you were about to throw up every time you swallowed. You put the leftovers in the fridge, already knowing it was just a matter of time before it would end up in the trash can. 

As you laid in bed that night you opened the student portal, the unpaid tuition staring back at you brightly, and with a few simple clicks you sent the remaining amount of your tuition that was waiting to be paid.

If only getting the money was that simple. 

You turned off the screen when you received the automated confirmation email and tossed your phone aside. You turned towards the small window in your room and stared at the city, which was somehow still alive. 

You were hoping for the relief to hit you, and it was there, but it was so dull you could barely feel it. What was stronger was the unbearable feeling of disgust. Tears gathered in your eyes as realization of what you had done truly hit you. 

I slept with someone for money.

You cried yourself to sleep that night, and the night after that too, not being able to shake those feelings as you constantly questioned how you could’ve let this happen. 

You felt that same disgust now as you laid in bed in their guest bedroom, while your backside was on fire. Could you really keep this up? Was the money really worth it? 

____________

Chapter 1: The Woman Who Challenges Death

Chapter 2: The City That Never Sleeps

Chapter 3: The Woman In Green Scrubs

Chapter Four: The First Fallen

Tony did not wait for Y/N to decide whether she wanted to see him again.

Three mornings after their encounter outside the hospital, he appeared on the roof of NewYork-Presbyterian just before sunrise, carrying two paper cups balanced in a cardboard tray and wearing a charcoal coat tailored too carefully for a man who seemed determined to look casual.

The city beneath them was still caught in the seam between night and morning. Streetlights burned in long amber lines down the avenues while a thin silver edge gathered beyond the river, slowly separating the buildings from the sky the way a hand might peel a photograph from its negative.

Far below, an ambulance eased into the covered drive, its lights sweeping once across the wet pavement before vanishing beneath the awning. A city bus rattled through an empty intersection. Windows lit one by one in the apartment blocks across the street, each small yellow square a person waking into a day they believed, without question, they would finish.

Y/N stood near the ledge with Steve a few careful feet away, the wind pulling at the hem of her coat though it moved through her rather than against her. She did not turn when the roof door groaned open behind them, but she felt Tony's presence cross the gravel the way one feels a held breath released. That particular human carelessness of a person who has decided, this morning, not to be careful at all.

He stopped beside her as though joining two angels on a hospital roof were an unremarkable errand, something between picking up dry cleaning and walking a dog. He lifted one cup from the tray and held it toward her, letting the steam curl upward and vanish between them like something trying and failing to reach her.

"I brought coffee," he said, his gaze fixed on the horizon rather than her face. A courtesy, she would come to learn, that he extended only to the people he was most nervous around. "I understand this is not much of an incentive for someone who cannot taste it. But I did not know what else to bring to an intervention."

Y/N looked at the cup without taking it. Steam rose and dissolved against nothing.

Steve said nothing, but his attention had settled on Tony with the particular stillness of a man deciding, moment by moment, whether to intervene.

Tony noticed. He lifted his own coffee toward him in a small, mocking salute. "You can stop looking at me like that, Steve. I am not here to convince her to leap from the roof."

"You've convinced people to make reckless choices before." Steve's voice was quiet, but the quiet did nothing to blunt the warning folded inside it.

Tony pressed a hand to his chest, feigning a wound. "I prefer to think I provide dramatic context and then allow people to ruin their lives independently. There's a difference. It's mostly liability."

"I didn't ask you to come," Y/N said, turning back to the city so she would not have to watch him try to charm his way past her.

"No one ever does." Tony set the rejected cup down on the low stone wall beside its twin, leaving it there between them. "It's one of the great burdens of being necessary."

The wind swept across the roof and lifted his coat at the hem. He stepped nearer to the ledge, resting both hands against the stone, and for a moment he looked less like a man who owned buildings and more like one who had simply run out of places to stand.

Steve broke the silence first, and when he spoke his voice had gentled into something closer to instruction than conversation. "There's a woman in Queens. Her time is close."

Y/N heard it the instant he said it, the way she always did, a second heartbeat arriving before the words that described it. An elderly woman lay in a narrow apartment three boroughs away, her daughter asleep in a chair pulled close to the bed, one hand still resting on the blanket as if she'd fallen asleep mid-vigil. The woman's breath had thinned to something shallow and effortful, and beneath it her heart carried the particular, unmistakable stagger that came before a stopping.

"I know," Y/N said.

"She won't be frightened," Steve told her, and something in the certainty of it made it clear he had seen a thousand deaths gentler than the world expected. "But she shouldn't wake alone."

Y/N nodded, already half turned toward the feeling of the apartment, the metronome dust, the daughter's slack shoulders.

Steve's gaze slid sideways to Tony, and something passed between the two men that Y/N could not name. Old, complicated, worn smooth by years neither of them discussed easily, the kind of understanding that exists only between people who have grieved the same thing from opposite sides of a door. Then Steve stepped back and let the pale morning air close over the place where he had been standing, and he was gone.

Tony stared at the empty spot for a moment too long. "He still knows how to leave a room," he said, and there was real admiration buried under the sarcasm. "Very solemn exit. Impressive commitment to making everyone else feel guilty by comparison."

"Why are you here?" Y/N asked, and this time she looked at him.

He rubbed his thumb along the seam of the paper cup, and beneath the humor his face went careful, almost young. "Because three days ago I watched you follow a surgeon through traffic while an ambulance carrying a dying man passed within a few feet of you, and you didn't so much as flinch."

"I reached him before he died."

"That isn't the point."

"He wasn't alone when it happened."

"You were distracted." Tony said it plainly, without cruelty, the way a man states a diagnosis he wishes were wrong.

Y/N's attention drifted downward, through the roof, through several floors of concrete and glass and human noise, until she found the rhythm she had not realized she was listening for. Steady, if a little fast, the tempo of someone who had gone home after midnight and come back again before dawn.

Tony followed the direction of her gaze without needing to be told what it meant. "There," he said softly. "You're doing it again."

"I'm standing still."

"Your body is."

She said nothing to that, because there was nothing to say that would not confirm it.

Then the first note of the sunrise song moved through the city, and every other sound in the world seemed to lean quietly out of its way.

It began beneath hearing, older than any language spoken by the living, too vast to be contained by mortal ears, and yet Y/N felt it in the marrow of whatever passed, in her, for bone. Light sharpened along the river. Across Manhattan, unseen, angels turned by the hundreds toward the coming dawn: on rooftops, on the girders of bridges, along the ledges of church steeples, all of them tilting toward the horizon like something rooted turning toward a sun it could not live without.

Beside her, Tony went very still.

Y/N looked at him and watched the change move across his face in stages. The humor left first, then the practiced confidence, until what remained was a man stripped down to something almost unbearably plain. One hand buried in his coat pocket, the other curled around a cup of coffee he could feel going cold against his palm, watching a sunrise he could no longer hear.

He had once stood among them. He had once heard the song the way she was hearing it now, full and unbearable and enormous. Now the heavens opened around him in total silence, and he watched it happen the way a man watches a door close on a house he used to live in.

"Do you miss it?" she asked.

He didn't pretend not to understand her. "Every day."

There was no deflection in it, no joke reaching to soften the answer, and that absence told her more than the words did.

The light spread wider over the river, gilding windows and rooftops as the song gathered and swelled. Angels listened. Tony watched them listen, his jaw tight, and Y/N found she could not look away from him either.

"Then why don't you regret it?" she asked. "The choice."

He took a slow drink before answering, and she understood the motion for what it was. Not thirst, but time, the kind of pause a man takes when he has carried an answer so long he has to check it still fits in his mouth.

"Missing something isn't the same as wishing you'd never left it." His eyes stayed on the horizon. "I miss never feeling pain. I miss knowing I couldn't get sick. I miss not lying awake because Pepper's late coming home and I'm doing math on how long a drive from her office should take." His grip tightened almost imperceptibly around the cup. "I miss eternity the way people miss the houses they grew up in. The rooms get bigger in the memory. The summers get warmer. The doors were always open, in hindsight, even the ones that weren't. That doesn't mean you're meant to go back and live there."

"You gave all of this up for one life."

He turned his head, and for once there was no irony anywhere in him. "No. I gave it up for my life."

The distinction sat between them, small and enormous at once.

The sunrise song went on filling every place he could no longer reach, and he let it, standing there and taking it the way a person stands in rain they've decided not to run from. Then, without ceremony, he picked up the second cup and pressed it into her hands. She let him. The cardboard held no warmth; the steam brushed her fingers and felt like nothing at all.

"Come with me," he said, already turning toward the door. "You have questions, and this roof encourages far too much poetry for an honest conversation."

"There's a death waiting in Queens."

"Then go." He adjusted his collar, unhurried. "I'll be at a café on Madison at nine. If you don't come, I'll be back tomorrow with breakfast and increasingly personal observations."

She didn't move. He reached the door and paused there, one hand on the frame, and looked back at her with something that might have been mercy.

"You should also know that Pepper has decided she likes you," he said. "Which means this is no longer under my control, and she will probably invite you into our home whether either of us is prepared for it or not."

Then he was gone, and the door swung shut behind him with a metal clap that seemed, for a moment, louder than the song still moving through the sky.

Y/N looked down at the coffee in her hands. Her concentration slipped, just slightly, and her fingers passed halfway through the cup before she caught it, steadied her hold, held on.

Around her, angels went on listening to the dawn, faces upturned, unmoving.

Y/N listened with them. But for the first time in longer than she could measure, the song didn't sound only like eternity.

It sounded like something that could be lost.

The woman in Queens died at seven twenty-three.

Her name was Miriam Rosen. She had taught piano for fifty-one years and held, without a shred of doubt, the conviction that not one of her students had ever practiced enough. When the last breath left her chest and her eyes opened onto the room beyond the room, she looked first at her daughter, asleep in the chair with one hand still curled against the blanket, and then unerringly, as if she'd known exactly where to find her, at Y/N.

She did not look afraid. She looked, if anything, faintly annoyed.

"I expected my husband," she said, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her sleeve, the gesture surviving even the transition out of her body.

Y/N stood near the foot of the bed while morning light filtered thin and gray through the curtains, dust turning slow circles above an old radiator that had stopped working years ago and never been replaced. "Your husband isn't an angel."

"I'm aware of that. I expected him anyway." A pause, and then, with the faintest crack of something softer beneath the irritation: "He was never good at waiting."

Her daughter stirred in the chair but did not wake. Miriam drifted toward her and hovered one transparent hand above her hair, unable to touch, unwilling to leave without trying anyway. The motion of it slow and careful, a woman memorizing a face she already knew by heart.

"She worries too much," Miriam murmured.

"She loves you."

"That is often the same thing." She said it not as a complaint but as a small, private joke she had made peace with a long time ago.

She stayed there several minutes longer, her attention anchored to her daughter's sleeping face even as time loosened its grip on her, resisting gently, not out of fear but out of tenderness, the reluctance of someone leaving a room she has loved rather than one she is afraid of.

When Steve appeared in the doorway, Miriam looked him over with the frank, appraising curiosity of a woman who had spent five decades correcting children's posture.

"You are not my husband either."

"No," Steve agreed.

"You look too serious."

He accepted the verdict without defending himself.

Miriam's gaze slid back to Y/N, and it caught, sharpened on the paper cup still cradled in her hands.

"You're distracted," she said, and there was something almost delighted in the observation. The newly dead noticed things the living had long since stopped seeing.

"It was given to me," Y/N said, feeling the need to explain herself and disliking that she felt it.

"By someone you dislike?"

"I don't dislike him."

"Then by someone you like."

"That isn't relevant."

Miriam's smile deepened, satisfied, as though Y/N had just confirmed something she'd suspected the moment she walked in. "My husband brought me coffee every morning for six months before he worked up the nerve to ask me to marry him. It was dreadful coffee. He was persistent anyway."

"This has nothing to do with marriage."

"Everything has something to do with marriage, if you live long enough." She said it lightly, but there was decades of certainty underneath it, the kind that could not be argued with because it had already been tested and found true.

Steve's mouth shifted, not quite into a smile, and Y/N caught it and looked at him. He lowered his eyes before she could ask what he found amusing.

Miriam took one last look at her daughter, then drifted toward the doorway where Steve waited. "Tell the man who gave you the coffee that it's gone cold."

"He knows."

"Then perhaps," Miriam said, already fading, already turning, "he understands you better than you think he does."

She left with Steve, and the small apartment seemed to shrink without her in it. On the bedside table, beneath a film of dust, a metronome stood with its arm resting motionless in the exact center, as if someone had stopped it deliberately, mid-beat, a long time ago and never started it again.

Y/N looked down at the cold coffee still cupped in her hands.

Then she disappeared.

---

The café occupied the ground floor of a narrow building on Madison Avenue, its windows fogged pale with warmth, the smell of roasted coffee escaping in a soft exhale every time the door opened onto the street.

Y/N arrived at nine exactly.

Tony sat near the back with Pepper, a newspaper spread carelessly across half the table and his phone balanced on top of it, though his attention had settled, with far more sincerity, on the eggs in front of him. Pepper sat across from him in a cream blouse beneath a dark coat, her hair falling neat over one shoulder, her posture the calm, practiced calm of someone with long experience keeping Tony Stark from turning an ordinary morning into a public incident.

A waiter approached the door as Y/N stepped through it. His gaze slid past her without catching.

Tony lifted a hand from across the room. "She's with us."

The waiter turned toward the apparently empty doorway and frowned, recalculating.

Pepper closed her eyes briefly, the particular patience of a woman doing quiet math on how many apologies this would cost her. "Tony."

"What?"

"You're making the poor man question his own perception of reality."

"Character building," Tony said, unbothered, already reaching for his coffee.

Y/N let herself become visible.

The waiter startled hard enough to slosh water over his own fingers, staring at her, then at the door, clearly trying to reconstruct a version of the last ten seconds in which he hadn't simply missed a woman walking in.

"I'm sorry," Y/N offered, because it seemed the decent thing to say.

"She's very quiet," Tony said, gesturing at the empty chair as if that explained everything.

Pepper gave the waiter a smile calibrated for damage control. "Our friend has a habit of appearing unexpectedly. It's a whole thing." The explanation made no real sense, but it gave the man a reason to leave, and he took it gratefully.

Y/N sank into the chair beside Pepper. It offered no sensation beneath her, the same way the café's warmth failed to reach her skin at all. Conversations layering over one another around the room, cups clinking against saucers, a child laughing somewhere near the window.

Pepper's eyes dropped to the paper cup still in Y/N's hand. "You kept it."

"He said he brought it for me."

"I also said it was an intervention," Tony put in, cutting into his eggs without looking up. "Apparently the coffee left a stronger impression than the concern did."

"Coffee's kinder," Pepper said.

He pointed his fork at her. "This is exactly why I prefer talking to people who at least pretend to respect me."

"We pretend not to find you exhausting. There's a difference."

Y/N watched the exchange pass between them like a ball tossed too many times to count. Sharp on the surface, no real edge underneath it, the particular rhythm of two people who had worn a groove into their arguments until the arguments themselves had become a kind of tenderness.

Pepper picked up the unused menu at Y/N's elbow. "Would you like anything?"

"I don't eat."

The waiter, returning at precisely the wrong moment, caught the end of it and stopped mid-step.

"She means she's not hungry," Tony said smoothly.

"That isn't what I meant."

"I'm translating."

Pepper cut in before either of them could make it stranger. "Tea, please. Something mild."

Once the waiter retreated, Y/N turned to her. "I can't taste tea."

"I know."

"Then why order it?"

Pepper folded the menu and set it aside, unhurried. "Because people get uncomfortable when someone sits at a table with nothing in front of them, and because Tony is about to spend the next hour explaining human existence to you as though he personally invented it. You'll want something to hold onto."

"I have made several important contributions to the general understanding of human behavior," Tony said, setting down his fork with dignity.

"You once walked into traffic," Pepper said, not looking up from her coffee, "because you assumed the driver would sense your presence and stop."

"He did stop."

"After hitting a parked car."

"No one was seriously injured."

Y/N watched the shape Pepper's smile took, small and knowing, and something in it made her ask, plainly: "You're married."

"Excellent," Tony said, leaning back. "We're starting with observable facts. I respect the strategy."

"Yes," Pepper said, one hand curling around her cup. "We're married."

"You knew what he had been?"

"Not when we met."

Tony lifted his coffee in a small, self-satisfied toast. "I was a very convincing human."

"You didn't understand why people carried umbrellas."

"Rain seemed like a minor inconvenience."

"You refused to wear a coat in winter because you thought being cold was educational."

"It was educational."

"You got a fever."

"My transition required experimentation," Tony said to Y/N, as if this settled the matter, while Pepper's expression suggested it had never once settled anything.

"He also tried to pay for breakfast with an antique gold coin," Pepper added.

"It had considerable numismatic value."

"The waitress thought you were laundering money."

"She lacked imagination."

The waiter returned and set the tea in front of Y/N, steam rising off the pale surface in a way that meant nothing to her hands. She wrapped both palms around the cup anyway, copying, without quite deciding to, the posture Pepper had taken with her own coffee. There was no warmth to find. She noticed the absence more than she expected to.

Tony's eyes tracked the movement. "You don't have to pretend."

"I'm not pretending."

"You're holding it exactly the way Pepper is."

Y/N looked down at her own hands, then across the table at Pepper's, and found them arranged the same way. Fingers curled loosely, thumbs resting along the rim.

She let go.

Pepper's expression gentled. "There's nothing wrong with learning by watching."

"That's what angels do," Y/N said. "Watch."

"That's what you've always done," Tony said, folding the newspaper closed and setting it aside, his voice dropping into something more serious. "It isn't the same as learning."

Y/N met his eyes. Mortality had etched fine lines at their corners and left faint shadows beneath them. Time already writing itself across his face in a hand she recognized from every dying patient she had ever stood beside.

"What's the difference?"

"Watching teaches you what people do." He reached across the table without looking and found Pepper's hand, threading their fingers together with the unconscious ease of a gesture performed ten thousand times. "Learning changes what you do afterward."

Pepper glanced down at their joined hands. Tony's thumb moved once, absently, over her knuckles, and something in Pepper's face shifted in response to it. Small, private, not meant for an audience, though Y/N could not stop watching it anyway.

"What changed you?" she asked.

Tony considered the question with real weight this time. "Everything."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the most honest one I have."

He glanced around the café. A child near the window dropping a spoon, his father bending to retrieve it without breaking stride in his own conversation; a woman at the counter laughing into her phone loud enough to turn heads; the door opening and closing, sending a current of cold air rippling through a stack of napkins.

"When I became human, I thought sensation would be the important part," he said. "Food. Pain. Heat. Touch. Music. I spent weeks treating the world like a lab. Ate until I was sick. Stood barefoot in snow because I wanted to know what it actually felt like instead of what it was supposed to feel like. Let Pepper talk me into believing cheap wine had some kind of hidden value."

"It does," Pepper said.

"It tastes like disappointment in a bottle."

"You finished it."

"I was gathering data."

"He cried," Pepper told Y/N, "because a song ended."

"It was a very moving song."

Y/N tried, and failed, to picture Tony Stark crying over the end of a song, and the image was so unlikely that amusement tugged at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.

Tony pointed at her, triumphant. "There. That was nearly a smile."

"It wasn't."

"It was," Pepper said, her own smile deepening.

Y/N looked down at the tea instead of answering, watching the last of the steam thin and disappear.

Tony's voice quieted when he continued, the performance falling away from it by degrees. "Sensation was overwhelming. But it wasn't the important part. Choice was. Every morning I woke up knowing I had less time than I'd had the day before, and every decision mattered because I couldn't make all of them." His fingers tightened, just slightly, around Pepper's. "I could stay or leave. Speak or stay quiet. Forgive someone or let the chance go by. I could spend an evening working, or I could sit across from the woman I loved while she pretended she wasn't watching me over the top of her book."

"I was watching you," Pepper said.

"I know."

Her gaze warmed, and for a moment neither of them seemed to remember Y/N was sitting there at all.

Then Tony's attention returned to her, steady. "Mortality turns time into currency. You can't afford everything. Eventually that's how you find out what actually matters to you. Not because someone tells you, but because you run out of hours and discover, too late for some of it, what you spent them on."

Y/N thought of the hours she had spent trailing Wanda through hospital corridors, waiting outside doors, listening for a heartbeat three floors down. She had never once thought of that time as spent. Time had never asked anything of her before.

"What happens if you choose wrong?"

"You will," Tony said, without hesitation, without softening it.

Pepper glanced at him, but his attention stayed fixed on Y/N.

"You'll say the wrong thing. Trust someone who lets you down. Waste years on something that falls apart in your hands. Hurt people you never meant to hurt." His voice lowered further. "You'll lie awake wishing you could go back to one single moment and do it differently. And you won't be able to."

Y/N listened for the rhythm beneath his ribs. Strong, still, though age and some old illness had left small irregularities threaded through it now, faint stumbles in an otherwise steady beat.

"Why would anyone want that?"

It was Pepper who answered, quiet and certain. "Because the possibility of losing something doesn't make loving it meaningless."

Y/N turned to her. There was no uncertainty anywhere in Pepper's face.

"It makes love frightening," she went on. "Sometimes it makes it unbearable. But it doesn't make it meaningless."

Tony lifted Pepper's hand and pressed his mouth briefly to her knuckles, the gesture so familiar it looked almost absentminded, and yet Pepper's whole face changed around it anyway, softened in a way that suggested it had never once become ordinary to her, no matter how many times he'd done it.

Y/N looked away, toward the fogged window, toward the gray sliver of New York visible through it.

The waiter passed and asked if they wanted more tea. Pepper declined. Tony ordered another coffee despite the look that earned him.

"Did you know he might die before you?" Y/N asked, once the waiter had gone.

Pepper's eyes stayed on Tony. "Yes."

"And that didn't make you afraid to love him?"

"It made me afraid every day."

Tony looked at her, and for once the humor had gone completely out of his face.

Pepper held his gaze a moment before turning back to Y/N. "Loving him has given me more anger and worry and grief than I know what to do with. More sleepless nights than I care to count." A pause, and then, simply: "It's also given me a life I wouldn't trade for a safer one. Not once. Not on the worst nights."

"That may be the kindest complaint you've ever made about me," Tony said, leaning back.

"You bought a motorcycle without telling me."

"A practical purchase."

"You didn't know how to ride it."

"I learned."

"You broke your wrist."

"The road was poorly designed."

Y/N listened as they slid into another familiar argument. Tony exaggerating, Pepper correcting him without heat, one interrupting and the other ignoring it and continuing anyway. Neither voice turned cruel. They knew, she realized, the exact shape of each other's faults, every edge and flaw memorized the way a hand learns a well-worn key, and neither of them had left.

That unsettled her more deeply than anything Tony had said about mortality.

After breakfast, Tony insisted on walking.

Pepper had a meeting downtown, and she paused outside the café to press one gloved hand flat against his chest before she left, and he bent to kiss her without any apparent awareness that Y/N or the flow of pedestrians around them existed at all. When Pepper stepped back, she turned to Y/N.

"You're welcome in our home."

"We hadn't discussed that," Tony said.

"We're discussing it now." Pepper adjusted the lapel of his coat with the ease of long habit.

"Our home contains expensive and fragile things."

"You're one of them."

Tony sighed, the sound of a man who had lost an argument several exchanges before he'd noticed it starting.

Pepper smiled at Y/N. "Don't let him frighten you off."

"He doesn't frighten me."

"I've become far too approachable," Tony said, aggrieved, as Pepper kissed his cheek and disappeared into a waiting car.

He watched it pull into traffic and hold there a beat too long, the way a person watches a door long after it's closed.

"You still fear losing her," Y/N said.

"Constantly."

"And yet you let her leave."

"She has a meeting."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know," he said, and this time he didn't try to dodge it.

They walked south together, Madison Avenue thickening with pedestrians who moved around Y/N without seeing her, some of them shifting aside at the last second on instinct alone, some instinct in the body registering a presence the eyes refused to.

"You can't keep someone safe by keeping them from living," Tony said, hands in his pockets, his pace unhurried despite the crowd breaking around him. "That isn't love. That's possession wearing love's coat."

Y/N thought of Wanda beneath the hospital awning, of Victor sending her home so she'd rest, of Wanda trusting him enough to leave a dying man in his care. "What if the person you love already belongs to someone else?"

Tony's stride slowed by half a step, just enough that she felt it beside her.

He turned his head. "There she is."

Y/N kept walking, and he matched her without effort.

"There's someone," he said. It wasn't a question.

"His name is Victor. He's a surgeon. He works with Wanda." She said it evenly, and only after the words were out did she realize how much she'd given away with the order she'd chosen to say them in.

"You know his name."

"Yes."

"You know his schedule, too, I'd bet."

She didn't answer that, which was its own kind of answer.

Tony exhaled through his nose. "That bad."

"There's nothing bad about him."

"That's what makes it worse." He gestured as they crossed the street, dodging a cyclist with the unbothered grace of a man who'd once walked directly into traffic on purpose. "If he were cruel, or careless, you could dislike him honestly and be done with it. Instead he's decent. Competent. He brings her food when she forgets to eat, which I understand is apparently a whole occurrence, and he does it without making a production of it."

"I didn't tell you that."

"You're telling me now," Tony said, watching her face. "Your expression did the telling before your mouth caught up."

Y/N's jaw tightened. She hadn't meant to give him that, hadn't meant to picture it so clearly that it painted itself across her face before she could stop it: Victor setting a paper bag down over Wanda's tablet, the particular ease of a man who had done the same small kindness enough times that it no longer needed announcing.

"I don't dislike the food," she said finally.

"You dislike that he's the one bringing it."

"I don't want to take anything from her."

"Admirable," Tony said. "Probably untrue."

They stopped outside a small bookshop, pedestrians dividing around them like water around a stone. "She loves him," Y/N said.

"Perhaps."

"They've built a life together."

"So had Pepper and I, before I understood what I actually wanted." He looked at her directly. "You were already human when you met her."

"No," he said. "I only looked like I was."

The answer silenced her more thoroughly than anything else he'd said all morning.

He pushed open the bookshop door, holding it, gesturing her toward the warm interior with its smell of paper and old glue. She stayed on the sidewalk.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"Because you keep going back to a hospital to watch a surgeon who doesn't know you exist, and Pepper suggested I try kindness before sarcasm, for once, as an experiment."

"You haven't attempted very much of it."

"I'm proceeding carefully," he said, and let the door swing shut, his own reflection standing alone in the glass for a moment before he turned back to her. "Tell me about her."

Y/N's gaze drifted toward the hospital, though it stood miles away and out of sight in every direction that mattered. "She's a cardiothoracic surgeon."

"I know," Tony said. "She's my surgeon, remember?"

"She doesn't sleep enough," Y/N said, and once she'd started, the rest came without her quite deciding to let it. "She carries coffee around until it's gone cold and drinks it anyway, out of stubbornness more than anything. She sings before difficult surgeries, though she'd deny it under oath. She hates crowded elevators, takes the stairs when she thinks no one's timing her. She remembers the names of her patients' families even when she pretends she's forgotten them, because admitting she remembers means admitting how much each one costs her."

Tony said nothing, letting her keep going.

"She tells frightened people the truth. But she shapes it first, softens the edges just enough that they can carry it out of the room without breaking. She gets angry when death doesn't listen to her, genuinely angry, like it's personal, like it's an insult aimed directly at her. She believes every failure belongs to her, even the ones there was never anything she could have done about."

The noise of the street seemed to recede as she spoke.

"She makes promises she can't guarantee, because she can't stand to leave someone without something to hold onto. She's reckless with herself in a way she'd never allow in anyone she loved."

Tony watched her with an expression too gentle to be entirely comfortable to sit under.

"And you worry about her."

"Yes."

"You admire her."

"Yes."

"You're jealous of Victor."

"No."

He lifted one eyebrow and let the silence do the rest of the work.

"I don't want him harmed," she said, sharper now.

"That wasn't the question." He stepped closer, his voice dropping. "Do you want her to see you?"

The stairwell rose up in her memory. Wanda's red-rimmed eyes, her whispered question into the dark, the exact moment her gaze had found the precise place Y/N stood without any way of knowing she should look there at all.

"Yes."

"Do you want her to touch you?"

Y/N's eyes dropped to Tony's hand resting against the bookshop door, and from there to the memory of Wanda warming a stethoscope between her palms before pressing it to a frightened child's chest, to her fingers linked through Victor's over a cafeteria table, to the careful, unhurried way she held the hands of strangers who were dying and needed, more than anything, not to do it alone.

"Yes."

Tony exhaled slowly, the sound of a man setting down something heavy. "Then stop telling yourself this is harmless."

"What would you have me do?"

"That's the question you came here to ask."

"I didn't come here to ask anything."

His mouth curved, without any real amusement in it. "You carried cold coffee across two boroughs and back."

Y/N looked down at the cup still in her hand. She had forgotten she was holding it.

Tony took it from her gently, and this time she let him. He dropped it into a bin by the curb without ceremony.

"You are not ready to become human," he said.

Her eyes snapped back to his. "I never said I wanted to."

"You didn't need to."

"I asked what it costs."

"No," he said. "You asked whether it was worth paying."

The distinction landed too close to true to argue with.

His expression softened, all the sharpness draining out of it at once. "Don't choose mortality because you're lonely. Loneliness makes every open door look like salvation, whether or not there's anything waiting for you on the other side of it."

Y/N heard the old pain buried under the words. "You were lonely."

"For longer than I understood at the time. Long enough that I mistook it for something else — restlessness, curiosity, boredom. It took Pepper to show me what it actually was."

"And she saved you."

He shook his head. "Pepper loved me. She didn't save me. Those aren't the same thing, and it matters that you understand the difference before you go looking for someone to save you too." He slid his hands back into his pockets, the gesture almost defensive. "I chose humanity because I wanted the chance to build something with her, but that life had to become mine, not just something borrowed from being near her. If all you want is Wanda, you'll make her responsible for every kind of pain that follows you into a body. Hunger. Fear. Illness. Grief. Regret. She can't carry that for you. No one person can."

Y/N thought of Wanda taking on the suffering of every patient who passed through her hands as though it were rightfully hers to bear.

"She would try."

"That's exactly why you can never ask her to."

A bus rumbled past, filling the street with noise and exhaust, and they stood through it without speaking.

"Becoming human isn't a romantic gesture," Tony said once the street had quieted again. "It isn't stepping out of eternity straight into a love story with better lighting. It's waking up in pain and discovering your body has needs you can't will away no matter how much you want to."

Y/N listened, and did not look away from him.

"You'll be cold. You'll be hungry. You'll get tired in ways sleep doesn't fix. You'll hurt people and not be able to undo it. You'll watch the people you love suffer and find out love gives you no special power to stop it — none. It just makes you watch closer."

His voice dropped further, quieter than she'd heard it all day.

"You'll lose the sunrise song. And some mornings, the silence where it used to be will feel less like peace and more like a punishment you agreed to."

She thought of his face on the roof, the way it had changed when the song began and he could no longer hear it.

"And yet you'd choose it again."

He looked down the street, toward the place where Pepper's car had long since disappeared into traffic.

"Without hesitation."

There was no triumph in the answer at all.

Only certainty, worn smooth by years of testing it against every doubt he'd ever had, and finding it, every single time, still true.

---

Y/N returned to NewYork-Presbyterian late in the afternoon.

She told herself it was because hospitals were full of dying people, and someone had to be there for them. The lie had grown so familiar by now that it no longer cost her any real effort to tell.

Wanda stood outside Lila Bennett's room, a pen caught loosely between her lips while she scrolled through a fresh set of test results on the tablet balanced against her forearm, her hair gathered into a loose knot that had clearly been fought into place hours ago and was losing the argument.

Victor approached from the far end of the corridor, a paper bag swinging from one hand, and Y/N stopped where she was and simply watched him come.

He held the bag out. Wanda eyed it with open suspicion, pulling the pen from her mouth. "What is that."

"Lunch."

"It's nearly five."

"Then it's an early dinner," he said, entirely unbothered, setting the bag down over her tablet before she could protest further.

"I ate," Wanda said, though she was already reaching for it.

Victor glanced toward the nurses' station, where one of the nurses shook her head slowly, without looking up from her charting.

"Traitor," Wanda muttered.

The nurse smiled and did not apologize.

Victor's hand found the back of Wanda's neck, brief and unhurried, the kind of touch that had clearly been repeated so many times it no longer required thought. "You can't operate tomorrow if you collapse today."

"I'm not going to collapse."

"You said that the last time. Right before you fainted during residency."

"That happened once."

"Twice."

"The second time was dehydration, which is a completely different medical event."

He simply looked at her, steady, unimpressed, and after a moment her resistance folded. She reached into the bag, unwrapped a sandwich, and took a bite mostly to end the conversation.

"Satisfied?" she said around it.

"Moderately."

His hand lingered a moment longer at her neck before dropping away, and Wanda leaned back into the pressure of it without seeming to notice she'd done it at all. The unthinking ease of a body that trusted another body completely.

Down the corridor, Y/N felt something sharpen inside her chest with a precision that no longer surprised her.

She knew its name now. Longing.

Pepper's voice returned to her, the possibility of losing something doesn't make loving it meaningless, followed, close behind, by Tony's warning about doors that only looked like salvation.

Wanda glanced down the hallway while she chewed, and her gaze found Y/N's position without hesitating, without searching, the way a compass finds north.

She went still.

Victor noticed immediately. "What is it?"

Wanda didn't answer right away.

Y/N could have vanished. She had every reason to. Instead she let the outline of herself linger at the edge of visibility. Not fully present, but no longer entirely absent either, a shape half-drawn in the air.

"There," Wanda said quietly, taking a step forward.

Y/N held still.

A nurse pushed a supply cart between them, breaking the line of sight for three full seconds, and when it passed, Y/N had not moved an inch.

Wanda's breathing had changed. Shallow, quickened, the particular rhythm of someone straining to hold onto a thought before it slips.

"Wanda?" Victor's hand found her arm.

She looked at him, then back down the corridor, then at him again. "I thought I saw someone."

He followed her gaze and found nothing. "There's no one there."

"I know."

Concern gathered visibly across his face. "You've been saying that a lot lately."

Wanda folded the sandwich wrapper closed over the uneaten half, her appetite apparently gone. "I'm tired."

"You slept last night."

"Not enough."

He studied her, and his worry was so plainly genuine, so entirely without performance, that it should have comforted Y/N to see it.

Instead jealousy moved beneath her ribs like something with its own pulse.

Wanda looked down the empty corridor one final time before letting Victor guide her, gently, back toward the nurses' station and Y/N stood unseen only a few feet away, watching her go.

Tony had asked whether she wanted Wanda to see her. The answer had been yes, immediate and unhesitating.

Now, watching Wanda search an empty hallway for a shape she couldn't quite name, Y/N understood, with a clarity that frightened her more than any warning Tony or Steve had offered that day, that being seen was no longer enough.

She wanted to be known.

---

Steve found Y/N in the hospital chapel after midnight.

She sat in the last pew, though sitting was an imitation more than a need, a habit borrowed from watching the living do it. The chapel held only the glow of small electric candles ranged along one wall, and beneath several of them, someone had tucked folded prayers written in hurried, private handwriting. The kind of paper meant to be found by no one but God.

Steve entered without a sound and settled beside her, and for a long while neither of them spoke. Y/N let her attention drift upward, through floors of concrete and steel, to where Wanda had finally fallen asleep in an on-call room, one arm folded beneath her head. Victor had left only after making her promise, out loud, that she would actually rest.

"You spoke with Tony," Steve said eventually.

"Yes."

"He told you what becoming human requires."

"Yes."

Steve rested his forearms loosely on his knees. "And now?"

"I understand less than I did this morning."

"That's often what the truth does to a person."

Y/N turned to look at him fully. "Do you believe he made the wrong choice?"

Something shifted in Steve's face, old grief, carefully worn, familiar enough by now that it no longer showed on the surface unless he let it. He looked toward the small flickering candles, each one a request neither of them had been sent to answer.

"No."

The answer surprised her more than she expected it to.

"You grieve for him."

"Every day."

"But you don't believe he was wrong to leave."

Steve lowered his eyes. "My grief doesn't get a vote in what his life was worth."

She turned that over in silence for a moment. "If I chose the way he did, would you believe I was wrong?"

Steve went very still, and the stillness stretched long enough that the ordinary sounds of the hospital crept in to fill it. An elevator chiming somewhere above them, a gurney's wheels rolling over polished tile, a muffled announcement dissolving into static before it reached the chapel doors.

At last he looked at her. "I would believe you were gone."

"I would still exist."

"Not here." His voice had gone rough at the edges. "I could stand beside you and you wouldn't see me. I could hear you suffer and you wouldn't know I was there to hear it. When your life ended, I might be close enough to catch your last thought, but I couldn't answer you. Not as your friend. Not anymore."

Y/N looked down at her own hands, folded uselessly in her lap.

"Angels lose humans every day," Steve went on, quieter now. "We walk beside them, and then they move on ahead of us, and that's the shape the work has always had. Losing one of our own is different. It leaves a silence in a place eternity used to live."

Tony had spoken of the silence left behind by the sunrise song.

Steve was speaking of the silence left behind by Tony.

Y/N felt caught squarely between the two of them, two different griefs shaped like the same door.

"I haven't chosen anything," she said.

"I know."

"You're speaking as though I have."

Steve looked at her, steady. "You carried coffee to Queens."

Her expression tightened. "Why does everyone keep telling me that means something?"

Something almost like a smile touched his mouth, gone as quickly as it came. "Because you've never once carried anything you didn't need."

The chapel settled back into quiet. Several floors above, Wanda shifted in her sleep, and Y/N's head lifted toward the sound before she could stop the reflex.

Steve saw it happen. Whatever had almost been a smile disappeared entirely.

"Who is she?" he asked.

"You already know her name."

"That isn't what I asked."

It was the same question Tony had asked her that morning, wearing a different voice.

Y/N's gaze drifted toward the chapel doors. "She's a surgeon. She fights death like it's insulted her personally. She believes skill should be enough to save everyone, and when it isn't, she punishes herself for the crime of being human."

"And what do you want from her?"

She thought of Wanda's eyes finding her in the corridor without needing to search. She thought of touch, of coffee gone cold, of rain she couldn't feel, of fear, of a heartbeat that wasn't hers and never would be unless something changed.

"I want her to look at me."

Steve's sorrow deepened, unmistakable now. "She already is."

Y/N turned to him fully.

He rose from the pew, unfolding slowly, and looked back at her from beside the chapel doors. "That's why you have to decide what she's allowed to see."

He paused there, hand against the wood.

"Tony is right about one thing. Loneliness can make an open door look like salvation, whether or not it actually is one."

"And if it is?" she asked. "If it's real?"

"Then it will still ask you to step through it," Steve said. "Every door does. That part never changes, no matter what's waiting on the other side."

He left her there with the candles.

Y/N sat through the remaining hours of the night and let the hospital speak to her in the only language it had ever fully trusted her with. Prayers murmured into the dark, a hushed argument two floors up, a last breath somewhere on the third floor exhaled at 3:14, the thin, furious cry of a newborn arriving on the fifth. She heard Victor call the nurses' station just to confirm, quietly, that Wanda was still asleep. She heard Natasha warn a first-year resident, in no uncertain terms, not to wake her for anything that could survive until morning.

But above all of it, clearer than any of it, Y/N listened to the sound of one particular heart.

It beat on, steady, in the dark.

The halftime buzzer echoed through the gymnasium, signaling a break in the intense game. Natasha, clad in her coaching attire, surveyed the court with a stern expression. The tension in the air was palpable.

Natashas piercing gaze followed the players as they retreated into the locker room. Her team was trailing, and the urgency of the situation reflected in the crease of her brow.

As the players settled into the locker room, Natasha’s eyes remained fixed on you. A silent understanding passed between you both – Natasha knew that you were their last hope for a comeback. The weight of expectations rested squarely on the your shoulders, and Natasha’s intense stare conveyed the gravity of the moment.

Inside the locker room, the air was charged with anticipation. Natasha, standing at the center, addressed the team with a steely resolve. “This is our chance to turn the game around. We’ve got the skills, the talent, but we need to play as a cohesive unit. Y/n, you’re our linchpin. The team looks up to you, and we need your best performance out there.”

Her eyes bore into you, emphasizing the crucial role you played in the team’s destiny. Natasha delved into the intricacies of the revised strategy, urging the players to synchronize their movements and capitalize on their strengths. The locker room echoed with the intensity of Natasha’s words, each one a call to action.

You, absorbing Natasha’s gaze, felt the weight of responsibility but also a surge of determination. This was the moment to prove yourself, not just as an individual player but as the catalyst for the team’s resurgence. Natasha’s demanding coaching style became a beacon of inspiration rather than an obstacle, pushing the team to elevate their game.

As Natasha continued to outline the strategy, her eyes never wavered from you. It was as if she could see the potential waiting to be unleashed. The halftime break ended, and the team, led by Natasha, returned to the court with a renewed sense of purpose. The second half unfolded with precision and determination and your team executed Natasha’s strategy flawlessly.

Under Natasha’s watchful eye, you showcased her your exceptional skills with a fierce determination. Every move was calculated, every shot purposeful. The team rallied around you, the synergy evident in their coordinated efforts. The scoreboard gradually shifted in their favor, the gap closing with each passing minute.

Feeling the weight of Natasha's expectations, you drove towards the basket with a newfound determination. The opponents, sensing the shift in momentum, intensified their defense. Yet, you maneuvered skillfully, executing a flawless layup that brought the crowd to their feet. A quick glance towards Natasha revealed a subtle nod of approval, a silent acknowledgment of the pivotal play.

However, the game was far from over. The opponents retaliated, scoring a basket that widened the gap. Natasha's stern expression betrayed a momentary tension – a coach acutely aware of the precarious situation. Her jaw tightened, and the lines on her forehead deepened as she contemplated the next move.

Gathering the team during a timeout, Natasha's voice cut through the air, firm and resolute. "We're running out of time, but we don't back down. Tighten your defense, trust the plays. Y/n, lead the charge. We're not letting them dictate this game."

Fueled by Natasha's unwavering belief you rallied the team. The court became a battleground, each possession a testament to their resilience. Natasha, though stoic, radiated a fierce determination that reverberated through the team.

In the closing minutes, you orchestrated a series of plays that saw the scoreboard narrowing the gap. Natasha, on the sidelines, displayed a subtle shift in demeanor – a mixture of anticipation and confidence. With seconds ticking away, you seized the moment, sinking a game-changing shot that tied the score.

The crowd erupted, and Natasha, unable to contain her pride, allowed a rare smile to grace her features. The final buzzer echoed, signaling a dramatic turnaround. As the team celebrated their hard-fought victory.

———

Natasha approached you with a subtle yet undeniable glint in her eyes, a mix of pride and something more enigmatic. The post-game euphoria lingered in the air, creating a charged atmosphere between coach and player.

"Y/n, that was an exceptional performance out there," Natasha commended, her voice carrying a rare warmth. "You truly stepped up when the team needed it the most."

Natasha's hand brushed against your shoulder, a subtle yet deliberate touch that sent shivers down your spine. With a glance towards her office, Natasha extended an invitation. "Why don't we discuss the game in more detail?“ You were too naive to understand her real intuition, so you just agreed. She is your coach after all, so what could go wrong?

As the two of you enter her office, Natasha walks ahead and you close the door behind you. She leaned against her desk, her gaze fixed on you with an intensity that surpassed the boundaries of a post-game analysis. The subtle hum of the air conditioner was drowned out by the unspoken tension between coach and player.

"Y/n," Natasha began, her voice a low murmur that seemed to draw you closer. "There's something about you on the court... a fire that's not easily extinguished. It's intriguing."

You, still caught in the afterglow of the victory, met Natasha's gaze with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty. "Thank you, Coach. I just did what I thought was best for the team."

Natasha circled the desk, closing the distance between you both. "You did more than that. You showed a level of skill and determination that goes beyond the court. It’s rare."

The air in the room thickened as Natasha's fingers lightly traced the neckline of your jersey, a subtle yet deliberate touch that sent a shiver down your spine. Your heartbeat quickened, the unspoken tension taking a more palpable form.

"I see potential in you, not just as a player," Natasha whispered, her lips mere inches from your ear. "But as someone who understands the game beyond its rules."

Caught in the magnetic pull of Natasha's presence, you felt a swirl of emotions. Confusion, anticipation, and a hint of something more. Natasha's gaze bore into you, a silent invitation that transcended the boundaries of a typical coach-player relationship.

"C-Coach Romanoff," You began, the words catching in your throat as Natasha's proximity became more pronounced. "I'm not sure I understand..."

Natasha silenced you with a finger against your lips, her eyes locking onto theirs with a smoldering intensity. "Sometimes, Y/n, the best plays happen off the court," she murmured, her voice carrying a seductive undertone. "Let me show you a different kind of victory."

You look up at her innocently and she leans down to kiss you. As she continued, you felt her hand slide down to your pussy. She runs her hand over your panties and rubs her fingers further inside. She held onto your shoulders a little with her other hand so that you wouldn't squirm too much. “M-Mrs Romanoff, I don't think we-”

She continued until she could feel your wetness through your underwear, "It's pretty wet down here.." she whispers in your ear and now starts to knead your breast. She grabbed your nipple and twisted it between her fingers, her head still in your neck “Should I stop?” The action was already sending waves through your body and your body twitched, “I..D-Don’t know...." she twisted them more, "Do you want it or not? You decide.“

Her movements ran through your whole body. Even your fingers were starting to cramp, “Comon, Detka, Say 'please don’t stop'..” She let go of your nipple, but now pushed it into your breast and you twitched again. “p-please don’t stop! Do not stop.."

This turned Natasha more on. You give your complete control only to her. She smelled your neck and licked it, “Say 'I want you’. ” Your head was so covered that you didn't even know what you were actually saying, “I-I want you..”

Now she let go of you completely and you staggered briefly to find your feet and stand again. She took a step back and took off her leather jacket, “Good girl.”

She walks you back and pushes you against her desk. She holds your waist, lifts you up and sits you on her table. She stands between your legs and her hands caress your soft thighs.

She kisses you again, moving her hands further up. She grabs your ass, pulls you a little closer and lets her cock rub against you. You moan into her mouth and pull away. You put your hands behind you and brace yourself on her desk. She continues to rub herself against you, her eyes scanning your body. She moans and pulls away, quickly pulling your panties to the side. She kisses you as she slides her finger into your pussy.

Your eyes close as she begins to slowly pump her fingers in and out of you. You gasp as she curled a finger inside you. But then she lifts you off her desk, turns you around, and presses your chest flat against the desk. She spreads your legs, bends down and presses her chest onto your back.

There was a slight rustle as Natasha opened a packet of condoms and slipped it over her member and then she pressed herself against you, cursing and cursing under her breath. You let out a breathy moan at the penetration, pushing yourself back onto hers. "God, you're so tight..." Natasha hissed as she was fully inside your vagina.

She didn't start gently and wait for you to get used to it, she immediately started hitting you roughly. Within moments you were moaning and panting wantonly, your body almost melting into the table. “Mrs R-Romanoff!”

She moaned in agreement, your knuckles already white from gripping the edge of the desk so tightly. Natasha began rocking you, first with small, hard thrusts, then longer and deeper. She changed positions a few times until she managed to hit your perfect spot, causing stars to appear in your vision.

The desk creaked and rocked under the force of her thrusts, and you were sure someone could probably hear the rhythmic tapping of the desk, but that only added to the whole excitement. “That’s it, make some pretty noises for me.” The dark sound of her voice echoed through your body, sending your racing brain into hyperdrive.

Every time her hips slammed into you, you felt white, hot ecstasy pouring from your core and coursing through your entire being. You couldn’t stop the moans and whimpers that fell from your lips, no matter how much you wanted them to.

“Such a good fuck toy,” she purred, burying a hand in your hair and tugging painfully. “Taking my cock so good.” Suddenly and violently, she jerked your head up so that her lips touched your ear. "Since you've had so much practice lately, I’ll give you a little reward.”

You arch your back and scream, "F-Fuck!" felt a lot of joy and couldn't hold back your salivation any longer. She stares contentedly at your drooling face, knowing that she is the only one who has the privilege of fucking you senseless. “Fuck yes, baby, cum for me. Cum on that damn cock!” she grits her teeth as she penetrates you. She feels your tight little hole begin to twitch around her and doesn't let up, feeling you buck your hips against her. “I think I c-can’t, I can’t...”

“Yes you fucking can, baby, let go..Lose control for me..” She pumps into you faster, getting dangerously closer to her own release. “You can do it, baby, just fucking let go!”She throws her head back and rubs circles on your clit with her thumb as she relentlessly drills your pussy. “Fuck yes!!”

“I-I’m coming-“She grabbed your neck and pulled your face towards hers. She brutally claims your pretty little mouth, swallowing your screams as you cum hard on her cock.

-

-

-

Part 2

By the time you, Lu and Maya reached the club, the celebration had already progressed well beyond anything that could reasonably be described as controlled.

The bass was loud enough to vibrate through the pavement outside and every time the doors opened, music and warm air spilled into the street along with flashes of colored light. The security guard took one look at Maya’s bandaged thigh, checked the three of you against the list and waved you inside without asking questions.

The atmosphere swallowed you almost immediately. After two months of sterile corridors, fluorescent lights and instructors appearing whenever anyone considered having fun, the club felt almost unreal. People filled the dance floor, pressed around the bar and crowded into booths beneath the darker upper level and your team was impossible to miss..

Someone had claimed a large section near the back, although the distinction between your reserved area and the rest of the club had already collapsed. Peterson was dancing with the confidence of a man who had apparently never seen himself dance. Reeves stood on the edge of the group encouraging him despite having no rhythm of his own and Dawson, who had suffered a mild concussion less than twelve hours ago, was sitting beneath one of the tables with his back against a chair and insisting he was completely fine.

Maya stopped beside you and stared. “They’ve been here for less than an hour..”

“They’re going to die tomorrow.”

“They survived the arena..Romanoff’s training session might be what finally kills them.”

At the mention of Natasha, something moved unhelpfully through your stomach. The conversation from earlier had followed you all evening despite every effort to push it away. It returned while you showered, while Lu changed her outfit four times and while Maya sat in front of the mirror insisting she could apply eyeliner perfectly well after taking pain medication. You kept remembering Natasha’s messages and the strange ease that had settled between you through the screen. For a little while, she had seemed less like the instructor whose approval determined the emotional quality of your entire week and more like an actual person who happened to understand your sarcasm far too well.

It should not have mattered as much as it did. You had known Natasha was human before tonight, obviously.. She ate, slept, owned a phone and apparently shared her apartment with a cat who despised the concept of happiness, none of that should have been shocking. Still, seeing those fragments of her life had created a crack in the image you had built during training and now you could not stop looking through it.

Lu looped her arm through yours and pulled you farther into the room. “Come on. You need a drink before you begin staring thoughtfully into the distance again.”

None of you noticed the table in the darker corner behind the dance floor. Natasha had chosen it deliberately when Clint dragged her inside almost forty minutes earlier. From there she could see the main entrance, the emergency exit, most of the bar and the section occupied by the recruits without being forced directly into the celebration.

He sat opposite her with one arm stretched along the back of the booth, watching the training group destroy whatever professional dignity they had managed to build during the last two months. Every few minutes, he looked at Natasha with an expression that suggested he was waiting for her to admit she was enjoying herself. But she wasn’t..she was thinking about you.

More specifically, she was thinking about the way you had looked at her in the briefing room when you asked whether she knew what had happened to your parents. Natasha rolled the glass slowly between her palms. “I lied to her.”

Clint’s attention shifted away from the dance floor. He had already heard most of the story on the way over, but he also understood that Natasha did not repeat herself unless the thought had become impossible to contain. “You panicked, Natasha..“

Natasha looked back toward the recruits. One of them had begun attempting to convince a server that his tactical balance training qualified him to carry six drinks at once. “I should have told her.”

“Maybe.” Her eyes moved to him. “That’s not helpful.”

“You’re asking for a simple answer to something that stopped being simple a long time ago.” Clint leaned forward, lowering his voice beneath the music. “Telling her tonight would have blown apart everything she thought she knew about you, Fury and her parents. Not telling her means she finds out later that you lied. Neither option is good.”

“Fury shouldn’t have put me in this position.”

“He believed you were the person most likely to keep her alive.”

“He knew what would happen if she asked.”

“Yes, because Fury is manipulative and emotionally repressed. This is new information to neither of us.”

Natasha’s mouth tightened. “He made me responsible for her while ordering me to conceal the one thing that explains why I’ve been treating her differently.”

“You treated her differently before Fury ordered you to train her.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“It might be part of the point.”

She looked away and Clint watched her for a moment before continuing more carefully. “You can’t change what you said earlier. What you can do is stop creating new lies around it. Decide what you’re going to tell her when the program ends, then make sure you can live with everything you do before then.”

Natasha’s fingers tightened around her glass. “You make it sound easy.”

“No. I make it sound possible.”

She was about to respond when the club doors opened again. Her attention moved instinctively toward the entrance and then it stopped. You stepped inside between Lu and Maya, laughing when Lu pulled you around a group blocking the walkway. You were dressed simply, but Natasha had never seen those clothes before. She had only seen you in training uniforms, tactical equipment, medical scrubs and the old shirts you wore in the compound gym. Tonight your hair was loose, your posture relaxed and the expression on your face belonged to someone who had not yet noticed an instructor watching her.

The first thought that entered Natasha’s mind was that you looked like your mother. The resemblance appeared in the angle of your smile and the way you held Maya’s arm while helping her through the crowd. It lasted less than a second, till you turned toward Lu and said something Natasha could not hear. Lu laughed, you rolled your eyes and the resemblance disappeared so completely that Natasha felt ashamed for searching for it at all.

Your mother had never smiled exactly like that. She had never moved like you did or worn that expression when embarrassed. She had never possessed your particular combination of caution and defiance. The woman walking toward the bar was not a collection of inherited features. It was you.

That realization had been developing since the arena, but seeing you outside the compound made it impossible to avoid. Earlier, Natasha had watched you make a decision your parents might not have made. Later, she had spoken to you without a tactical problem or evaluation standing between you. Through the messages, she had discovered humor that training rarely allowed you to show and a softness you normally protected beneath discipline. Now, for the first time, Natasha was looking at you without immediately placing you inside the categories she had constructed: recruit, responsibility, daughter of two dead agents.

You were still all of those things, but you were also a young woman standing beneath blue light with a smile Natasha noticed before she could stop herself. The recognition was not welcome. Clint followed her gaze and remained quiet for several seconds. “Well.”

Natasha looked down at her drink. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

Clint’s mouth twitched. “You know, most people look less frightened when they realize they’re attracted to someone.”

Natasha’s head turned sharply. “I am not attracted to her!”

“Nat, I’ve been shot by you before. You don’t need to threaten me with your eyes.”

She glanced toward you again despite herself. You were standing at the bar while Lu argued enthusiastically with the bartender about something involving fruit and Maya tried to stop her and Natasha lowered her voice. “She is one of my agents, Clint..”

“She’s also an adult.”

“That doesn’t make it appropriate.”

“I didn’t say it did.”

“I evaluate her. I give her orders. My reports affect where she is assigned after training. Whether she completed basic is irrelevant while I still have authority over what happens next.”

Clint nodded. “That part matters.”

Natasha had expected him to tease her again but agreement unsettled her more. “The feeling isn’t the problem..what you do with it would be.”

“There is no feeling.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

She stared at him and Clint lifted both hands. “You’re the one arguing with me.”

Natasha looked back toward the bar. The distinction irritated her because he was right. Attraction was not an action and the first involuntary thought that you looked beautiful did not mean she intended to pursue you. What frightened her was not the thought itself but the uncertainty surrounding it. For months, every intense reaction you created in her had been easy to name..Today had disrupted them. She had watched you become separate from the people she remembered and had felt something remain after the resemblance disappeared.

She was still deciding how much of that she was willing to admit to herself when Clint’s attention moved over her shoulder and his expression changed. Natasha turned and saw four men had moved toward the bar, surrounding you and the girls beneath the excuse of ordering drinks. They were not part of the training group. They were older, already visibly drunk and standing close enough that Maya had shifted sideways to protect her injured leg.

You noticed them immediately and so did Lu. The playful expression disappeared from Lu’s face as one of the men leaned an elbow against the bar beside her, blocking the easiest path back toward the team. Another said something to Maya that made her look at him with open disgust. You remained still, but Natasha saw the change in your posture. Your weight settled more evenly, your shoulders lowered and your free hand moved away from the bar. It was subtle enough that the men did not recognize it for what it was, but Natasha did.

You were preparing to handle the situation. She knew you could..all three of you were trained and even with Maya injured, the men would have regretted forcing the confrontation, but that did not mean you should have to. Natasha stood before Clint could comment.

“You know she can break his wrist herself.” he said.

“I know.” She crossed the club anyway.

At the bar, the men’s intentions had become increasingly obvious. You could smell alcohol on the nearest one every time he spoke and his gaze had moved over your body often enough that any possibility of misinterpretation disappeared. “Come on..I’m being friendly.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You don’t have to be rude.”

Lu heard that and turned toward him. “She said she isn’t interested.”

One of his friends laughed. “Nobody asked you.”

Maya set her jaw. “You should leave.”

The men exchanged glances, apparently amused that three women had objected to being surrounded. You could already see how this would end. The recruits had been given one evening off after surviving an equipment failure and you had no intention of spending it explaining to Hayes or Natasha why Lu broke someone’s nose or why Maya worsened her injury kicking a stranger in the knee.

You lowered your voice. “Walk away.”

The man beside you smiled as though the warning entertained him. “Or what?”

His hand moved toward your waist and you began to catch it, but another hand reached him first. Natasha closed her fingers around his wrist before he touched you and turned it just enough to raise his elbow and disrupt his balance to force him to face her.

The smile disappeared from his face instantly and Natasha looked directly into his eyes. “Or you discover why that was a bad question.”

Her voice was calm and nearly lost beneath the music, which somehow made it more frightening. The man attempted to pull his wrist away but Natasha did not allow him to move. Recognition spread across the face of one of his friends and one reached for the man’s shoulder and whispered urgently, “That’s Natasha Romanoff.”

The color drained from the man’s face and Natasha’s grip remained steady. “You’re going to step away from them.”

He nodded. “All of you.” Another nod. “If I see you approach them again, the conversation will be less polite.”

“We were only talking.” Natasha turned his wrist a fraction farther. “We’re leaving!!” he corrected quickly and she released him. The four men disappeared into the crowd so quickly that Lu watched them go with open admiration.

“I think one of them just reconsidered every choice he has made since birth..”

“Lu!” you warned and she looked at Natasha. “Thank you.”

Maya nodded, although her attention had moved toward the leg she was trying not to favor. “Seriously.”

“You were handling it.” Natasha said and ver eyes moved over you, checking automatically for any sign that the man had touched or hurt you. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” The answer came too quickly and you immediately became aware of how close Natasha stood. She was not wearing training clothes or tactical equipment, but a dark jacket rested over a simple black top and the softer club lighting changed the familiar lines of her face. You looked toward Maya instead and her hand rested on the bar, the muscles in her injured leg were beginning to tremble.

“You need to sit down.” you said. “I’m fine.”

“You say that every time you’re visibly not fine.”

“The medic told me movement was good.”

“The medic did not tell you to wear heels.”

Lu looked down at Maya’s shoes. “I told her that.”

Maya sighed and allowed Lu to wrap an arm around her waist. The bartender had already begun remaking the drinks abandoned during the confrontation and you reached for your wallet. “I’ll wait for these and bring them over.”

Lu guided Maya toward the reserved section, glancing back only once and that left you standing beside Natasha. The sudden quiet between you felt absurd in a room this loud. You stared at the bartender’s hands while he prepared the drinks, aware that Natasha remained less than a meter away. Hours earlier, you had managed to exchange messages with her without thinking about every word, now that she was physically beside you, every possible subject disappeared from your mind.

You could not ask about Liho without admitting how much of her profile you had studied. You could not mention your parents without dragging the grief of the afternoon into the club and could not discuss the arena because tonight was supposed to provide distance from it.

Natasha did not appear more comfortable. She looked toward the crowd, then the drinks, then the direction the men had gone. Her posture was relaxed by ordinary standards, but you had spent two months learning how to recognize tension in her. A security employee approached before either of you had to speak and he looked from Natasha to you. “The manager wants to know what happened.”

“Four men were harassing them.” Natasha said.

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“No.”

The employee glanced toward the direction the group had fled. “We’ve had complaints about them already, so security is finding them now. Can you both stay nearby for a few minutes in case the manager needs a statement?”

Natasha’s expression suggested she did not appreciate being asked to wait, but she nodded. “Sure.”

The bartender placed three drinks in front of you. You looked toward the packed floor separating you from Lu and Maya and Natasha picked up Maya’s drink before you could object. “Which table?”

You pointed toward the reserved section. Together you brought the glasses over, but the booth had become even more crowded. Maya was seated at one end with her leg elevated across Lu’s lap, while Peterson and three others argued about whether Clint could fire an arrow accurately while intoxicated.

“He can’t.” Natasha said as she set Maya’s drink down and Peterson looked offended. “Have you seen him try?”

Clint, seated opposite them, lifted his glass toward Natasha. “For the record, I could.”

“You’re not proving it.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Natasha gave him a look and Clint sighed. “Fine.”

There was no room left in the booth. Hayes had taken the only empty chair and was speaking with another member of security, probably about the men from the bar.

“You two can use our table.” Clint said, gesturing toward the corner. “Until security is finished.”

The suggestion made practical sense. The table was visible from the recruits’ section, less than ten meters away and surrounded by other people and wasn’t private. Natasha’s coat and glass were already there and security had specifically asked both of you to remain nearby, but you still hesitated and Natasha noticed. “You can stay with the others.”

“There isn’t anywhere to sit.”

“Bennett could move.”

Lu immediately tightened her hold around Maya’s leg. “Medical necessity.”

“You’re enjoying this!” you accused.

“A little.”

You looked toward the corner table, then at Natasha. “Only until security comes back.”

“Of course.” You followed her through the crowd and sat opposite her and Natasha noticed the choice and seemed to relax slightly. For the first minute, neither of you spoke. You took a careful sip of your drink and Natasha reached for hers, then appeared to reconsider and chose the glass of water beside it instead.

The silence stretched, but it wasn’t comfortable, but neither was it openly unpleasant. It simply contained too much awareness and you had never sat across from Natasha without a tactical map, evaluation sheet or training objective between you.

Natasha looked toward the recruits and you followed her gaze. Peterson was now attempting to persuade Clint to arm wrestle him. “He’s going to lose..” you said.

“Yes.”

“Will Clint let him?”

“Probably.”

“Why?”

“Because Barton believes humiliation builds character.”

You smiled faintly. “Does it?”

“No. But he enjoys it.”

Another silence formed and you traced your thumb along the condensation on your glass. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”

Natasha’s eyes returned to you. “I didn’t expect to be here either.”

“Hayes?”

“Barton.”

“What did he say?”

“That refusing to celebrate makes me unpleasant.”

You tried not to smile. “Was that their exact wording?”

“No. Their wording was less polite.”

“I didn’t know instructors came to these things.”

“I’m not here as an instructor.”

The answer produced a small shift in your chest before Natasha continued. “I’m also not pretending I won’t notice if one of you attempts to climb the lighting equipment.”

“So you’re unofficially supervising.”

“I’m observing.”

“That sounds like supervising with less responsibility.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You’ve become brave since this morning.”

“I think I used all my fear when I yelled at you.”

“That would explain several things.”

You looked down at your drink, but she saw the smile. Earlier, through Instagram, you had asked her questions without seeing her expression change. In person, every pause felt important and Natasha seemed aware of the same difficulty. “How is Maya’s leg?”

“She says it doesn’t hurt.”

“So it hurts.”

“Probably.”

“Make sure she doesn’t walk back to the compound.”

“We weren’t planning to.”

“Bennett might.”

“Lu once tried to walk six kilometers after spraining her ankle because she didn’t want to pay for a taxi..”

Natasha stared at you. “Why?”

“She said the taxi driver sounded judgmental.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It was the only explanation she gave.”

A quiet laugh escaped Natasha before she could stop it and you looked at her. The sound was small, almost lost beneath the music, but you had never heard it during training, not like that. Natasha’s expression shifted when she realized you were watching and some of the old distance returned. You looked away before she had to rebuild it completely.

A member of security appeared several minutes later. The four men had been removed and the manager only needed confirmation that nobody intended to make a formal complaint. Natasha answered most of the questions and you confirmed her. The exchange lasted less than five minutes and when the employee left, the practical reason for you to remain at the table disappeared.

You placed both hands around your glass. “I should go back.”

Natasha nodded. “You should.”

Neither of you moved immediately. Then Lu shouted your name from the other booth because Peterson had somehow put Maya’s jacket on backward. You stood, relieved by the interruption and strangely disappointed by it at the same time. “Thank you again.”

“You don’t need to thank me every time I stop someone from touching you without permission.” The words were calm, but something in Natasha’s expression made your heartbeat shift.

“Right.” you said. “Good to know.”

You returned to the others before you said anything worse. For the next hour, you barely spoke to Natasha because she remained at the corner table with Clint while you stayed with Lu, Maya and the others. You danced once, badly, because Lu physically dragged you onto the floor and drank slowly and spent more time preventing Maya from standing than doing anything else.

Still, your attention kept moving toward the corner. Sometimes Natasha was speaking to Clint, sometimes Hayes joined them and once, you caught Natasha looking toward you, but she turned away so quickly you could not be certain she had been looking at you at all.

You told yourself you were imagining it…Natasha was not. She had noticed every time you glanced toward her and hated that she had begun anticipating the next one..and Clint noticed that too. “You’re both exhausting.“

Natasha did not look at him. “Who?”

“Exactly.”

Before she could respond, several recruits approached the table. Peterson came first, still wearing Maya’s jacket incorrectly and dropped into the seat beside Clint. “Agent Barton says you once completed a mission while handcuffed to him!!”

Natasha looked at Clint. “Why are you telling recruits classified stories?”

More recruits gathered around the table, carrying chairs and drinks. Lu brought Maya over once the booth became too loud and you followed because Maya needed help moving. Within minutes, the corner was no longer Natasha’s quiet retreat because half the training group had formed an uneven circle around the table, demanding stories about missions and arguing over which details Clint had invented. You chose a seat beside Maya, two places away from Natasha.

Clint told them about Budapest first, although not the Budapest everyone asked about. This was a different mission involving a stolen diplomatic car, a hotel kitchen and Natasha pretending not to know him for sixteen hours. At one point the table erupted into laughter and even Natasha laughed, although she shook her head while Clint exaggerated every detail. One story led to another and Hayes mentioned an operation in Prague where Natasha had posed as a violinist despite being unable to play. Natasha corrected him by saying the cover had lasted only three hours and nobody had asked her to perform.

“What would you have done if they had?” Maya asked.

“Created a distraction.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that prevented anyone from remembering the violin.”

Nobody seemed certain whether she was joking. You listened more than you spoke because the missions interested you, but the way Natasha told them held your attention more. She left out the violence and classified details, focusing instead on the mistakes, ridiculous covers and unexpected complications. For the first time, you heard her discuss fieldwork as something that could be absurd rather than only dangerous.

The recruits asked questions until the music grew louder and the group began to separate again. Peterson and several others returned to the dance floor, even clint was dragged away after someone challenged him to a game near the bar. Hayes left to check on Dawson, who had returned from beneath the table and was now attempting to order fries.

Maya eventually asked Lu to help her back to the booth where she could elevate her leg properly. You began to stand with them, but Lu placed a hand on your shoulder. “Stay. I need the space beside her.”

“I can sit somewhere else.”

“You’ve been guarding her for an hour. Go drink your drink.”

There was no teasing in her voice, although the quick glance she gave Natasha was not entirely innocent. “I’ll be fine. Lu is annoyingly competent when she wants to be.”

When you looked back, only Natasha and two recruits remained at the table. The recruits finished their drinks and left less than five minutes later when their friends called them to the dance floor. You and Natasha were alone..again, although surrounded by your team and visible to half the club.

This time the silence felt different, so you turned your glass slowly. “Were those stories true?”

“Most of them.”

“Which parts weren’t?”

“Barton was not naked in the laundry cart.”

You laughed so abruptly that part of your drink nearly spilled. Natasha’s mouth curved faintly as she watched you wipe the table with a napkin. “I can’t tell when you’re joking.”

“That’s useful in the field.”

“And deeply irritating everywhere else.”

“So I’ve been told.”

You looked toward the dance floor, where Clint had been surrounded by recruits and appeared to regret every decision leading to that moment. “Did you like it?” you asked.

“What?”

“The cover work. Pretending to be someone else.”

Natasha leaned back slightly, considering. “Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“It was simpler to understand what people expected from someone who didn’t exist.”

The answer carried more weight than the earlier stories.. “Was it..difficult coming back afterward?”

Her eyes returned to you. “Sometimes.“ You sensed the boundary in the short answer and looked down. “Sorry. That was personal.”

“You didn’t know.” The conversation might have stopped there, but Natasha added, “The difficult part wasn’t returning to myself. It was deciding which parts of the cover had been invented and which parts had always been there.”

You studied her expression. “Like what?”

“A preference..something you enjoyed only because the person you were pretending to be would have enjoyed it.” Natasha ran one finger around the rim of her water glass. “If you wear an identity long enough, the distinction becomes less obvious.”

“Did any stay?”

“A few.”

“Can you tell me?”

“No.”

The answer was immediate and you smiled. “Worth trying.”

Natasha’s gaze softened. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m trying to take advantage of you being in a public place where you can’t assign me extra laps.”

“I can assign them tomorrow.”

Your smile faded and Natasha almost looked pleased. “There she is.”

“You said you weren’t here as an instructor.”

“That doesn’t mean I stopped being one.”

You shook your head and took another drink. The conversation grew slowly from there. Natasha mentioned a mission in Rome and you admitted you had never left the country except for a childhood trip you barely remembered. She described cities without romanticizing them, remembering which airports were impossible, which hotels had terrible security and which streets became dangerous after dark. The mission stories made the conversation easier because they provided somewhere to return whenever one of you came too close to something personal. You asked about languages, cover identities and the strangest object she had used as a weapon. Natasha asked what kind of field assignment you wanted after training.

You admitted you did not know. “I thought I would..When I joined, I imagined I’d reach this point and everything would become obvious.”

“It rarely does.”

“What did you think I’d be good at?”

Natasha studied you for several seconds. “Leadership.”

Your fingers tightened around the glass. “Even after today?”

“Because of today.”

“I disobeyed you.”

“You also made nineteen people listen while they were terrified.” Natasha’s voice remained even. “Discipline can be taught. People choosing to trust you when the plan fails is harder.” Warmth spread through your chest and you looked away before she saw how much the words affected you.

The club had thinned slightly as the night progressed. The recruits who were not dancing had begun pairing off in booths and corners. Peterson had disappeared behind a pillar with someone from another group, although neither of them seemed to realize their feet remained visible. Two other recruits were kissing near the coat room while their friends attempted to conceal them with jackets.

You and Natasha watched one of the jackets fall. “God..they’re terrible at this..” you said.

“At hiding?”

“At all of its..”

Natasha’s eyes moved toward you. “You sound experienced.“ and nearly choked on your drink. “I didn’t say that..”

“You implied it.”

“I said Peterson is bad at kissing behind a pillar. Anyone with eyes can determine that.”

Another pair disappeared together toward a darker corner and you shook your head. “They’re going to regret that tomorrow.”

“Maybe.”

You looked toward Natasha. “You don’t think so?”

“I think people spend too much time predicting regret while they’re still enjoying something.”

You lifted an eyebrow. “That sounded suspiciously philosophical.”

For a moment, you both watched the chaos around you. Then Natasha asked, with enough casualness that it took you a second to register the question, “Anyone here you’re going to regret disappearing with?”

You almost choked again and Natasha’s eyes widened a fraction. “That wasn’t meant to be an interrogation.”

“No, no..! I just didn’t expect you to ask.”

She looked faintly amused. “Forget it.”

You considered letting her, but you glanced back toward the recruits. “No.”

“No?”

“There’s nobody.”

Natasha nodded as though that was all she had asked and something made you continue. “I dated someone before S.H.I.E.L.D., but that went badly enough that I decided romance was clearly a government conspiracy.”

Natasha laughed and you smiled. “She was..intense.”

The pronoun registered a second later and Natasha’s eyes shifted back toward you.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was something.”

Natasha hesitated, because the sudden knowledge that the answer included women slid neatly into the awareness she had been trying not to examine all night. “You said she.”

You looked at her for half a second and then understood. “Ooh.”

Natasha immediately regretted making it awkward. “I’m sorry. That sounded-”

“No, it’s fine.” You smiled nervously. “Yes..she.” Natasha nodded and you watched her expression carefully. “She was my only serious relationship and by serious, I mean she seriously damaged my opinion of relationships.”

Natasha’s mouth twitched. “That bad?”

“At first, it felt nice that someone cared where I was..then it became questions about who I talked to, why I didn’t answer quickly enough and why I needed friends she didn’t know. By the end, I was explaining everything before she even asked.”

Natasha’s expression hardened. “That isn’t care.”

“I know that now.”

“Did she ever hurt you?”

“Not physically.”

The anger in Natasha’s face did not disappear and conversation could have ended there. Instead, perhaps because you were warm from the alcohol or simply because you had spent the entire evening discovering pieces of Natasha you had never expected to exist, curiosity won. “What about you?”

Natasha looked at you and you immediately became aware of what you had asked. “Y-You don’t have to answer that!!”

“Why?”

“Because I just asked about your dating life..“

“Very observant.”

You groaned softly. “I’m stopping now!”

Natasha took a drink and watching you over the rim of the glass. She could have let you retreat, probably even should have- “There have been people.”

Your eyes returned to her. “People?”

“People.”

“That is an incredibly spy-like answer.”

“It’s accurate.”

You smiled and Natasha looked toward the dance floor. “Women, a few men. Nothing that survived very long.”

Your heart jumped so sharply that you hated your own body for it. Women. Natasha liked women..

You took a drink to hide whatever your face might have done, but Natasha noticed anyway. “Surprised?”

“..A little.”

“Why?”

You immediately realized there was no answer that wouldn’t embarrass you. “I don’t know.” Natasha waited and you laughed nervously. “You don’t exactly discuss your romantic history during combat drills.”

“That would be poor time management.”

You both laughed and there it was again..that new ease. No flirting, just the dangerous knowledge that the possibility existed, plus you knew Natasha dated women and Natasha knew you did too.

The next hour passed in pieces and you spoke about terrible dates. Natasha told you exactly one story about a woman in Prague who stole her motorcycle after dinner and returned it three days later with a full tank of fuel. You were convinced she had made it up but she refused to clarify. There was something in Natasha’s voice that made you look up again, but someone crashed into the side of your chair before either of you could say more. A recruit spun away from the dance floor with a full red drink in his hand and the glass tipped when he collided with the table, spilling across your shoulder and down the front of your clothes.

You jumped up with a sharp gasp. “Oh, shit!” The recruit stared at you in horror. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Natasha caught the glass before the remainder could spill over the table, but the drink splashed across her hand and sleeve. “It’s fine.” you said, although cold liquid was already soaking through the fabric against your skin. The recruit grabbed a handful of napkins and attempted to press them toward you. Natasha intercepted them before his hand reached your chest. “She can manage.”

“Right..sorry..God, I’m sorry.”

“You said that.” you told him.

“Do you want another drink?”

“No.”

“Money for cleaning?”

“Just..leave it.”

His eyes moved toward Natasha and went away. You looked down at the dark red stain spreading across your clothes. “Perfect.”

Natasha inspected her sleeve. “The bathroom will have water.”

You gathered the napkins and made your way toward the restrooms, aware of Natasha walking several steps behind you. She had the same practical reason to go; the drink had left her hand sticky and stained the cuff of her jacket. That did not stop your body from reacting to her presence. The women’s restroom was crowded, bright and considerably quieter than the club, although music still vibrated through the walls. Several women stood before the mirrors fixing their makeup, while others occupied a line outside the stalls.

Lu had apparently seen the accident. She followed you inside seconds later, took one look at the stain and winced. She grabbed paper towels and began wetting them beneath the tap. Natasha moved to the far sink and washed the drink from her hands. Lu pressed the towels against your shoulder. “Take this off.”

“In here?”

“You have something underneath it.”

“So do twelve other people who don’t need to see it.”

A message arrived on Lu’s phone and she checked the screen, the humor suddenly end disappearing from her face. “Maya’s bandage is bleeding through.”

Your attention shifted immediately. “How much?”

“She says not much, which means enough that I need to check.”

“Go. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lu hesitated, looking from your stained clothes to Natasha. “I can clean a shirt without supervision, you know?” you said.

“I was worried about the shirt.”

“Go help Maya.” Lu handed you the wet towels and left, pushing through the restroom door while already calling her. Natasha turned off the water. “Do you need to go with her?”

“Lu knows what to do. Maya probably pulled the edge of the dressing when she moved.”

You tried to clean the stain, but it had spread across the top of your shoulder and partway down your back where you could not see it. Natasha watched you struggle through the mirror. “You’re making it worse.”

“I’m aware..”

“Give me that.”

You looked at her reflection and Natasha extended one hand toward the towels. Her expression was practical, almost impatient, but she did not move closer until you handed them to her. You turned slightly, allowing her to reach the stain on your shoulder and the first touch was only the pressure of damp paper against fabric. It should not have felt significant, Natasha had adjusted your tactical vest, corrected your stance and moved your arms during training dozens of times. This was different only because there were no weapons, instructions or other recruits between you.

You could see her in the mirror as she stood behind you, concentrating on the stain with the same attention she gave equipment inspections. One hand held the fabric away from your skin while the other pressed carefully against it.

“The color may not come out.”

“That’s alright.”

“This was expensive?”

“No.”

“You answered too quickly.”

“It was a gift from Lu.”

“That explains why it’s impractical.”

You smiled faintly. “You don’t like it?”

Natasha’s hands paused for the briefest second. “I didn’t say that.”

The answer brought warmth into your face, but before either of you could speak again, the restroom door opened violently and two laughing women stumbled inside together. One walked backward while trying to hold the door for the other and collided directly with you. You stepped sideways to avoid falling into the sink, but your shoe landed in water spilled across the tile and the floor disappeared beneath you.

Natasha caught your waist instinctively, but the woman behind you struck her shoulder at the same moment. The momentum carried both of you backward through the open doorway of an empty stall, so Natasha’s back hit the partition and you fell against her. One of her arms tightened around your waist to stop you from reaching the floor, while her other hand caught the wall beside your head. Your palms landed against her shoulders and for a second neither of you understood what had happened.

Then the world became painfully clear..Your bodies were pressed together in the narrow space. Your face was close enough to hers that you could see every shift in her eyes and feel the warmth of her breath against your cheek. Natasha’s hand remained against your waist and your fingers tightened involuntarily in the fabric over her shoulders.

The two women who caused the collision offered a quick, drunken apology before disappearing toward the mirrors. Neither seemed to notice the position they had left you in, but god, you did..and Natasha did too. Her eyes moved over your face, stopping for one dangerous second at your mouth before returning to your eyes. The movement was so quick you might have imagined it, but you stopped breathing anyway.

“You slipped.” Natasha said and the sentence was absurdly obvious, but her voice sounded lower than usual. “I..noticed.”

Neither of you moved and your palms remained against her shoulders. Natasha’s fingers had tightened slightly around your waist and the realization sent a shiver through you that had nothing to do with the wet fabric against your skin. You could smell her perfume beneath the sharper scent of spilled alcohol and for one reckless moment, your mind wondered what would happen if the distance between you disappeared completely. Natasha seemed to recognize the thought in your face and her expression changed.

She released your waist and placed both hands carefully on your upper arms, helping you regain your balance. “Careful.” You stepped back too quickly and nearly slipped again, so Natasha caught your elbow, steadied you and released it immediately.

“Shit, sorry..” you murmured.

“You didn’t push them into us.”

“I meant-” You stopped because you did not know what you meant.. Sorry for falling against her. Sorry for not moving sooner. Sorry for noticing the way she had looked at your mouth?

“You don’t need to apologize.”

You looked toward the mirror outside the stall and your face was flushed and the stain across your shoulder had become the least significant problem you possessed. For several moments, both of you washed your hands despite neither requiring it. Water ran while women moved around you, touching up lipstick and discussing people waiting outside. Nobody knew that something had almost shifted in the stall.

And..perhaps nothing had happened at all. Natasha had caught you because you had fallen..Your faces had been close because the space was narrow. Every detail had a reasonable explanation..but that did not explain why your body still remembered the exact placement of her hand-

“You should check on Maya.”

“Yes.”

“And change before the stain dries.”

“Right.”

You reached the door, then paused. Some reckless part of you wanted to look back, so you did. Natasha was already watching you through the mirror and your eyes met in the reflection. The tension was too new for that and too serious to pretend it had not happened, then Natasha looked away and reached for a clean towel. “Go.”

This time, you listened. You left the restroom and found Lu crouched beside Maya’s injured leg while Hayes inspected the edge of the bandage. The bleeding was minor, exactly as you suspected, but Lu barely looked at the dressing when you approached. “What happened?”

“Someone spilled a drink on me.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Nothing happened.”

Lu studied you for another second, then looked toward the restroom door behind you. Natasha emerged several moments later, expression composed and jacket sleeve damp where she had cleaned it. Her gaze found you automatically before shifting toward Maya and Lu saw that too.

You sat beside Maya before she could ask another question and across the room, Natasha returned to Clint’s table and reached immediately for her water. Clint also looked at her damp sleeve. “What happened?”

“A drink spilled.”

He waited and Natasha drank half the water without looking at him. Clint’s eyes moved toward you and you were listening to Maya, but your fingers had risen unconsciously to the place on your waist where Natasha had caught you. Natasha followed his gaze and saw the movement. “It was an accident.”

Clint turned back to her. “I still haven’t asked anything.” He studied her face and for once, the humor disappeared completely. “Nat.”

“Nothing happened.”

“That isn’t what worries me.”

Natasha looked toward you again and you chose that moment to glance back at her. The noise of the club continued around you, but the distance between the tables suddenly felt more fragile than it had before.

Natasha looked away first and had been correct earlier. A feeling was not an action and noticing you did not mean she had crossed a boundary. Catching you when you fell had been instinct and helping with the stain had been harmless..The problem was the second before she released you.

Because she wanted to remain there.

Across the room, you lowered your hand from your waist and tried to listen while Lu spoke. You had discovered that Natasha dated women..had felt her fingers tighten around you..had watched her gaze fall to your mouth. Any one of those things would have been enough to occupy your mind for the remainder of the night.

By the time the last car returned to the compound, the celebration had deteriorated into a quiet struggle to get everyone through security without attracting the attention of anyone senior enough to ask questions.

The recruits who had spent the night declaring themselves perfectly sober were now leaning against walls, misplacing identification cards and speaking with the exaggerated care of people attempting to convince the world they had consumed nothing stronger than water.

Natasha and the instructors had travelled separately. You had seen her only once outside the club, standing near the curb while Clint spoke to one of the drivers. Her expression had already changed by then. The small traces of amusement she had allowed at the table were gone, replaced by the unreadable composure you knew from training. She had looked toward you while you helped Maya into the car and it lasted less than a second.

Your body remembered the bathroom anyway. Now the corridor outside your room was filled with hushed laughter, poorly controlled footsteps and repeated warnings from the overnight security officer that people were trying to sleep. Lu had one arm around Maya’s waist and the other pressed against the wall for balance, although it was not entirely clear which of them needed the support.

When you all arrived in your room again, you closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. You could feel the weight of the long day in every muscle, from the bruises beneath your clothes to the ache behind your eyes. So, exhaustion should have emptied your mind, instead, the bathroom returned with perfect clarity.

Natasha’s back against the partition, her hand at your waist and the brief tightening of her fingers before she let go. You remembered the way she had looked at you. Not like an instructor assessing whether you were injured or like the woman who had spent two months watching for every mistake. Her gaze had fallen to your mouth, you were almost certain of it.

And that was the problem. Almost. Perhaps you had imagined the entire thing because of the conversation beforehand. You had just learned Natasha dated women and had been drinking, the space had been narrow and adrenaline had a way of making ordinary moments feel more significant than they were. Natasha had caught you because you slipped, that was all.

“Are you planning to sleep against the door?”

Lu’s voice pulled you back into the room. She stood in the bathroom entrance holding bandages, antiseptic wipes and a bottle of water she had apparently taken from the club. You straightened. “I was thinking.”

Maya looked up from where she was carefully peeling the edge of the dressing away from her thigh. “That’s never good after midnight.”

“It’s nearly three.”

“That makes it worse.”

You moved toward your bed and began removing your earrings, concentrating on the simple task so neither of them would examine you too closely. Lu crouched in front of Maya, inspected the wound and then looked over her shoulder at you. “You’ve been strange since the bathroom.”

Your fingers stopped against your ear. “I’m tired.”

“So are we.”

You turned toward the mirror and pretended to inspect your face. Your makeup had faded and exhaustion had left shadows beneath your eyes, but nothing about your reflection should have revealed what happened. Nothing had happened. “You both drank too much..”

“I drank exactly the right amount..Enough to dance with someone whose name I don’t remember and not enough to miss Romanoff following you into the bathroom.”

“She did not follow me.”

“She went in after you.”

“She had alcohol on her sleeve.”

Maya pulled the old dressing free and dropped it into the bin. “Technically, you both had alcohol all over you.”

“A guy spilled a drink.”

“We know.” Lu cleaned the skin around Maya’s injury with exaggerated care. “What happened after that?”

“I cleaned my clothes.”

“With Romanoff?”

“She was cleaning her jacket.”

“In the same bathroom?”

“It was the nearest bathroom, Lu.”

She nodded slowly, as though considering the evidence in an investigation. “So the two of you entered together, remained inside after I left and came out looking like someone had threatened you both with emotional vulnerability.”

You pulled the stained top over your head and threw it onto the pile of clothes. “Nothing happened.”

“You keep saying that as though you’re trying to convince a jury.”

“Because you keep asking.” Lu’s eyes narrowed. “Did neither of you say anything in a way that felt like something?”

You reached for your sleep shirt with more force than necessary. “What does that even mean?”

“It means sometimes two people stand very close together and say absolutely nothing because speaking would create a problem.”

Your head snapped toward her and Lu’s expression changed immediately. The brief movement had answered more than you intended. “Oh.“

Even Maya appeared more awak now and Lu pressed her lips together, but the effort to remain quiet made her entire face change. You pointed the wipe at her. “Don’t.”

“..And then?”

“And then nothing!” The words came out sharper and louder than you intended. Lu’s amusement vanished and Maya went still. You closed your eyes, “Shit.” You dropped the wipe onto the desk and pressed both hands against your face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

Neither of them answered at first and when you looked up, Lu was watching you more carefully. “It’s okay, we were pushing.”

“I’m just tired..”

“We know.” Maya’s expression softened. “You don’t have to tell us anything.”

Guilt tightened in your chest, because they were only teasing because that was how the three of you survived difficult things without allowing them to become too heavy. “I really am sorry.” you said more quietly and Lu crossed the room and took the used wipe from beside your hand. “Apology accepted.” She bumped her shoulder gently against yours. “We’ll leave it alone.”

“Thank you.”

“For tonight.”

You looked at her and Lu smiled and moved away before you could throw anything. The three of you cleaned the room in exhausted silence and Maya removed the rest of her makeup while Lu gathered glasses, clothes and discarded packaging from the desk. You washed your face, brushed your teeth and changed the damp dressing over one of the deeper bruises on your ribs. By the time the lights went out, Maya had taken another painkiller and Lu had placed a bottle of water beside each bed with the authority of someone who would certainly forget to drink her own.

“Alarm?” Maya asked into the darkness.

“Eight thirty. ” you answered and Lu groaned. “That is not enough sleep.”

“We report at ten.”

“I need two hours to become human..”

Within minutes, Maya’s breathing slowed and Lu remained awake slightly longer, shifting beneath her blanket until she found a comfortable position. “Y/n?”

You stared toward the ceiling. “What?”

“I’m sorry too.”

You turned your head toward her bed, although the darkness prevented you from seeing much more than her outline.

“It’s fine.”

“We’ll stop.”

“I know.” Another pause followed. “But if Romanoff murdered someone in the bathroom, you are legally required to tell us.”

You reached for the nearest pillow and threw it toward her voice. She laughed quietly, caught it and kept it. “Good night.”

“I hate you.”

“Good night, Y/n.”

The room settled and you expected exhaustion to pull you under almost immediately, but your body refused to relax. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw the bathroom again. The event could not have lasted longer than a few seconds. You had slipped, Natasha had caught you and both of you had regained your balance. Nothing about it deserved this much thought..Yet your mind kept slowing those seconds down.

Natasha’s arm around your waist had been firm enough to stop the fall, but careful. Her body had been warm beneath your hands and you had felt the shape of her shoulders through the thin fabric of her top and when you looked at her, something in her expression had been unguarded.

A few months ago, Natasha would probably have caught you, placed you upright and asked whether you had injured yourself before moving on as if nothing happened. Tonight she had hesitated and the question that refused to leave was not whether you had imagined it..

It was whether Natasha was thinking about it too.

Was she lying awake somewhere in the compound remembering the same second? Did she regret not releasing you sooner? Was she embarrassed that you noticed her gaze move? Or had she already dismissed the moment as an accident involving a careless recruit and a wet floor?

You rolled onto your side, because the thought of Natasha forgetting it was strangely worse than the possibility that you had misread it..You had spent two months wanting her approval, one of the best agents alive and the person responsible for determining whether you belonged in the program. Wanting her attention outside training was different..

You pulled the blanket higher and stared into the darkness. You closed your eyes and tried to think about tomorrow’s schedule, tactical formations or anything that did not involve Natasha’s hand tightening around your waist. Eventually exhaustion overcame embarrassment and the ceiling disappeared.

When the bathroom returned, you did not immediately realize you were dreaming. The same music vibrated through the walls, the same bright lights reflected from the mirrors and the same drink stained the shoulder of your clothes. Natasha stood behind you, pressing a damp towel against the fabric while you watched her in the reflection. “You’re making it worse.”

Her gaze lifted to yours in the mirror and this time, she did not look away. The restroom door opened and someone stumbled into you, your shoe slipped and the world tilted exactly as it had before.

Natasha caught you and you fell against her inside the narrow stall, palms landing against her shoulders while her back met the partition. One arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you securely against her. For a moment, the dream followed reality perfectly. Her breath touched your cheek, her eyes moved over your face and dropped toward your mouth..then the moment changed.

In reality, Natasha had stepped back, in the dream, you leaned closer. You did it slowly enough that she could stop you and part of you expected her to place a hand against your shoulder and remind you exactly who she was. Instead, her fingers tightened around your waist and that was all the permission your dreaming mind needed.

Your mouth found hers and the first kiss was tentative, more question than decision, but Natasha answered it almost immediately. Her hand moved upward along your back, pulling you closer as the restraint in her expression finally disappeared. Weeks of frustration that had not actually happened seemed to exist inside it anyway. Every correction she had delivered too close to your ear, every look held a second too long and every message you had reread when you should have been sleeping compressed into the warmth of her mouth against yours.

You felt her turn you until your back met the stall door. The movement stole the air from your lungs. “Natasha..” you whispered and whispering her name without rank or distance changed something between you. Her forehead rested briefly against yours and her eyes searched your face as though offering one final opportunity to stop.

You pulled her back into the kiss and her hands became less careful. One settled at your hip while the other slid beneath the damp edge of your shirt, fingertips tracing warm skin and leaving heat everywhere they touched. You arched toward her before you could control the reaction and Natasha’s mouth moved from yours to the line of your jaw.

Her teeth scraped once, then again harder before she sucked a mark into the sensitive skin just beneath your ear. The sharp sting made your knees weaken and she felt it. “Stay still.” One hand left your hip and braced beside your head, pinning you more firmly to the stall door. The other stayed under your shirt, fingers spreading wide across your bare ribs before sliding higher and dragging the damp fabric up with it. “You slipped into me. Now you’re going to take what that gets you.”

Your hands tightened on her shoulders. “Natash-“ She cut the word off with another kiss, deeper this time and tongue sliding against yours in a slow, claiming stroke that left no room for argument. When she pulled back, her eyes were darker, “Already that needy?” She pressed her thigh between yours, “Two months of watching you try so hard to impress me and the second I put my hands on you, you melt.”

You tried to answer, but the only sound that left you was a shaky breath. Natasha’s hand drifted lower, palm gliding over your stomach, then lower still until her fingers brushed the waistband of your pants. She didn’t ask, she just simply slipped past the fabric, found the heat of you and pressed one finger along your folds. The moment she felt it, that smirk sharpened. “Fuck..” she breathed, almost to herself.

She pushed the finger inside you in one smooth, controlled thrust and your body reacted instantly. Natasha’s free hand clamped lightly over your mouth, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind you who was in charge. Her eyes stayed locked on yours, watching every flicker of reaction as she curled the finger and dragged it out, then pushed back in deeper. “Quiet..” she ordered, “Or I’ll stop.”

You nodded frantically against her palm. She rewarded you by adding a second finger, stretching you open with a deliberate roughness that made your thighs tremble. Natasha’s breath had gone uneven too, she was staring at the place where her fingers disappeared into you like she couldn’t look away. “That’s it. Take it.” She thrust harder, setting a pace that was pure control..

Every time her fingertips dragged over that sensitive spot inside you, your knees nearly gave. She caught you easily, pressing you harder against the door, using her body to keep you upright while she fucked you open with her hand. “You’re dripping down my wrist already. Did you think about this every time I corrected your stance? Every time I stood behind you and fixed your grip?”

You could only nod again, muffled sounds slipping past her fingers. The pleasure was building too fast, too sharp and Natasha saw it. She slowed just enough to keep you right on the edge, then added a third finger, stretching the burn into something overwhelming. Your head fell back against the door with a soft thud and that was when the outer bathroom door opened.

Natasha moved instantly and yanked her fingers free, leaving you aching and empt, then spun you, shoved a stall door open with her shoulder and pushed you inside the nearest empty one. The lock clicked and she had you backed against the cold tiled wall before the outer door even finished swinging shut, one hand already back between your legs, two fingers sliding home again like they’d never left. “Not a sound..” she whispered, lips brushing yours and her free hand caught your chin, forcing your eyes to stay on hers. “Someone’s out there. You make noise and this ends. Understand?”

You nodded and biting hard into your lower lip. She started moving her fingers again and every thrust was measured, designed to make you struggle. She watched your face with ruthless focus, studying the way your eyes fluttered, the way your throat worked as you swallowed every moan. “Good girl..“ she murmured. “Look how hard you’re trying. You’re shaking..”

She curled her fingers and pressed her thumb against your clit at the same time, rubbing tight, controlled circles. Your hips jerked helplessly and Natasha’s other hand covered your mouth again, “Stay quiet for me. Just like that. Let me feel how desperate you are.”

Outside, water ran and the stranger washed their hands. Natasha never stopped, she just fucked you through it with ruthless patience and adding pressure, twisting her wrist just enough to make your vision blur. Your muffled whimpers vibrated against her palm and she drank every one of them in, eyes half-lidded, breathing harder herself. “You’re going to come on my fingers while someone’s standing right outside…And you’re not going to make a single sound when you do. Are you?”

You shook your head, tears of strain prickling at the corners of your eyes from the effort of holding everything in. Natasha’s fingers drove deeper, faster, the wet sounds soft but unmistakable. Her thumb never left your clit and the pressure coiled tighter and tighter until it snapped. Your body locked up and pleasure crashed through you in hard, silent waves. Natasha held you through it, fingers still moving and watched your face the entire time and something dark and hungry flickered in her expression.

When the outer door finally closed again and the footsteps faded, Natasha slowly eased her hand away from your mouth and her fingers stayed inside you a moment longer, giving one last slow curl that made you whimper aloud at last. She leaned in and kissed you, “Next time.” she said against your lips, “I won’t let you stay quiet.”

When you woke, you did so all at once. Your eyes opened to the dim morning light seeping through the curtains and for several seconds you had no idea where you were. Your heart raced and your breathing was uneven, heat lingered beneath your skin so vividly that you could still feel the ghost of Natasha’s hands.

Then the room came into focus and you stared at the ceiling. “Oh my God.”

You dragged both hands over your face and immediately regretted closing your eyes because another fragment of the dream returned: Natasha’s mouth against your neck, her hand beneath your shirt and the way she had talked. So, your body reacted again and you kicked the blanket away as though it were responsible.

What the hell was wrong with you?

You had dreamed about Natasha Romanoff. Not a vague, harmless dream in which the two of you happened to attend the same event. You had dreamed about her pressing you against a bathroom door and touching you until you could barely think. Your commanding officer!! The woman who would be standing in front of your entire unit in less than two hours!!

A wave of embarrassment moved through you so strongly that you considered hiding beneath the blanket and refusing to report. That was impossible. Natasha would come looking for you, which would somehow make everything worse..

You grabbed clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind you while your mind won’t keep shut and the shower did not help. Cold water reduced the lingering heat in your skin but did nothing to erase the dream. Every time you reached for soap or closed your eyes beneath the spray, another detail returned. The most humiliating part was how real it had felt. Not only the physical desire, although that was bad enough, but the dream had given you something worse: Natasha wanting you without hesitation.

By the time you dressed, you had formed a plan. You would not think about it and you would attend training, respond to orders and avoid looking directly at Natasha unless operationally necessary. The dream had been nothing more than your brain processing an intense day, alcohol and the discovery that your intimidatingly attractive instructor dated women. That explanation was reasonable.

You repeated it while brushing your teeth and repeated it while Lu and Maya continued making unhelpful noises through the door. You repeated it throughout breakfast, where half the recruits appeared to be negotiating with death.

At 0957, all twenty two recruits stood outside the main training hall and the line was quieter than usual. Nobody wanted to provide Natasha with evidence of weakness and rumors had already spread that Fury’s warning about morning training had not been rhetorical. Several recruits smelled aggressively of mouthwash and one had applied enough cologne to qualify as chemical warfare.

You stood between Lu and Maya, staring straight ahead when the doors opened at exactly 1000 and Natasha stepped into the hall.

The transformation from the woman in the club was immediate. Her hair was tied back again and a dark tactical uniform replaced the simple clothes from the night before. A tablet rested beneath one arm and nothing in her face suggested she had spent hours telling mission stories, laughing at your questions or catching you in a bathroom stall.

The recruits straightened automatically and Natasha stopped in front of the line, examined them one by one. “Good morning.”

The silence that answered her was so complete it almost became suspicious. Her gaze moved toward Peterson. “Remove the sunglasses.”

He hesitated. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”

Peterson removed them and immediately squinted beneath the training hall lights and Natasha studied him. “Are you sober?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you capable of operating equipment without injuring yourself or someone else?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know where your identification card is?”

Peterson’s face changed and Lu slowly reached into her pocket. Natasha saw the movement. “Bennett.”

Lu held the card up. “There was a misunderstanding.”

“There usually is.”

She took it from Lu and returned it to Peterson. “Anyone who is not sober leaves now, reports to medical and explains exactly why they ignored a direct warning from Director Fury.”

Nobody moved and Natasha’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Being hungover is not the same thing as being intoxicated. I don’t care whether your head hurts. I care whether your judgment is impaired.”

Still nobody moved. “Fine.”

Her gaze continued down the line and when it reached you, your heartbeat jumped. The dream returned in a single, violent flash: Natasha’s hand beneath your shirt, her mouth against yours..her name in your voice.

You looked away before your expression could reveal anything and Natasha’s attention paused. Only for a fraction of a second, but you felt it. She moved on without comment and you released a breath through your nose and tried to concentrate on the wall beyond her shoulder. Natasha reached the end of the line, turned and walked back toward the center. “Last night was your time. It is over.”

The words changed the atmosphere immediately. Whatever fragments of the club remained among the recruits disappeared beneath the awareness that Natasha Romanoff had returned completely to her role. “This morning, you’ll receive the engineering assessment from yesterday’s systems failure. The arena remains offline and none of you will enter it until the investigation is complete.”

A small easing passed through the line. “Today’s schedule has been adjusted.”

She tapped the tablet and the display behind her activated. A technical diagram appeared, showing an automated weapons platform surrounded by armor plating, ammunition feeds and targeting sensors. Your stomach sank and Natasha continued. “Yesterday demonstrated that several of you rely too heavily on the assumption that automated systems will behave according to programming. Today, we remove that assumption.”

A second diagram showed the weapon’s internal mechanisms. “You’ll spend the first two hours learning to identify the vulnerable points of an armored gun platform. That includes power supply, optical sensors, rotational controls, ammunition feed and manual emergency release.”

Peterson raised his hand slowly and Natasha looked at him. “What?”

“Will the weapons be active?”

“Eventually.” His hand lowered. “After technical instruction, you’ll work in teams to approach, disable and dismantle a series of armored units under simulated fire.” Several recruits shifted.

“Unlike yesterday, every weapon has been inspected manually and disconnected from independent software control. The instructors will operate them directly.” Natasha’s gaze returned to the line and found you again. This time, you forced yourself not to look away…and was a mistake. Her eyes held yours and the bathroom returned with enough force that warmth climbed into your face. You remembered leaning toward her in the dream, remembered her looking at your mouth in reality..

Something changed in Natasha’s expression. She noticed the color in your face and the brief disruption in your focus. Her eyebrows drew together slightly, evaluating whether you were ill, hungover or otherwise unfit for training. “Y/l/n.”

Fuck..Your heart nearly stopped. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you with us?”

“Yes.”

The answer came much too quickly. A few recruits glanced toward you and Lu stared straight ahead, but you could feel the amusement radiating from her. Natasha watched you for another second. “Then repeat the final objective.”

Your mind emptied..The dream had left absolutely no useful information behind. You looked toward the diagram, forcing the words into order. “Approach, disable and dismantle the armored units under simulated fire.”

“What are the primary systems you identify before approaching?”

“Power supply, optical sensors, rotational controls, ammunition feed and emergency release.”

Natasha’s eyes remained on you. “Good.” She turned toward the display and your lungs began working again. Beside you, Lu whispered without moving her lips, “What’s up with you?”

Natasha’s head turned slightly and you immediately stopped breathing. “The first technical session begins in five minutes.” Natasha announced. “Collect protective equipment from the eastern storage room. Full armor, eye protection and gloves. Anyone who vomits inside a helmet cleans every piece of equipment in this building.”

A collective expression of horror passed through the recruits. “Move.”

The line broke instantly and people hurried toward storage, Peterson holding his head while Dawson muttered something about regretting every decision made after midnight. You followed Lu and Maya, trying to focus on equipment lists and weapon diagrams instead of the woman standing behind you.

Before you reached the door, you glanced back and Natasha was speaking to Hayes beside the display. As though she felt your attention, her eyes lifted and they met yours across the training hall. For one suspended second, neither of you looked away. Natasha’s expression remained professional, but the memory of the club sat between you regardless: the quiet table, the conversation about women and the narrow bathroom stall where her hand had remained around your waist a moment too long.

Then Hayes said something and Natasha turned toward him. You continued into the storage room. Lu was waiting beside the protective vests with an expression of unbearable satisfaction. “Don’t.” you warned.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You don’t need to.”

Maya handed you a helmet. “You’re going to be fighting armored guns while trying not to remember your sex dream?” Your head snapped toward her and she smiled sweetly. You pulled the helmet over your face to hide the heat returning to it.

It was going to be a very long day.

-

-

-

you stir the batter in the bowl more vigorously than before. this was the third time you had tried to perfect the consistency. it either had lumps impossible to beat, or was too runny to pour onto the hot skillet. normally, pancake batter wouldn’t hold so much importance, but today, you needed this one thing to go right.

last night, you’d been tossing and turning through most of the evening. when the sun started to peak through the curtains of your bedroom, you sighed and quietly slipped out of bed, abandoning all hope of feeling rested.

today, your boss’s boss and several colleagues were visiting the office. as office manager, any shortcomings from your team had a way of becoming your responsibility. the thought alone made your stomach curl. handling failure has never been one of your strengths.

lost in thought, your whisk scraping loudly against the porcelain bowl, you accidentally splash yourself with some of the batter. you hardly notice as you stare straight ahead out the glass window in the kitchen. bacon sizzling on the stove next to you pops in protest, being left on one side for too long.

“shit.” you mutter to yourself, setting the bowl to the side. you grab a pair of tongs, flipping the pieces of bacon you had haphazardly lined the pan with. you scrub a hand over your face, trying to take a deep, regulating breath.

“i see my busy bee is already buzzing this morning.” you hear a voice, still raspy from sleep, ring from the entryway to the kitchen. you turn, your face a little flushed as you’re faced with your favorite pair of sage green eyes.

“i’m sorry, did i wake you?” you ask. suddenly, you feel a little self conscious about the mess coloring the counters. not to mention, you’re sure your face is a clear reflection of your current state.

“yes, but i don’t mind.” wanda shuffles closer to you when you make no move to close the gap. her hands find your waist with easy recollection. she holds you steady—you didn’t realize your body was nearly vibrating before. her thumbs stroke you through your pajama shirt. you look at her, feeling something tug in your chest at the way she looks at you. she studies you carefully. you try to mask the worry and stress on your face, offering a small smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

“you know..” wanda starts, reaching up to wipe away some wayward flour that was caked onto your cheeks and chin. “breakfast is usually my job.” her hand returns to your waist, pulling you an inch closer. you exhale shakily. something about the warmth of her body pulls you from your thoughts.

“i like to do it sometimes.” you insist, reaching behind you for a cup meant to pour the pancake batter onto the pan. wanda regards you for a moment and then releases your waist. she grabs the cup from your unsuspecting hands.

“i’ll help.” she says, and the way she says it leaves no room for argument. she steps around you, taking your place in front of the stove. you stare at her back, swaying on your toes.

“wanda, you really don’t need to help.” you step closer so you’re shoulder to shoulder.

“and you don’t need to make breakfast. sometimes we do things we don’t have to do.” she pours generous sized circles of batter onto the heated pan. they sizzle, smoke rising off them. she reaches for the temperature knob, turning the heat down.

you exhale through your nose and step aside, bumping your shoulder lightly against wanda’s before reaching for the coffee mugs instead.

“do you think ‘tasha will be up soon?” you ask as you place a coffee pod into the machine. you’re the only one who uses the flavored pods—wanda and natasha prefer the plain coffee grounds.

“she was starting to wake up when i left the room.” wanda replies, flipping the pancakes. you nod, getting a third mug out of the cabinet.

as if on cue, you hear natasha’s footsteps coming down the hall, always louder when her body is heavy with sleepiness.

“it’s 6AM.” natasha grumbles, her eyes squint to adjust to both the sun streaming through the open window and the kitchen lights you had turned on when you first started making breakfast. she looks so soft standing there that guilt tugs at your chest for waking them both.

“the sun is coming up?” you offer, your shoulders shrugging. she can read the guilt creeping into your expression. she scrubs her hands over her tired face.

“come here.” she holds her hands out in front of her. you abandon your spot in front of the coffee maker, padding into her open arms. she gathers you against her with the same practiced familiarity as wanda. the embrace is heavier though, drawing you closer.

“you were tossing and turning most of the night. you wanna talk about it?” her hands glide lower down your back, her hands warm even through your pajamas.

you shake your head. “no, i’m okay. or i will be later …maybe.” you shrug. you look off to the side, suddenly finding a spot on your wrist very interesting.

you feel her hands tighten around your hips until you’re suddenly being lifted into the air, your bum now resting against the cold granite top counter. you shiver at the unexpected temperature difference. you cross your ankles, but natasha steps between your legs before you can, her palms resting flat against your bare thighs.

“you’re not wiggling out of this that easily, little bee.” her voice is firm, but there’s a softness to her eyes that tells you she’s not actually upset. “you’re stressed about the people visiting your work today.” it’s not a question. you frown, squirming under her close observation. “talk to me. what’s going on in that head of yours?” her finger gently pokes at your forehead.

you look at natasha through your lashes, your eyes darting to wanda who still has her back to you as she wraps up breakfast. you watch her plate the food and your stomach almost turns at the sight. you’re really not hungry. making breakfast had simply been a distraction.

“(y/n).” natasha calls your attention back to her. your eyes find her emerald green ones. you frown deeper, your posture falling.

“i don’t know… i’m just stressed. what if i fail? what if i’m held accountable for something i didn’t do wrong, but my team did? you know my boss is a total asshole and he always makes me feel stupid—like nothing i do is good enough. i just really don’t want to be reminded of that today.” you exhale forcefully when you finish. your body is tense with the confession.

natasha reaches up to cradle your face with gentle, yet firm hands. “hey, listen to me.” she doesn’t continue until she can tell you’re really listening to her. it takes a few beats.

“it’s going to be okay—really. you’ve been doing a very good job about helping your team stay in line. plus, they all love you. i’m sure they’re just as eager to perform well today for your guests as you are to please them.” she speaks with such a surety that you almost internalize her words. you think over them for a second, and then your boss’s face flashes into your mind. you sigh, eyes closing, shoulders falling again.

“natasha’s right, (y/n). you have nothing to worry about. you’ll see later tonight once this is all over with.” wanda chimes in, sliding your refillable water bottle over to you. you don’t reach for it.

“i want it to be over with now.” you groan stubbornly. it’s so petulant sounding, it has both of them chuckling softly despite themselves.

“i know, sweet girl. it’ll be okay.” wanda assures, standing next to her wife now. “for now, let’s try and get some food in that tummy. then after we can talk about it a little more before sending you off to work.”

—

“hey, (y/n), did you grab yesterday’s report off the printer?” your coworker kate asks. she was basically your unofficial assistant, always running around with you, willing to tackle whatever task you needed to take down. you were grateful for someone like her. sometimes she was the only thing keeping you sane throughout the work day.

“yep. first thing i did when i walked in this morning.” you nod your head, your fingers vigorously typing away at the keyboard in front of you. kate lingers in the doorway to your office, rocking back on her heels.

“what’re you typing up?” she asks curiously, stepping into the room.

“notes i forgot to add to yesterday’s report.” you mumble, eyes not even sparing a blink until you had the revised version ready to go. your “special” guests were due to arrive any moment now. you needed this done.

your phone buzzes next to you on your desk. your eyes don’t even glance in that direction. kate, being the nosy thing she is, steps closer, looking at your lit up phone screen.

“it’s natasha!” she declares cheerily. she was particularly supportive of your throuple relationship. she was also the only one in the office that really knew. she steps closer, getting a better look at the text before the screen goes dark. “she asking if you got to work okay.” she reads, taking a step back.

“shit.” you mutter, your hand on the mouse as you navigate to the print button. “i’m supposed to text them when i get to work. making sure i’m safe and all that.” you click on the print button. “i’ll text her back later.”

before you can think about it any longer, someone calls your name from the conference room.

—

“jesus christ, they were intense.” steve comments when your whole team is huddled together in the break room at the end of the work day.

your visitors had come and gone, all without rattling the office too much. everyone was on their best behavior, which you were very grateful for. even steve and bucky seemed to keep their obnoxious inside jokes to a minimum around prying ears.

“i’ll say.” you agree, smoothing a hand over your hair.

“i’m glad that’s over with.” kate comments, clutching her water bottle close to her chest with two hands. “this one has been extra stressed more than normal for weeks.” she jabs a finger in your direction, her eyes light with her teasing comment. your whole team chuckles softly at your expense. you roll your eyes.

“okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. laugh it up. they could have had my ass if they found anything wrong today.” you try to defend yourself, but you can’t hide the smile threatening to stretch across your face. it was such a relief now that they were gone.

“oh, please, (y/n), you’re the best of us. the only reason tony gives you shit is because he’s probably threatened by you,” carol chimes in. you snort at her comment.

“threatened? please. like i’d want his job.” you feel your phone buzzing in your pocket. you pick it up without thinking too much about it. it’s from wanda.

We haven’t heard anything from you today. Did everything go okay at work?

you curse under your breath. you forgot to text both of them all day today. you know their expectation is at least one check-in. you quickly type out a brief response as the rest of your team talks amongst themselves.

went great. talk more about it a little later.

you hit send, shoving your phone back into your pocket.

“ready to go, everyone?” you ask, gathering your personal items you had set on a little table. your water bottle feels heavier than it should at the end of the day. you can’t remember taking a single sip.

kate walks you to your car once the rest of your team parts ways. “proud of you, chica. everything went amazing today.” she compliments as you round the drivers side of your car.

“couldn’t of done it without you katie girl.”

—

the house is quiet when you step inside. you shuck off your shoes, placing your car keys on a small table under a mirror that hangs adjacent to the front door.

the house feels still without wanda or natasha. they must have gotten called into the office for the day. you guessed they would be home in a little bit, but for now it was just you in the empty space. you place your empty water bottle on the kitchen counter. it waits there, beads of condensation trailing lazily down its sides. it sat there almost as full as it had been that morning. your stomach twists at the realization of disregarding yet another rule today. it wasn’t on purpose.

you stare at it for a moment longer before picking the bottle back up to take a small sip. you still didn’t feel very thirsty. you set it back down, leaving it to sit alone on the edge of the counter while you head for the couch in the living room.

the soft cushions envelop you as soon as you sit down, and you sigh heavily. more silence surrounds you as you lean back against the cushions, your eyes fixed on a random spot on the ceiling. your hands are clasped over your stomach, fingers tapping back and forth absentmindedly. you wait for the relief you’d been promising yourself all day.

it never comes.

you’re unsure how many minutes have passed when you hear the soft hum of the garage door opening through the walls. you sit up at once, a soft smile on your lips you didn’t even realize is there.

they’re home.

voices drift in from the entryway and you can feel your body relax at the sound. you glance towards the walkway, your eyes landing on your water bottle perched on the kitchen countertop. evidence. you look away before either of them can follow your gaze.

natasha rounds the corner first, her expression warm as her eyes find you. “hi, honeybee.” you’re already crossing the room before she can reach for you. her embrace eases an ache you’d been carrying all day. “hi.” you mumble into her shoulder, your arms wrapped tightly around her waist. she presses her lips to the top of your head, lingering there before she feels you loosen your arms to greet her wife.

wanda smiles warmly, her gaze taking in your small frame. she pecks your lips before you can bury your face into her neck, her arms wrapping around you automatically. you inhale her scent, the action just as comforting as her arms around you. she sways back and forth just a little as you linger in her arms.

“what do you say we make dinner?” wanda murmurs next to your ear after another beat of silence. you nod into her neck, loosening your grasp as you step back from the embrace.

the three of you moved around the kitchen with practiced ease. dinner was made, plates were set and you were all in your respective seats before you knew it.

“i wanna hear all about your special visitors today. how did it go?” wanda asks as she cuts into her steak.

“it actually went really well.” you start, smiling a bit as you recall your surprisingly successful day. “kate was a huge help. she reminded me to calm down whenever i was getting a little too stressed out. steve too. he kept trying to make me laugh. i was able to share my reports without forgetting key things or stumbling over my words. it almost went too well. like i was waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time,” you stab a piece of steamed broccoli with your fork, popping it into your mouth when you finish your sentence.

“i’m not surprised to hear that it went well. i knew it would.” natasha says. you can hear a twinge of pride in her voice.

“we’re very proud of you, little love.” wanda places her hand over yours, giving it an affectionate squeeze. you glow under her praise, your stomach fluttering at both the gesture and her words.

“thank you.” you reply in a soft tone, your gaze falling towards your plate as you smile gently.

forks and knives clank against plates as you all enjoy your food. you reach for your water that natasha had placed in front of you when you first sat down. she hadn’t said anything about it being full, and neither did wanda. perhaps they forgot to mention it.

“how was work for you guys?” you ask before you take a drink. they recall their day, which sounded like it was just as successful as yours had been. the call into work had been unexpected, but they were able to smooth all the ruffled feathers. they’ve always been good at that.

after you were all done eating, the three of you work together to clean up. wanda stood at the sink, washing the dishes while natasha wiped off counters and you put away the leftover food.

you open the fridge, setting the tupperware of steamed vegetables on the top shelf.

wanda becomes more quiet, her movements slowing as she scrubs each plate before carefully placing it in the dishwasher. natasha doesn’t ask any more questions or spark up a new conversation as you all work together. she doesn’t glance at you even as she can feel you watching her, instead turning to wipe down the table.

you linger where you are, eyes darting between them. the silence makes your belly curl.

you forgot to text them. only after being texted multiple times did you reply, and even then, it was very brief. you also had neglected your water almost all day. the expectation was at least one gone by the time you got home.

your disobedience wasn’t intentional, just small actions you told yourself you’d eventually get to and then never did.

you watch wanda place the last dish into the dishwasher. her back is still to you as she dries her hands. she uses the same small towel to dry splashes of water that had gotten onto the counter surrounding the sink.

“little bee?” natasha’s voice cuts into the silence. your eyes dart to where she stands several feet away. “can we talk for a minute?”

the knot in your belly tightens, but you nod regardless. subconsciously, your legs carry you over to the living room couch. you sit in the middle of the long sofa, a practiced routine as wanda and natasha assume their spots on either side of you.

you stare at your hands in your lap. wanda curls one leg under the other as she faces you, the other hanging off the end of the couch. natasha sits with both her feet flat on the floor, her torso twisted to face you. silence settles over the three of you for a long moment.

“bee, look at me.” wanda says gently. she doesn’t reach for you yet. you lift your head, sage green eyes boring into yours with a softness you’re not sure made you feel better or worse. “did you drink your water today? or was what we saw from when i filled it this morning?” they’re both almost positive it was the latter, but she wanted to double check just in case.

“from this morning.” you mumble, eyes falling back to your lap. this wasn’t the first time this had happened. you hear natasha exhale through her nose beside you. it’s quiet for another few beats.

“this is becoming a pattern, isn’t it?” wanda still speaks gently. the words echo in your mind. memories of other instances you’ve neglected the small tasks begin to run through your mind.

“i don’t mean to do it.” you whisper, your fingers fidgeting with the hair tie you always kept on your wrist.

“we know.” wanda replies. “but it's still happening.”

more silence washes over the room. it’s deafening. the knot in your stomach twists even more.

“none of this is about the water bottle.” natasha speaks, her words echoing in your right ear.

“the water isn’t important because we want you hydrated. it’s important because we asked you to take care of yourself.” she adds, her voice even, without a trace of harshness.

“when you don’t, you tell yourself you’ll do it later. later becomes tomorrow. tomorrow becomes next week. eventually your needs become the last thing on your list.” your shoulders fall when wanda speaks again. her words begin to resonate as you listen to them, almost as if she’s painting the full picture of which you’ve never fully looked at before.

“i… i guess it’s just a habit. it’s not on purpose.” your defense is weak, but you have nothing else to offer but the honest truth.

“we know, honey.” wanda soothes.

“intent explains behavior. it doesn’t erase the impact of it.” natasha adds. you feel tears begin to prick your eyes, your cheeks growing warm. it’s silent for another couple seconds.

“this morning you didn’t let me make breakfast.” wanda says. you glance up at her for the first time in several minutes. you’re slightly confused at why she brings it up.

“today you wouldn’t let yourself drink water.” she continues. she pauses a moment, letting it sit there before going on. “you let us hold you when it’s easy. when you’re exhausted or falling apart..” another small pause. “but the little moments before that…you decide you can carry those alone.” a tear rolls down your cheek you didn’t realize was balancing on your lower lid. the weight of what they’re saying begins to wash over you.

you sniff, the clock ticking on the wall the only other sound in the room.

“this dynamic doesn’t work unless you allow us to take care of you. we can’t carry something you won't hand to us.” natasha speaks again. you can’t look at either of them, your vision suddenly blurry as more unshed tears brim in your eyes. you twist the hair elastic around your fingers with trembling hands.

“i didn’t really realize it looked like that.” your voice cracks at the end, another tear slipping down your cheek.

“we know.” they both say in unison.

they don’t fill the gaps of silence as the three of you sit there. wanda watches your face carefully as the realization washes over you in waves. neither of them rush to comfort you, instead letting you linger in the silence. when your shoulders begin to shake and the hair tie slips from your fingers, natasha places a hand on your thigh, squeezing gently. wanda lifts your chin, tilting your face towards her. you blink, causing a couple more silent tears to fall. she wipes them away with her thumbs, cradling your face with tender hands.

“we’re not mad, little bee.” she assures, stroking your cheeks until your eyes finally meet hers.

“we’re very proud of you for hearing us.” her gentle praise causes warmth to bloom in your chest despite everything else.

you sniffle, blinking away the rest of your tears. natasha reaches for the tissue box on the coffee table, handing the tissue to wanda. she gently wipes away the salty tears, running the tissue under your nose that was getting a little runny. you exhale slowly through your mouth, letting the emotion run through you.

natasha leans forward, her face coming into your peripheral vision. she squeezes your thigh again, a silent call for you to look at her. your eyes lift to her gaze without much thought.

“understanding why this happened doesn’t mean we skip our responsibilities.” she says.

you cast your eyes back down to your lap.

“i know…” you say, resigned.

“do you understand why there still needs to be accountability?” she asks.

you nod.

“can you tell us why?” she presses gently.

“because if we only talked about it…” you swallow before continuing, “i’d probably tell myself i’ll do better,” you exhale shakily, “and then i’d do the same thing over again.”

“exactly.” natasha reaches up to tuck some hair behind your ear before lifting your chin.

“we still love you very much.” she reassures, her eyes are tender but firm, conveying the weight of her words. your lip juts into a pout without consciously thinking about it, the softness of the moment almost overwhelming.

there’s some more silence as you hold her gaze before she speaks again.

“stand up for me, baby love.” you stand on slightly shaky legs, turning slowly until you’re standing facing her. her hands find the button of your pants, fingers pinching to undo it before she slides down your zipper. it echoes in the otherwise quiet room. your heart begins to race in anticipation.

she peels your pants down your legs, and you place a hand on your shoulder to steady yourself as you step out of them. she takes her time to fold them carefully before setting them aside.

“com’ere.” she murmurs gently, holding her hands out. she helps to guide your body down into her lap. your head rests comfortably in wanda’s lap, propped up by your folded arms while your lower half is draped across natasha’s. you exhale shakily as natasha hooks her fingers into your underwear, carefully shimmying them off your hips until they’re bunched at your thighs. you shiver at the new exposure, feeling the cool air on your legs.

“you don’t need to count, little bee. just lie your head there in mommy’s lap and feel.” she smooths a palm over your bare asscheeks. wanda runs a hand down your hair at the same time.

you nod when natasha doesn’t continue, figuring she was waiting for your acknowledgment.

your body tenses slightly as you lie there in anticipation. you flinch when her hand comes down for the first time. the first always felt like a shock to your system.

she rubs out the sting and then hits you in the same place. your asscheek begins to bloom with heat, the weight of her hand heavy against your sensitive skin.

her palm comes down on the other cheek. this time, she doesn’t soothe the sting before hitting you again.

she builds a predictable rhythm, careful not to spank you in the same spot too many times without rubbing your increasingly sensitive backside.

the more she hits, the more inflamed your skin becomes, each one hurting more than the last. tears begin to prick your eyes again.

another slap lands in the spot where your buttcheek and thigh meet, the sensation causing your whole body to jerk. she spanks you there twice, a sob ripping up from your throat. your fingers curl around the material of wanda’s pants, your knuckles turning white from how firmly you were grasping on.

“that’s it, honey. let it all out.” wanda encourages as her nails gently scratch along your back.

natasha doesn’t let up, maintaining her rhythm until she can see the visible shake of your shoulders—like the weight finally lifting off of them.

“there we go, baby. just feel.” natasha croons, another smack landing on your left asscheek. she soothes it this time.

“doesn’t it feel good to let us take care of you?” natasha murmurs, hand coming down on your right cheek again. you sob, nodding your head against wanda’s leg.

you can feel when the last of the tension dissipates from your body.

your weight suddenly feels heavier in their laps as your body fully surrenders to them. you even feel it in your mind; the thoughts quieting, the pressure to carry everything all on your own fading into nothing.

natasha spanks you twice more, sealing the end of your consequence. your whole body shakes with sobs. the release feels euphoric.

your limbs are heavy as wanda carefully gathers you until you’re sitting in her lap, your body pulled tightly against her as her arms wrap around you. she doesn’t shush you, simply rocking you back and forth and stroking along your spine as you ride out the emotion.

you’re unsure how much time passes as she sways you back and forth or when you finally stop crying.

it’s not until your sobs die down and turn into sniffles that you finally lift your face from where it was buried in wanda’s neck.

you glance around you, slightly disoriented as you sway in her lap. your cheeks are pink and tear stained, eyes puffy from all the crying, but you feel lighter than you’ve felt in weeks.

“there’s my little honeybee.” wanda cradles your face in her hands. her green eyes are endlessly soft, a gentle smile on her face. you sniffle, her hands wiping away the wetness on your cheeks.

natasha appears in your vision, sitting closely next to her wife. she’s holding a bottle of water.

she smiles, wanda chuckling affectionately when you lean forward and your lips part, like you’re waiting expectantly.

natasha unscrews the cap, bringing it to your lips and carefully tipping it back. you swallow the liquid easily, suddenly feeling very thirsty after everything that just happened. when you pull back, natasha pulls the bottle away, screwing the cap back on.

“you did so good, baby.” she praises, caressing your cheek.

“so good.” wanda echoes.

your mind is hazy, full of nothing but the warm fuzziness of your submission. you look between both of them with glossy eyes.

“next time, we’ll carry it together.” wanda says, hands holding firmly to your hips in a grounding manner.

“together.” you nod, the word barely above a whisper.

・・・・・

It was meant to be an easy mission, nothing too much to handle. They had an extensive meeting about the mission, one more quick briefing before they left the compound, and yet, the Avengers were not prepared for the ambush. 

Supposedly, an independent criminal organization was causing trouble across the city, and no one managed to stop them yet, so the Avengers were asked to help. It was unusual, having to resort to the Avengers for such a trivial issue, they were all aware of it, but they decided not to question it. 

What they weren’t aware of was that the so-called ‘organization’ was in fact Hydra, and the request for help came from them as well. It was an undercover mission, an ambush, the whole thing orchestrated to lure them out. 

From what they knew, there were about 15 rogue civilians to deal with, but once the squad got there all hell broke loose. Masses of armed soldiers attacked them, the number of people significantly higher than they anticipated and they quickly got overwhelmed. 

And that’s where you came in. Hydra wanted to take the Avengers down for good, but for that they needed someone on the inside, so they came up with a plan that involved you joining the Avengers and living with them at the compound. The thing was, you couldn’t just show up at their doors and ask them to join, which is why this whole thing was organized. It was meant to give you a way in. Help them, show them what you’re capable of, and hope that they take you in. 

You were waiting for your cue, hiding behind the rubble of a collapsed building. Your hands shook slightly from the stress. This was an important mission, and if you failed to deliver there would be hell to pay. On top of that, this was your first mission out in the field. They needed someone that wasn’t known, someone that the Avengers didn’t have on their radar, which is why you were chosen. They trusted you to get the job done, because even though you haven’t had much experience, you were one of their most valuable assets. You were not only a highly trained killer, you could also easily blend in, both of which were needed. 

You heard a commotion very close to where you were hiding, which snapped you out of your thoughts. When you peeked out you saw Clint on the ground, his bow discarded, and a soldier standing above him. You knew this was your moment, and there was no time to hesitate as you came out of hiding. You took the soldier by surprise, one second he was about to kill Clint and the next he was falling to the ground, body limp and his neck twisted. Quick and easy move, with deadly consequences. 

You stared at Clint, his eyes wide in shock, you reached down, offering him a hand as you checked up on him. “You good?” He nodded and accepted your help. He stood tall as he padded your back. “Insane move, kid. Thanks.” 

You stared at the body of the dead soldier, he was one of your own, though you’ve never met him. There were a lot of people that worked with Hydra, but you still felt a sting in your chest. You just took someone’s life. It wasn’t the first time, killing was not only part of the job you had to do for them, it was also a part of their extensive training, but it was never easy for you. You never wanted to kill people, to cause harm.

“Come on, we need to move.” Said Clint, which brought you back to the present. You nodded and followed him. You fought your way through, mindlessly killing anyone that was in your way. The cruelty didn’t make you flinch nearly as much as it should, you knew you had to detach yourself from this, otherwise you would completely break. As you continued through the streets you met some of the other Avengers, and you saw their confused stares, but there was no time for questions. You still had a job that needed to be done.

You didn’t see Wanda or Natasha until all the fighting was over and you all gathered at the meeting point. Those two were the ones you were the most anxious to meet. They seemed nice in the pictures you’ve seen, but everything you’ve ever heard about them was always heavily censored by Hydra, meaning that as far as you knew, Wanda was a deadly witch, and Natasha was a merciless spy and assassin. Both cold-blooded murderers, who never hesitated to kill.

You stared at the damage around you, your eyes landing on another dead soldier near you. This one you recognized, you never really talked, as keeping any kind of relations at Hydra was not common, but you saw him around often, he was in charge of training younger soldiers, much younger than you. You heard the stories about him, how he never hesitated to raise his hand if anyone dared to disobey, no matter who they were. He was cruel and soulless, and yet, you couldn’t shake the feeling of nausea blooming inside of you.

“Quite the punch you’ve got there, kid.” Said Clint, which snapped you out of your thoughts. You stared at him, and he noticed a sort of a haunted look in your eyes. It took him back a bit, but he just thought it must’ve been the aggression of what just happened. It didn’t occur to him that there might have been more to it. That what just happened awakened all the horrors you went through. His expression softened though, his words careful as he asked you, “you’ve got anywhere to go?” 

You shook your head hesitantly. “No, uhm, not really.”

They all shared a concerned look, an awkward silence settling among the group. You briefly thought they were going to send you away. After all, you were not their problem, you were just a lost girl that they stumbled upon. You were about to tell them that it was okay, but a voice suddenly interrupted you. 

It was Tony, asking you if you would like to come with them. That was the moment your act began as you gave him a hesitant shrug and asked in an uneven voice. “Go where?”

“To the compound, that’s where we stay. You could come stay with us, we could certainly use your skills.” He clarified, and you shrugged. “I wouldn’t wanna bother…”

Tony shook his head immediately, waving his hands in a dismissive manner. “Nonsense, we’ve got more than enough space. Come on, kid. What do you say? You just saved our asses. It’s the least we can do.”

After a moment of silence you nodded, rather reluctantly. “Then…I guess, yeah. Thank you.” 

Tony smiled as he padded your back cheerfully, keeping his hand on your back as he led you to the quinjet. You stared in awe, completely taken back, which Tony noticed and smirked. “Pretty impressive, huh?” 

You passed by the two women as you continued walking, the eye contact was brief, too brief to really catch anything, but it still sparked a weird feeling inside of you. A feeling you couldn’t quite describe. 

They’re just scary. You told yourself.

You all made your way inside, and you sat as far away from them as you physically could. You didn’t like whatever feeling it was that they were awaking in you. It was scary and distracting, and you had a job to do here. You couldn’t afford to mess it all up. 

The mood was light among the group, despite the violence that you’ve all witnessed. You were shocked to see them all be so friendly with one another. With Hydra it was just work, impersonal and cold, no friends, no warm hugs and smiles, just work. Here it seemed as if they’ve been not just colleagues but also friends, almost a family. 

Everyone mostly left you be, not wanting to overwhelm you with useless questions. Only Clint asked you once if you were doing okay and handed you a bottle of water, which you appreciated. For the majority of the time you just kept to yourself, occasionally observing them.  

But then came the question of where you learned to fight like that, and you were ready, you had the perfect story Hydra gave you. Even fake files, everything was flawless. Almost too flawless. You saw Natasha’s frown when you glanced at her briefly. She was suspicious. It made sense, she was a spy after all. You didn’t let her rattle you though. You kept answering, maintaining the persona Hydra set up for you. 

“I, uhh, I did martial arts as a kid…but now, I-, I try to make some extra money by fighting…” you explained. 

“Fighting?” Asked Tony, the confusion was obvious in his facial expression. 

“Like illegal underground fighting, you know people bet, watch you get beat up for fun. On a good day, I can make some decent money” You clarified, your voice insecure, aware how shitty it sounded. 

“So, that’s how you make money?” Clint asked, concern clear on his face, to which you nodded. “Uhh, I mean, I also do waitressing. That doesn’t make me a lot of money, though.” 

Clint nodded in understanding, but the concern was still very clear. “And you said you didn’t really have a place to stay, right? So where have you been until now?” 

“In different places…mostly hostels though. I don’t make enough money to afford something permanent.” You said, your shrug meant to be indifferent, as if you were okay with how your life has been going, but it was clear you were struggling. If only they knew. You were hoping you’ve been convincing so far, and based on their facial expressions, it looked like you were. 

Their faces were full of pity, sad that someone as young as you had to go through life like this. Tony followed up, their questions suddenly relentless. “What about your parents?”

“Dead,” you said as you looked away, “they died when I was 14, I had different foster parents since then, none of them were very good. I ran away the second I turned 18.”

“How old are you now?” Wanda asked, which caught your attention. Neither her nor Natasha have said anything to you since you met. You looked at her properly this time, and answered. “22.” 

She nodded, her face a mix of worry and sorrow. You felt like a lost kitten, with the way she looked at you. You felt that feeling again, the one you couldn’t explain before, and you looked away again, that unexplainable fear sparking again. 

They left you alone after that as they resumed their previous conversation, but even then you still felt someone constantly looking at you, observing you. You tried your hardest to ignore it, but the persistent stares kept unsettling you. You gathered the courage to finally look up after a while and that’s when you finally looked at Natasha. This time the eye contact wasn’t brief, it was in fact too long to be considered casual, but it was not friendly in any way. Her eyes were cold, and you felt a shiver run down your spine, in that moment you felt as if she completely saw through you. It wasn’t just guarded, but borderline uninviting, and completely different to Wanda. 

The way Wanda looked at you was careful, but not hostile, her warmth unhidden. Unlike Natasha’s. You looked down again, losing the silent fight for power. Something in her attitude, though you couldn’t pinpoint what exactly, told you to let her win, to obey her. Maybe it was the years of continued abuse at the hands of Hydra, where submission was expected and forced if not given freely. For the majority of your life the power over what you did was in the hands of others, maybe that was why you didn’t challenge Natasha, you just weren’t used to it. 

You were exhausted and desperately wanted to doze off, but you did not feel safe enough to do something like that around so many people you didn’t even know. You were hoping that it wouldn’t take much longer to the compound, and thankfully, your prayers were heard as a few minutes later Tony announced you’ve arrived.

You all made your way out of the quinjet, everyone moved slowly, their steps carefree and unhurried. You were once again taken back by how peaceful the mood was, while you were internally crashing. Perhaps it was the stress of the day, the importance of your mission working out, but now that it was somewhat over you went into overdrive, too overwhelmed to function properly. You were the last one to walk out, and no one spared you any more looks, not even the two women, which you were grateful for. It felt like both of them had some supernatural power to see through your act, and you were sure they would immediately notice that something was off with you. 

Once you stepped outside you were met with Tony, who gave you a bright smile. “Come on, I’ll quickly show you around and walk you to your room. I imagine you’re exhausted right now, but you’ll need a medical check up tomorrow. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks.” You said and followed Tony. You really didn’t catch a lot of what he was showing you, too out of it to really pay attention. You briefly remember seeing the kitchen, but if anyone asked you where it was, you wouldn’t know the answer. And finally, after all the walking, and Tony’s endless albeit nice talking, you were standing in front of a door to a room that would now be yours.

“Aaand this is where you’re going to stay,” he said ceremoniously as he opened the door and let you in. “There’s a bathroom and everything, so you should be all set.” 

You nodded in understanding and gave him a smile that you hoped conveyed the gratefulness you felt in the moment, despite the exhaustion. Maybe the reason you were here was not genuine but your appreciation for their generosity wasn’t fake. After all, they could’ve left you on the side of the street. And yet, they didn’t. 

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, get some rest, kid.” He said at last and left, closing the door behind him. You let out a heavy sigh as the door finally clicked shut and sank down on a chair by a desk, letting yourself rest for a moment. 

It was only a few moments later that someone knocked on your door, and you had to stop the groan that threatened to escape. You wanted peace and quiet, and yet you couldn’t get it for whatever reason. 

You stood up and opened the door. “Yeah?” You didn’t bother to hide the tiredness in your voice, which you regretted immediately when you saw who was standing there. 

Wanda. 

Wanda with a whole pile of clothes in her hands.

“Hey, sorry. I don’t want to disturb you, but I figured you could use some clothes?” She said, a small smile adoring her face. The words got stuck in your throat as you stared at her in disbelief. It wasn’t that great of a gesture, but it was the fact that she thought of you. Thought of how you didn’t have any clothes besides the ones you were wearing, and went out of her way to help you.  

You weren’t sure if she noticed the look of surprise on your face, but nevertheless, she did not comment on it, she only extended her arms a bit more, signaling for you to take the clothes. You cleared your throat and grabbed the stuff carefully, your voice small, “uh, thank you, really. That’s very kind of you.” 

She waved her hands dismissively and shook her head. “It's no big deal. Get some rest.”

“Thank you. You too.” You said as she slowly started to walk away and closed the door. You stared at the clothes in your hands, there were a few shirts, a pair of sweatpants, shorts and a nice oversized hoodie. You threw it all on the chair you were sitting on, grabbing the hoodie and shorts to change into and headed towards the bathroom. 

The bathroom was pretty spacious, and you took your time to take it all in. At Hydra you had shared bathrooms, everything small and dirty, a clear sign that you were undeserving of any luxury, or just basic human decency for that matter. Not here though, here everything was clean and new, clearly untouched by anyone. It was such a small detail, and yet it touched you more than it should. 

You went through the cabinets, looking for towels. There wasn't too much stuff, but you were fortunate enough to find a basket with some much needed essentials. You grabbed the shower gel and shampoo, ignoring the other stuff you saw there and kept rummaging. The next cabinet you opened had towels and you signed in relief, happy you didn’t need to go find someone to give you a towel. You’ve had enough for the day, and all you wanted to do was clean yourself up and go to bed. 

The towel was soft in your hands, the material unlike anything you’ve ever felt before and you briefly wondered if everything here was just so much better than at Hydra. So far it seemed that way, and you felt a sting of envy stir within you. It just wasn’t fair, these people got to have the best of the best, meanwhile you got the bare minimum. Just enough to not complain, and even then, it was not like you could complain. Complaining meant punishment, and that was one thing everyone desperately wanted to avoid at Hydra. 

You shook your head, hoping to also shake off the unwanted thoughts as well and put the towel and the clothes within arms reach of the shower. You didn’t take your time when it came to undressing, you were exhausted and all you could think about was bed, so you quickly took off your clothes and threw them in the corner to be dealt with later. 

You stepped into the shower and that was the moment you were faced with another issue. You had no idea how to turn it on, the system entirely different compared to what you’ve seen before. You pressed a few buttons and hoped for the best, and at last you felt a stream of cold water hit your back. You didn’t flinch, cold water was not unfamiliar to you, it was in fact all you’ve ever known. 

You were quick with it, swiftly scrubbing your skin of any dirt and thoroughly washing your hair. Turning off the water was much easier than turning it on, and once you did that you stepped out and reached for the towel. You dried yourself off and put on the clothes, the hoodie completely swallowing you. 

You made your way to the bed and laid down under the covers, letting out a sign of relief at finally being able to rest. The mattress was soft, almost cloud-like and the covers were fluffy, but just heavy enough to make you feel comfortable. You closed your eyes hoping to get that rest you so desperately craved, and yet all you could do was toss and turn, any sleep completely avoiding you. 

It felt wrong, being here, talking to these people, using their space, when at the end of the day you were going to betray them. Use them for information and run away. Guilt gnawed at you, your brain unable to turn off. 

In the end, despite how comfortable and exhausted you were, you ended up being in and out of sleep the entire night. Falling asleep only to wake up moments later, your sleep just as restless as your mind was.

____________

The first couple of days were rough for you, especially since you were never quite good at adapting to new places and people. You barely left your room, and when you did, you tried to not run into anyone, somehow feeling even more anxious than you did when you first arrived. The kitchen was a place you avoided all together, considering someone was constantly there. 

Maybe it wasn’t smart to isolate yourself from everyone so much, especially since your job here was to gather information, but you had a role to play. An orphan that moved from one cheap apartment that was barely standing to another and made her money in illegal fighting rinks. No friends, no family, and barely any money. So, it made sense for a girl with a backstory like this to distance herself from other people, those people being strangers no less. 

It just so happened that the role you were playing here happened to be exactly what you’ve done if you were here for yourself. And it’s not like anyone from Hydra was physically here to see what you were doing, so you decided you were going to give yourself a couple days of peace before you started snooping around like you were meant to. 

You ran into Clint twice since you got here, but your interactions were brief since he was constantly in a hurry, for some unknown reason. You also saw Tony once, while you were wandering around, and despite his best efforts to talk your ear off, you excused yourself before it could get to that stage.

No one made an effort to check up on you personally though, your room quiet since Wanda came to give you clothes. The same ones you were currently wearing. It made you a bit sad, you were hoping that maybe someone would stop by, just to ask you if you were doing okay. Go out of their way to do something nice. But on the other hand you were happy you were left alone, that meant no explaining yourself, no pretending. Just a fake illusion of peace in a room that was yours but at the same time wasn’t. 

You weren’t sure how you felt about not seeing Wanda and Natasha. It was a strange mix of relief and longing. There was something in them that drew you close, but at the same time you constantly felt that bundle of anxiety whenever they talked to you or looked at you. 

You found yourself thinking about them while you were hiding in your room. It has already been 4 days since you arrived. Similarly, it has been 4 days since you ate anything. You already felt weird being here, but walking into the kitchen and taking food that was not yours felt like a line you just simply couldn’t cross. You didn’t think anyone noticed though. After all, they were all busy, it wasn’t their job to look after you and make sure you were okay.

Wanda did notice though, and so did Natasha but she didn’t care about it nearly as much as Wanda seemingly did. That was exactly why Wanda found herself convincing, or more like arguing with Natasha to have breakfast with you after not seeing you for those 4 days. 

They were both going through their morning routine, when Wanda decided to bring it up. Natasha was already done and waiting for her girlfriend to finish getting ready, sitting on the bed and mindlessly scrolling through her phone.

“You know, I was thinking,” said Wanda as she was brushing her hair, looking at Natasha through a mirror, though she just gave her a mindless hum while her eyes stayed the screen, “it might be nice to ask her to have breakfast with us.” 

This caught Natasha’s attention, and she abruptly raised her head to look at her girlfriend, her eyes full of confusion. “Who? The new girl?” 

“You know, she has a name, no need to call her ‘the new girl’.” Said Wanda as she rolled her eyes and continued. “And yes, she doesn’t really have anyone here, she could probably use some company,” said Wanda casually, as she shrugged her shoulders, while Natasha’s stance was anything but casual, her posture tense, clearly signaling her discomfort with the idea. “And that’s why we should have breakfast with her?”

Wanda nodded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, not noticing how appalled by the idea her girlfriend was. “Yeah, she’s all alone here, it’s a nice thing to do. And I want to get to know her more.” 

“Okay? That’s not my issue though. And neither it’s yours.” Said Natasha, her eyebrows raised in a disapproving manner.

Wanda let out an exasperated breath and turned around to look at her girlfriend directly, choosing to change tactics, “You know, she’s even younger than I was when I first got here, love.” 

“And how exactly is that my problem?” 

“She probably finds it scary here. I know I did.” This only earned her an eyeroll from Natasha, but she wasn’t willing to give up. “Come on, Nat. I haven’t seen her around since she got here. I’m kind of concerned.” 

Natasha gave her a skeptical look. “Concerned? You don’t even know her.” 

“Neither do you.” Shot Wanda back. 

“I just don’t have a good feeling about her. This whole thing smells fishy. The way she just showed up when we needed help? Don’t tell me it doesn’t sound suspicious. For all we know this could be some sort of set up.” Said Natasha as she crossed her arms, raising her eyebrows in a disapproving manner. But then she continued, her next words stubborn in an almost childish way. “And I think it’s weird how she’s keeping to herself.” 

Wanda couldn’t stop herself from letting out a chuckle, finding her girlfriend’s words ridiculous. “Oh, come on. She’s not a threat, she’s just scared and alone. We both know what that feels like.” 

Natasha rolled her eyes, unwilling to admit that Wanda’s words were actually getting to her. “Okay? She can hang out with Tony, he seems to like her.” 

Wanda mimicked her gesture, rolling her eyes in a similar manner, her words carrying a final tone. “One breakfast.” 

Natasha didn’t agree right away, and a moment of silence settled between them. But Natasha was a weak, weak woman when it came to Wanda, and she found herself agreeing despite her reluctance. “Fine, but I don’t trust her.” 

Wanda beamed, and she stepped closer to stand directly in front of Natasha. She wrapped her arms around Natasha’s neck, resting her elbows on her shoulders. When she raised her head she saw the victorious smile on Wanda’s face, clearly happy with getting her way. She wrapped her hand around Wanda’s waist, giving it a gentle squeeze, the gesture natural.  “And you don’t have to, I’m not asking you for that,” said Wanda as she leaned down and gave Natasha a small peck on the lips. “Just give her a chance, will you?”

So, that was how, half an hour later, they found themselves knocking on your door. Wanda carried a soft smile, while Natasha looked like she was ready to kill. That was the first thing you saw when you opened the door, Natasha’s murderous look, and you had to stop yourself from immediately closing the door again from how much it scared you.

It was Wanda who spoke though, her voice was gentle, and it somehow managed to soothe the anxiety Natasha left behind. “Hey, we were wondering if you would like to join us for breakfast?”

You shook your head, unsure if you heard her right. “I’m sorry, what?” 

Wanda laughed at your confused reaction, and in that moment you decided it was your absolute favorite sound in the world, so melodic and soft you almost melted. “You know, breakfast? With us? We haven’t seen you around that much, we thought it might be nice for you to get out a bit.”

You grimaced. “I, uh, I’m not sure, I really wouldn’t want to impose.” 

“Ah, come on, we wouldn’t be asking if we didn’t want you there.” Wanda said, her voice sincere, but you couldn’t help but glance at Natasha, clearly skeptical. 

“Don’t mind her, she frowns by default.” Wanda said, as she saw you look Natasha’s way, clearly unmoved by her girlfriend’s scowl. 

Natasha just rolled her eyes, deciding not to comment. “Look, I’m hungry, are you coming or not?”

You weren’t sure if it was the look she gave you or the tone of her voice but you found yourself nodding without even realizing it. Her whole attitude was stern, and it was clear that she was used to things going her way. Wanda was the same, at least from what you observed so far, but she seemed more like the type to coax you into agreeing with sweet words and smiles. Meanwhile, Natasha used stern looks and firm words to get her way, her attitude clearly strict. 

Both made you feel a certain type of way, but that wasn’t something you were willing to unpack right now, or at all. 

Wanda smiled brightly when she saw you nod, and she didn’t waste time in grabbing you by the wrist and pulling you out the door. “Come on, then. I’m making pancakes, do you like them?” 

“Uhh, I’ve never had them actually, but I mean, they do look good.” You said sheepishly as you glanced at Wanda, who was walking by your side. Natasha was a couple steps behind you, seemingly taking her time despite claiming she was hungry.

Wanda gave you a surprised look, genuinely baffled that you’ve never had something as classic as pancakes. “Really? How have you never had them?” 

You shrugged your shoulders and spoke. “Well, my foster parents weren’t really the type of parents to have a family breakfast full of love with you, and my parents worked a lot, they just didn’t have time to make me breakfast.” 

You saw the flash of sadness in Wanda’s eyes, and you were immediately hit with the guilt from lying to them again, but she quickly flashed you a smile and spoke. “Well, then, prepare yourself for the absolute best breakfast of your life.” 

You let out a giggle at the determination in her words, absolutely sure you were going to love whatever she was going to give you. A comfortable silence settled between the three of you, the sound of steps echoing as you walked through the compound. 

Although, it seemed like Wanda was eager to fill that silence no matter what. “Like the clothes?” She asked as she gave a cheeky smile, not missing how you were entirely dressed in her clothes. The look you gave her was nothing short of shy, clearly flustered. “I-, yeah, they’re really nice. I promise I’ll give them back soon, I just need to go get some of my own.” 

“Hey, it’s okay, no rush, keep them for as long as you want to. I don’t mind.” She said, her voice soothing the quiet storm in your mind, and you gave her a grateful smile. “Thank you.” 

Once you all made it to the kitchen Wanda immediately went to the fridge, taking out the ingredients, while Natasha got started on making coffee.

You stood next to Wanda, unsure what to do. “Do you need help?” 

She shook her head and nodded to the stools by the kitchen island. “No, it’s okay, I’ve got it, just go sit.” 

“Okay.” You said as you moved to sit down. Natasha briefly turned around to look at you, “want coffee?”

“Yes, please.” You breathed out, desperately needing one. She gave you a nod and turned back to the machine, making an extra cup for you. 

You watched them move around the kitchen, smoothly working together to prepare breakfast. It was fascinating, how easily they read one another, how they knew what the other was about to do, you could clearly see how this was something they’ve done dozens of times before, and you felt a pang of jealousy in your chest. You wished you had someone like they had each other, someone with whom you could do something as simple as making breakfast. 

You’ve never been in a relationship, which makes sense, you’ve spent the past 14 years of your life with Hydra, there was no space to date. No one there dated, and if they did, they never talked about it. The only couple you ever saw was your parents, and even that wasn’t an exemplary example, but if it weren’t for them, you probably would’ve never known what a relationship even is. That was how guarded your life was at Hydra. 

“So,” started Wanda, which snapped you out of your thoughts, “I haven’t seen you leave your room like, at all, since you came. Are you constantly cooped up there or are you just a vampire and leave when we all sleep?” You could hear the slight concern in her voice even though she tried to mask it with humor, and it made you curious. Why would she be concerned about you? 

The laugh you let out was honest, but it was still carrying a touch of unspoken heaviness. “Well, I guess, I’m just still getting used to this place.”

“I get that, I also didn’t get out that much when I first came here, if it weren’t for Natasha I think I still would've been stuck in that room.” Said Wanda, her voice full of understanding, but that wasn’t what caught your attention. “How long have you been here?” 

Wanda thought for a second before responding, momentarily stopping her movements. “A little over five years. Miss grumpy over here has been here for longer. Like 7 years now, I think?”

“I’m not grumpy.” Murmured Natasha, but her tone said something else. Wanda was quick to respond. “Sure, you just frown for fun, huh?” 

The eyeroll Natasha gave her was small, but it did not hide her frustration one bit. You couldn’t help but giggle at the way the couple bickered so effortlessly. You found it endearing how they just kept going back and forth, Wanda somehow never getting discouraged by Natasha’s grumpy nature. 

“Oh well, that really beats the 4 days I’ve spent here.” You murmured, faking annoyance. Somehow, the way they interacted with you and between themselves eased you enough to let go of some of the anxiety you felt, letting your guard down a bit.  

“Have you been together this whole time?” You asked carefully, not able to stop yourself, too curious to know more about the two women. You found yourself wondering what they were like when no one was watching. What did they talk about? Did they hold hands when they went for a walk? Did they cuddle? If they did, who held who? Did they have nicknames for each other? What were they like in bed- 

And that’s enough. 

“Kind of, we got together 3 months after we met.” She said as you watched her pour the dough into the pan. Gratitude filled you as you realized she wasn’t looking your way, because if she did, she would, without a doubt, notice the blush on your face, your thoughts leaving you a flustered mess. 

Natasha noticed though, as she placed a cup of coffee in front of you and sat down as well. You gave her a small smile, only glancing at her momentarily and murmured, “thanks.” She frowned when she saw your reddened cheeks, unsure where that came from. She turned her attention back to Wanda and mumbled. “And she’s been annoying me ever since.” 

“Don’t act like you don’t like it, love.” Said Wanda as she gave Natasha a cheeky wink, but her girlfriend just rolled her eyes and murmured while taking a sip of her coffee. “I don’t.” 

Wanda laughed as she turned to look at you, her words both honest and full of humor. “As you can see, we’re very in love.” 

“That must be nice.” You meant for the words to sound more lighthearted than sad, but somehow the sorrow didn’t get lost on either of them. Wanda tilted her head in curiosity, asking carefully, “you’ve never been in love?” 

“Not really, no. But it’s fine, I just always kind of wondered what it was like.” You explained, trying to keep your jealousy at bay. They didn’t need to know how much you craved the feeling of being loved by someone, it wasn’t their problem. 

“It’s very exciting at first, because it’s something new and you’re just getting to know someone, but over time it settles and it becomes kind of…calming in a way? At one point you just get to know them completely, there is nothing more to discover, no quirks to get used to, and you just exist together. Go through life together. It’s not so exciting anymore, but not in a bad way, it’s just comfortable.” You listened as Wanda spoke, clearly referencing her relationship with Natasha, because when you glanced sideways, you saw the tiny smile adoring Natasha’s lips, and you couldn’t help but smile as well. For the first time, you didn’t find Natasha scary, the smile completely softening her features, and for a second you wished she would smile at you like that too.

“That sounds very beautiful.” You said as you finally mustered the courage to look up, and saw the gentleness in Wanda’s eyes. “It is beautiful, and one day you’ll get to experience it too.” 

You heard the determination in her voice, but there was something else too, something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. It almost sounded as if she knew something you didn’t, but you decided not to dwell on it too much. 

“So, what do you guys even do around here?” You asked, both curious and also because you couldn’t keep stalling the inevitable, you were meant to get information here, not make friends.

“Lots of things, we train, prepare for missions, test weapons. Tony is constantly working on something or throwing parties no one asked for. And if not that then we just chill or hang out together.” Explained Wanda, though you couldn’t help but notice the reluctance on Natasha’s face. You wondered what that was about.

Did she know something? 

“You already have experience with that, huh? Training, fighting…” Asked Natasha, the suspicion in her voice clear as day, as if she was trying to catch you in a lie, but you were ready to answer any questions they might have. 

“Yeah, what was that about, the illegal fighting?” Wanda added, but unlike Natasha, her voice didn’t carry the same suspicion, only quiet concern. 

“I told you, I can make decent money on a good night.” You shrugged. 

Natasha fixed you with a firm look and asked. “Why did you never get a normal job?”

“I did waitressing on the side, but that barely made me enough money to afford groceries. Those fights were the only reason I didn’t have to sleep on a bench in a park. Though, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t close to that.” 

“God.” Sighed Wanda, obviously not pleased with what she was hearing. “What about something else?” 

“Well, let’s just say I’m not really qualified for anything else, I never finished school. I dropped out in my last year of high school.” You said with a shrug.

“What?!” Wanda turned away from the stove to look at you, her eyes full of shock. 

You sighed, prepared for the lecture that was sure to follow. “I know, I know. It was stupid and irresponsible decision, I’ve heard it all before.” 

“So, why did you do it?” Natasha asked, giving you a raised eyebrow, though this time her face expression didn’t scream suspicion. It seemed more like a disapproval, the kind of look a mother would give you if you brought home a bad grade. 

You looked back down before responding, staring into your cup, somehow feeling like she was scolding you with her eyes. “My foster parents...they weren’t very good. Never took care of me. I had to work throughout high school so I could afford food, because they refused to give me any of theirs. When I started my senior year I was one month away from turning 18, they told me they expected me out of the house by then. I tried to go to school and work, but it just wasn’t working, school was taking up most of my time and I just couldn’t afford to pay rent with how little I was working.” You explained, hoping you were believable, this was the most crucial moment of your mission. If they believed you now, everything would go smoothly, and the mission would be successful. You took a breath and continued talking. “So, I dropped out. I told myself it was just temporary, that I’ll work hard and save up enough to go back to school. Well, as you can see, that didn’t really work out.” 

“Oh, god, that is so awful, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” Murmured Wanda, but you didn’t really catch anything except for the ‘sweetheart’. You were sure your brain short-circuited for a moment. No one has ever called you anything like that, not your parents and definitely not anyone at Hydra. It sounded so sweet and you found yourself wishing she would call you that again. 

You couldn’t help but notice the mild look of surprise on Natasha’s face, almost as if she was as taken back by the pet name as you were. She cleared her throat and spoke. “Do you want to go back to school?” 

The shrug you gave her might have come across as careless, but you just weren’t sure, or at least that was what you tried to convey. “I guess? I really don’t like calling myself a high school dropout, but I never really considered going back either, I barely make ends meet, so it just wasn’t an option for a really long time. But it would be nice to finally finish it.” 

“Well, you still can. Now that you’re here you would have enough time for it.” Said Wanda as she finally finished cooking and set a plate stacked with pancakes in the middle of the table. They smelled delicious, and looked like they were from a movie, but you didn’t reach for them right away. You weren’t sure how they were actually meant to be eaten, but you were also waiting for them to start, feeling like you needed permission before you could proceed. That was also one of the things that Hydra installed in you, mealtimes were just another tool to manipulate and torture, to bend children to their will. 

The look you gave her was nothing short of skeptical. “I don’t know, it took me 4 days to get to the kitchen. Going back to school seems kind of impossible right now.” 

“Hey, there’s no rush. You don’t have to go back at all, if you don’t feel like it, but the offer is on the table.” Said Wanda as she finally sat down, but she didn’t sit down next to Natasha like you expected her to. No, instead she sat down to your other side, metaphorically trapping you between them. It should’ve felt suffocating, to have both of them at your side, but instead you felt a strange wave of safety wash over you. 

“And so are these pancakes, so eat. I didn’t spend all that time behind a stove for nothing.” Wanda added and motioned for you to take some. 

You gave her a sheepish look, trying to hide your embarrassment. “Okay, this is going to sound extremely embarrassing but I actually have no idea how to eat these.” You said, hiding your face in your hands, but then you heard a laugh, one that definitely did not belong to Wanda. When you peaked out you saw Natasha laughing, but you could tell she was not trying to mock you, it was the type of laugh you let out when a baby does something silly. You blushed even harder at this and hid your face once again, but you let out a small giggle as well.

“Love, stop laughing.” Wanda said, though she couldn’t stop herself from smiling as well. 

Natasha's laugh died down, now more of a chuckle. “I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen someone look so stressed over pancakes.”

You pointed exasperatedly on all the stuff that was on the table with the pancakes, the chocolate spread, the jam, the whipped cream and the fresh fruit and whined dramatically. “There’s a lot of stuff here, it’s stressing me out!” 

Wanda let out a laugh too, finding your dilemma absolutely endearing. She took your plate and put a couple of pancakes on it, then she put a bit of butter on top and poured a generous amount of maple syrup over it. 

“Here, this is how people typically eat it.” She said as she set the plate back in front of you. “I like to put chocolate spread and fruit on it too, Nat finds it disgusting.” 

“That’s because it is. It’s sweet enough that even a toddler would refuse to eat it.” Grumbled Natasha. 

“Try it like this, and next time I make them you can try them differently, see what you like.” Said Wanda, while effectively ignoring Natasha’s not so nice comment. 

“Thank you.” You smiled and took a bite. You didn’t even manage to swallow before you raised your head in surprise, not expecting them to taste so good. “Good, huh?” Smiled Wanda. 

You took your time before responding, not wanting to be impolite. “I think this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.” 

“I’m glad you think so, sweetheart.” 

That damn word again.

You kept your gaze on your plate, trying not to overthink. For a moment, the only sound filling the silence in the room was just the cutlery scraping against the plates. Surprisingly, Natasha was the one to fill in the silence this time. “We need to hurry, we have training in an hour and I don’t want to train with a full stomach.” 

“When do I start training?” You asked curiously, and Natasha raised her eyebrows as she asked. “Did you have the medical?” 

You nodded proudly, almost as if you were a kid that did their homework before their parents told them to, and Natasha nodded in approval. “Then we can start on Monday."

“We?” You asked in confusion, but Natasha was quick to answer. “Yes, we. I will be training you.”  

“Oh.” 

“Got a problem with that?” She asked, though there was no actual malice in her words, she was just teasing you, but you were still quick to defend yourself. “No, no, of course not. Just surprised.” 

Natasha smiled at your response, a hint of challenge in her eyes, clearly having fun teasing you. She was about to say something when Wanda interrupted her with a stern look. “Love, stop winding her up.” 

Natasha just raised her hands in surrender. “I’m not doing anything.” 

“Sure.” Mumbled Wanda. 

The rest of the breakfast continued peacefully, both women making effort in filling the silence, either by bickering or asking you questions. You actually had a very nice time, and when both of them stood up to go get ready for training you found yourself wishing for the breakfast to last forever. 

Maybe Wanda noticed the longing in your eyes, or maybe she actually enjoyed your company, you weren’t sure, but before you all went your separate ways she looked at you and asked. “Want to do this again tomorrow?” 

You nodded immediately, not only because of how gentle her voice was or because of how charmingly she smiled, but because you couldn’t physically wait to spend more time with the two women again. 

“Yeah, this was really nice. Thank you.” You said appreciatively. 

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” Said Wanda, giving you one last look before retreating back to their room.

“See you around, malyshka.” Said Natasha and turned around to follow her girlfriend. You tilted your head curiously, wondering what the word meant. You considered asking her, but she was too far away, so you just shrugged and went to your room, feeling so much better than you did these past 4 days.

________

It was Wanda who had your full attention. Her tongue was a warm, wet heaven as it slid between your folds, lapping at your core. She was relentless, her tongue flicking against your clit with a rhythm that was making your hips buck uncontrollably. She was sucking and licking, her mouth a perfect, wet paradise, and you could feel the pressure building inside you, coiling like a spring ready to snap.

You bit down hard on your hand, your teeth sinking into the soft flesh, as a particularly intense lick from Wanda sent a jolt of pleasure through you. You could feel the whine building in your throat, but you swallowed it down, your eyes shut tight with the effort to stay quiet.

Wanda's fingers joined her tongue, sliding inside you, curling in just the right way to make your eyes roll back in your head. You could feel your orgasm building, could feel the wave crashing over you, pulling you under. You bit down harder on your hand, your other hand fisting the sheets, as your body convulsed with the force of your release.

You could feel Wanda's tongue lapping at you, drawing out your orgasm, making you shake and tremble. You could feel Natasha's tongue, still working at your rim, her touch gentler now, soothing you as you came down from your high.

You lay there, panting, your body still quaking with aftershocks, as the two of them pulled away, their heads popping out from under the sheets. They looked at you, their faces glistening with your pleasure.

Your cheeks flushed under the attention, shy. You had many soft protests before they began and now you're a silent thing. Chest rising and falling fast, leaking onto the sheets. Wanda leans in to press a kiss to your lips while Natasha slides a hand up your thigh, drawing near to where your clit lies.

"shh," Natasha hums against your skin, her hand stilling in a gentle, possessive hold as Wanda pulled back with a knowing smile, leaving you breathless in the dark quiet of the room.

The last strike of the cane landed on your backside and you couldn't help but let out a breath of relief. 

You didn’t move, your breaths coming out in shallow gasps as you tried to regain some sort of a composure. 

“Good?” Asked Wanda as she moved to take the cuffs off of your wrists. They cuffed your arms behind your back at the beginning of the scene but by now you could barely feel anything, your limbs numb from no movement. 

“Yes.” You answered robotically.  

You didn’t enjoy it much, the cane. It left a sting that forced tears that had nothing to do with pleasure, but every ‘Color?’ was answered with ‘Green’.

You were far too afraid that if you told them you didn’t enjoy something they would end the arrangement and you would be left without an income. An income that you desperately needed to get by. Rent, tuition, food, none of that would pay itself. 

“I’m gonna go grab some lotion for her.” Muttered Natasha as she eyed you, unsure if you were just recovering from the intense canning or if something was genuinely wrong. 

Natasha and Wanda were good dominants, asked all the right questions, negotiated everything, though their care was more on the impersonal side. You were not their girlfriend or a wife. You were simply someone they paid for a good time. To be their little toy for the weekend and then go home. 

Every move, every word, every decision told you you were simply a person providing a service and nothing more. You were okay with that, that was what you signed up for after all. And they did pay you well, each sunday ending with a generous transaction. 

You only saw them through the weekend. They were far too busy with their company during the week and liked to keep their weekday evenings free for relaxation while you were left juggling school and your two other jobs throughout the day. 

You felt the mattress dip by your side as Wanda slowly stroked your hair. “I hope these are not sad tears.” She murmured. 

You shook your head immediately. “I liked it.” 

You did not. You wanted to stop before it even started. 

It was them who introduced you to the world of BDSM, though they weren’t really aware of it. You told them you were experienced. 

It wasn't like you hated everything. Being tied up was nice, especially when they edged you or overstimulated you. The paddle was fun too, hurting just enough to make you crave more, while slick covered the inside of your thighs. Being called a ‘good girl’ made you squirm and your hips buck more than anything else. You truly found a lot of it enjoyable, but there were certain aspects of it that made you want to hide away and cry, but you often found yourself saying ‘yes’ and ‘green’ even when your body yelled at you to say ‘stop’. This was a job after all. You were hired to be their submissive. To fulfil their needs as dominants. 

So when Natasha suggested the cane you said yes, just like always. You were here to please them, that’s what they were paying you for. The least you could do was say yes. 

“Got the lotion.” Said Natasha as she approached you and sat down on your other side. You heard her open the cap and squeeze some of it onto her palm, the sound more sharp than normal. “This is going to sting a bit.” She muttered. 

You gave her a small nod, just to show her you heard her, though the second her palm touched your aggravated skin you hissed sharply. Natasha was quick to pull her hand away. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, just stings.” You murmured, your voice strained. 

She only hesitated for a second, before her hand reached out again. “I know, the lotion will help. I promise.” 

The initial contact felt like being burned by fire, but you powered through and soon you were able to settle into the touch. The sting didn't immediately disappear, but it dulled enough to not make you whimper in pain. 

They gave you a few more minutes to rest, Wanda helped you roll onto your back and sit up, while Natasha handed you a bottle of water. They both watched carefully as you drank most of it, your mouth feeling like it was filled with sand. 

“Let’s get you to bed.” Said Wanda moments later as she helped you stand up. They had a special room where they did scenes, where they completely took you apart. Once everything was over they would always lead you to their guest room, while they quietly retreated to their own master bedroom. The simple gesture always left you feeling dirty, almost as if you weren’t worth their bed, but you knew the rules. This was strictly just sex, they were not looking for a companionship. 

Wanda helped you lay down when you reached the bed, while Natasha placed another bottle of water on the nightstand. “We’ll be in the bedroom if you need anything. Sleep well.” Said Wanda, her voice lowering. 

All I need is the money. 

“Good night.” You murmured as they closed the door to the guest room and the darkness engulfed you. You desperately tried to shake off the feeling of abandonment. You couldn't understand why you felt so down and shaken, you’ve done scenes you hadn’t really enjoyed that much before, but you were always fine. Why was this so different? 

Whatever. Nothing a bit of sleep won’t fix.  

You closed your eyes, hoping to will the sting away. The money you would receive tomorrow would make it all worth it. Even if you felt like a disgusting, used piece of toy. 

You hadn’t felt this disgusted with yourself since this arrangement started. That first night with them leaving you to question all your morals but you truly had no choice. 

______________

The end of your junior year was approaching quickly and with that the last tuition payment as well. You had it all under control, until you didn’t. 

The past three years were spent running between school in the morning, waitressing in the evening and bartending during the night. It was a lot and you barely had enough time to breathe, but you managed to pay the bills that needed to be paid, though you were often left with barely enough money to afford food. Sometimes all you had left was 20$, and sometimes you managed to save enough to feel like royalty, though you guessed actual royalty felt much different than you did. 

And then it all came crashing down on you in February. Your landlord unexpectedly raised the rent, which meant you had to pick up even more shifts. That was somehow manageable, but then your laptop broke down. And that was truly your downfall. You were in university, you needed a laptop to survive, but the repair cost so much you didn’t have enough for the upcoming tuition installment. 

You paid what you could, leaving a small amount of money in your bank account to afford some food, and promised yourself you would make up for it next month. The next month was the same, and your balance showed you were still almost one full tuition payment short. 

You worked hard to pay it off, and yet, when May arrived and it was time to pay the rest of the tuition off you were more than 2000$ short. 

Then one monday you received an email. Your hands shook and your heart stopped beating for a second as you saw the title. 

Final Notice: Outstanding Tuition Balance

You hesitated for a second before you opened it, wishing you could just pretend it didn't exist, but you knew that was not how life worked. You simply couldn’t run away from it. 

Tears gathered in your eyes as you opened the email. You couldn’t even read the whole message but the most important information stood out clearly. 

Outstanding balance of 4500$.

Failure to meet the deadline might result in a suspension of enrolment. 

By Monday, 25th of May, 1:00 PM. 

You had less than 7 days to get over 2000$. No amount of extra shifts was ever going to solve this, but you still tried asking. Both of your bosses turned you down, claiming there were no extra shifts to give. 

You tried asking for an extension too, claiming it was an extraordinary issue and that by September everything would be paid off. They turned you down too. 

The emergency loan didn’t work out either. 

You could drop out, that would technically make the problem disappear, but you didn’t want to give up now. You had one more year to get through and then you would finally be out of this mess. 

Just when it seemed like this would be the only way to get out of this situation, you overheard two girls talking in the lecture hall while you waited for your morning lecture to start. 

“Ugh, there’s this cute handbag I want to get, but I can’t fucking afford it.” Whined one of the girls. The sound made you wince, you could already tell what type of person she was and it made you despise her before even talking to her. 

“Show me.” Gasped the other girl, curious to see what it could possibly look like. The first girl swiftly pulled out her phone, the webpage with the handback already loaded as she turned the screen towards her friend. 

“It’s so cute though.” Dreamed the other girl, her eyes shining with adoration. 

“Yeah, look at the price.” Scoffed the first girl, the unhappiness clearly written across her face.  

Her friend gasped as she handed her the phone back. “Oh shit girl, that’s worth at least like one kidney.” 

The first girl whined again, the sound cutting through your head. “I know! Fuck it, I need to get myself a sugar daddy. That would solve everything.” 

They both laughed, obviously understanding it was just a harmless joke, but to you it sounded like salvation. 

The idea disgusted you. You were a lesbian, and having to interact with a man that you were not interested in at all left a bad taste in your mouth but you were desperate. 

Maybe we could just talk. Some of them just want dinner and that’s it, right?

You had less than 5 days left, you had to do something. 

That night you searched through the internet. Most of the websites felt much like a scam or straight up like a prostitution website but then you came across the one that would change everything for you. 

SugarDatingNYC

You clicked on it and you were surprised to see the simple, professional design. It seemed more like a corporate webpage rather than a place where one could pay someone for their time. 

The initial link only showed the basics. How it worked. Verification. Rules.

You didn’t see anyone’s profile. You needed your own profile for that. 

You didn’t immediately clink the ‘Sign Up’ button. You couldn’t believe you let yourself get to this point. There was nothing wrong with sex work, if that was what one wanted to do then good for them. But this was not the future you envisioned for yourself. Having to sell yourself just to afford basic necessities. 

You stared at the screen blankly for a few minutes, but your desperation won in the end. You did not want to be kicked out of the school. 

You signed up, but left your profile blank, your profile picture empty. You did not want anyone to see you on a webpage like this. You told yourself you would just look through to see who was on it, how much money they were offering for what type of stuff. 

Some just wanted to text, some wanted pictures, some wanted actual dinners. The money was nice but nowhere near enough compared to what you really needed. 

Then you looked at the profiles of people who wanted something more, something physical, and that’s when you found prices that would actually solve your issue, but the thought made you nauseous. Most of them were men, the profiles filled with sleazy photos and creepy descriptions, the language making you wince. 

No, you did not want to be a slave that would serve her master or a sex toy that would do anything for her daddy. 

No money was worth this. 

And then you stumbled upon their profile. Natasha and Wanda. A Married couple, both dominant, looking for a submissive, women only. Their profile was clean, professional, and it felt like finding a needle in a haystack. 

They wanted a dinner first, to discuss preferences and boundaries, promising a generous compensation. 1500$. It wasn’t enough but it was better than nothing and their profile was the only one that did not make you want to curl into a corner and cry. 

Your fingers hovered above the keyboard, wondering what you should write. Each message left unfinished before you deleted it. Frustrated, you put the phone away, deciding to let it be for now. 

The next morning you woke up even more drained than usual. School, work, another work, all of it passed with you barely noticing, your brain working on autopilot. Soon you were in the same place as yesterday, laying in bed and staring at that damn webpage. You found their profile again.

You pondered, but then you finally made the decision. You truly needed the money and there really was no time to waste. It didn’t matter to you that you weren’t a submissive. Or at least you weren’t aware of it. You weren’t totally clueless, you knew one side had control and the other didn’t, you knew people liked being tied up, liked being hit, but you’ve never tried it before so you couldn’t really tell if that was something you were into. It didn’t matter though. If they wanted a submissive, they would get one. 

You redid your profile, added a picture, a description, perfectly tailored the profile to what they wanted, adjusting the language over and over again to match their tone. 

And then you messaged them, your hands shaking with nerves. 

Hi, I really like your profile. Would you be up for a meet up? I’m available any time. 

You didn’t expect a quick response, after all it was middle of the night, and perhaps they didn’t even visit the website that often. You put the phone away as your heart beat dramatically. You couldn’t believe you’ve done this. You closed your eyes and tried to sleep, but your current situation left you feeling restless. It wasn’t until your alarm was almost about to go off that your brain finally decided to quiet down. 

You checked the webpage the second you opened your eyes and you couldn’t tell if you were relieved or disappointed to find your message unanswered. They hadn’t seen it yet, which was a good sign, it at least meant they hadn't completely dismissed you, but it left you feeling uneasy. 

It was during the second lecture of the day, while the lecturer was setting up his presentation for the class that you decided to check the webpage again. Your eyes widened when you saw you got 2 new messages. 

Tonight, 8PM. Here’s the address. 

The second message was an address of a restaurant, which you immediately looked up. It was luxurious and expensive, located in a part of the city you don’t venture in accidentally. Clearly meant for wealthy people to visit.  

You were a bit startled to see there was no hello or an introduction, just a simple instruction with time and place. What if they’re serial killers? 

You shook the unwanted thoughts away and typed back.

I’ll be there. 

Your shift at the bar was supposed to start at 9 PM, there was no way you would be able to make it. You opened the chat with your boss and messaged him that you wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. 

_____________

“You think we should text her back?” Asked Wanda as she stared at the opened chat in Natasha’s phone. 

Natasha just shrugged her shoulders as she answered indifferently. “We can try. What do we have to lose?” 

“She seems eager.” Murmured Wanda thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, she probably wants the money.” Chuckled Natasha. She knew what the girls on these sorts of apps wanted. Easy money to buy luxurious stuff. It wasn’t like it bothered her, but she did find it humorous at times. 

“Let’s just meet up with her tonight, the worst that can happen is that she won’t show up.” Argued Natasha. 

“Okay.” Sighed Wanda, the excitement missing in her voice. 

They had a happy marriage, some would argue that it was too happy. They loved each other dearly and were more than enough for one another. But over the years their sexual desires grew, what started as a very vanilla sex slowly evolved into more kinkier stuff. However, that’s when they realized one important factor. Neither of them were truly submissive. Both of them could relinquish power every now and then, but the simple truth was that both women simply enjoyed being dominant more. 

It wasn’t a marriage ending type of issue for them, but they both secretly hoped for some sort of a solution. 

Neither of them expected for that solution to arrive so soon. 

They were hanging out with some of their friends, everyone in the circle having known each other for years at this point, which meant that no topic was too sensitive to discuss. 

It started off calmly, everyone simply catching up on what they’ve been up to lately, eating dinner and sharing wine. 

It was later that evening that the conversation turned into a very intense sexual discussion, each friend spilling one confession after another. Wanda and Natasha kept quiet, not revealing much about their own sexual escapades, since they preferred to keep that private. 

That didn’t last long as suddenly one friend turned to the married couple and bluntly asked. “So, who’s the dominant one?”

Both women stared in shock, not really sure what to say. “Uh, I mean, we both are?” Answered Wanda, her voice hesitant. 

“What do you mean?” Asked another friend, placing her elbows on the table as she stared at them intensely, smirk adoring her face. She was always the one that loved winding people up, and she was thoroughly enjoying this moment. 

“Well, we can both sub, but we both prefer being on the dominant side.” Answered Wanda again, a bit more sheepish. 

“So how does that work then?”

“It works just fine, thanks for asking.” Clipped Natasha, clearly getting tired of being interrogated about something so personal. 

“Oh, come on Nat. Don’t be so uptight.” Teased another woman, but Natasha was quick to bite back. “I’m not uptight. This is just none of your business.” 

“It works fine, but if neither of us are up for subbing then we’re just sort of stuck. We still have fun but it just feels unbalanced sometimes. It's becoming a bit more frequent, but it’s okay.” Answered Wanda quickly but honestly, hoping to close the topic. 

“Get a sugar baby then, someone who would sub for you. People will do just about anything, if you offer them enough money.” A different friend answered indifferently, throwing the information at them so casually as if she was discussing the weather. 

“But we don’t want to open our marriage.” Argued Wanda, disgust clearly written across her face. Natasha’s face was no different, clearly not thrilled about the idea. 

“Then don’t. Open your bedroom. Keep it professional, just a simple transaction. They come over, you guys fuck and they leave. No need for any romance.” Shrugged the same friend.

“I don’t know, that doesn’t feel right.” Murmured Wanda as she looked away, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious. 

“Give it some thought, hm? There are many websites meant exactly for this. This isn’t an unsolvable issue.” Said the friend as she offered them an honest smile, her look free of judgement. 

Natasha and Wanda didn’t open the topic that night again once they got home, choosing to let it sit for a bit. It was days later that Wanda decided to bring it up again, approaching her wife and confessing she was willing to give it a try if it was strictly a sex only arrangement. Nothing more.  

They had a thorough conversation about it, clearly laying down boundaries and what they both expected from it. And after that, they started doing their research, looking over different websites to use, neither of them were completely comfortable with it, but they figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. 

They searched through many websites, but none of them felt right enough until they found that specific one. It seemed professional, or at least as professional as it could be and they both quickly agreed to set up their profile there. 

They chose to keep it simple, only sharing what was necessary, there was nothing sexual to it, nothing suggestive, the whole profile looking close to a CV. 

And then…nothing. 

They didn’t reach out to anyone. The idea of reaching out to young girls and offering them money for sexual services felt predatory to them. So they just had their profile there, finding new messages from a few people every now and then, but none of it ever really worked out. 

It wasn’t like either of them was really disappointed, since neither of them truly believed it would work out. So they just left the profile there, deciding to just check if there was anything new every now and then. 

And then they found you, or rather, you found them. 

Were you, perhaps, going to be the solution to their problem? 

_______________

You almost backed out about 10 times before you finally got on a train to go to the restaurant. You couldn’t believe you were doing this. What would your younger self think? 

Your leg bounced uncontrollably the whole way there, and you kept considering just getting out of the train and leaving, but you needed the money. 

It’s fine. It’s just a conversation tonight. I don’t have to do anything with them. 

The walk from the station to the restaurant felt endless and too quick at the same time. You became increasingly more anxious the closer you got, your hands shaking in their pockets and your breathing laboured.

You showed up to the restaurant exactly 10 minutes early, wanting to appear professional, or as professional as you could be in a situation like this. 

You weren’t surprised to already see the married couple sitting by the table, recognizing them from the picture on their profile. They both seemed like the type to arrive at places early. You weren’t sure if you were glad to show up after them or not, approaching them felt weird, but sitting there and having them approach you would feel weird too. 

You walked closer carefully, internally trying to convince yourself to not run away. You kept walking until you stood directly in front of them, their eyes raised as they sensed a new presence and you suddenly felt even more shy at their intense stares. You hid your arms behind your back, not wanting them to see the intense tremor. 

“Hi, I-, I’m the one from the website. It’s nice to meet you.” You said, your voice shaking, as you tried to sound as polite as possible. 

“Hello. I’m Wanda.” Said the first woman and then nodded her head towards the empty chair to your left. “Sit down.” 

Your eyes darted to the other woman who simply offered. “Natasha.” 

You nodded as you pulled the chair back and sat down, it was then that you allowed yourself to look around and admire the restaurant’s interior. It felt and looked expensive, and you could tell the only thing you would be able to afford here would be a cup of water. Maybe not even that. 

“I-, uh, I don’t really know where to start-” You murmured frantically, wanting to fill the silence but Wanda was quick to interrupt you. “That’s okay. Let’s just keep it simple, hm? Choose something to eat, our treat.” 

Her voice was melodic, and so soft you found yourself nodding without even realizing it. You picked up the menu carefully and scanned what was inside. You weren’t surprised to see that you didn’t know the majority of the dishes, everything expensive and way over the top for a regular person. 

“Wine?” Asked Natasha when the waitress brought the bottle to the table.

“Sure.” You nodded absentmindedly. Alcohol was probably what you needed. 

“Did you choose something?” Asked Wanda after a few minutes and you nodded shyly as you showed her what you wanted. She offered you a gentle nod in response as she smiled. 

No one said anything while you waited for the waitress to come get your orders and you were desperate to fill the awkward silence. Though it seemed like you were the only one who felt the awkward atmosphere because the two older women seemed entirely at ease, almost as if this was no different than just a casual dinner with a friend they hadn’t seen in a while. 

Natasha ordered for all of you once the waitress got to your table, Wanda only making an occasional comment with few adjustments, while you sat quietly, playing anxiously with your fingers in your lap. 

Once the waitress left Natasha cleared her throat and spoke, her voice low. “So, what do you want out of this?” 

“I just-, I want money.” You murmured as you winced internally, shame washing over your whole body. 

I sound like a slut. 

“That we can do.” Chuckled Wanda, and her little teasing comment eased something in you.

Maybe you didn’t need to feel so ashamed. They were here for the same thing, they wanted this too. 

“Look, I know this is weird. Believe me, this isn’t what we typically do on a friday evening either, but this is just a conversation, okay? No pressure, we just talk and see where it goes.” Said Wanda, her lips pulled into a tiny but genuine smile. 

“Okay.” You nodded, unable to not return the smile. 

They didn’t ask you much about who you were or why exactly you were doing this, all they wanted to know was that you were all on the same page. They asked you if you had any experiences with BDSM and you nodded immediately, wanting them to believe you were the perfect fit. 

You continued the conversation as you ate, though most of it consisted of them explaining what they wanted from this while you nodded along. They didn’t go into great detail, mostly just clarifying that this was a sex only arrangement to them, it was to remain absolutely discreet, that you were to see no one else during this arrangement for safety purposes and that each night spent together would end with a payment of 3000$. 

Your eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when you heard how much money they would pay you. That would be more than enough to pay off the tuition. 

“Are you still interested?” Asked Natasha as she raised her eyebrows at you, not being able to hide her smirk.  

“Very.” You nodded immediately, earning yourself a chuckle from her. 

Wanda clasped her hands together, closing the conversation. “Well, for now, I think we talked enough. Would you like to come over tomorrow? We can discuss this in more detail, find some common ground and sign a contract.” 

“I-, yeah, sure. That works.” You said as you took a sip of the wine, both surprised and relieved to see this moving along so fast. The sooner this happened, the sooner you would get the money. If they kept their promise you would still get money tonight, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay off everything. 

With that Natasha stood up to go pay, while Wanda led you outside and made sure to exchange your phone numbers, reminding you to send them your bank account number as well. 

Wanda immediately replied to your message with an address. “This is our place. Be there tomorrow at 8 PM, okay?” 

“Of course.” You nodded politely, which made Wanda give you a gentle smile. “Perfect! It was nice meeting you.” 

“See you tomorrow.” Said Natasha as she returned, her hand moving to rest on Wanda’s lower back. They looked good together, almost as if they were from the front page of some expensive magazine. 

“See ya.” You said as you waved your hand awkwardly and quickly turned around in the direction of the train station, desperately needing to escape. 

There wasn’t anything wrong with them, they didn’t make you feel uncomfortable. They were professional but polite. It was the idea of this arrangement that made you feel uneasy. 

You will feel even more uneasy when you get kicked out of the school. 

You watched the people pass you by as you stood at the platform, waiting for your train to arrive. You wondered quietly what they were up to tonight, whether they’ve also done something they never thought they would have to do. 

You felt your anxiety rise any time someone glanced your way, feeling like everyone could see right through you. 

They know what you did. They know your dirty little secret. 

You barely registered the train arriving or getting on it, your body suddenly working on autopilot. It was only half way through the journey that you finally woke up from whatever trance you were in, the sound of a new notification on your phone waking you up. You pulled it out of your pocket, wanting to check what it was. 

The color drained from your face when you saw. Wanda transferred the money. 1500$ just like that. 

You released a shaky breath, finally feeling like that weight was lifting off of your shoulders. And as you left the train station and pressed your card against the gate to pay for your ride you realized that dread didn’t fill you, the sound of the money leaving your bank account not leaving you shaken for once. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

______________

You stared in awe as your uber dropped you off in front of their house. Normally you wouldn't spend your money on an uber, choosing to save that money instead, but when you looked up a way to get there you were horrified to find out you would have to walk for about an hour after getting off of the train, the whole journey taking close to 2 hours, while the uber would only take about 30 minutes. The neighbourhood was apparently so high end that there was no public transport going there, everyone simply drove. 

You thanked the driver and got out, slowly making your way to their front door. You felt smaller and smaller as you approached their house. You briefly wondered if only the two of them lived there. You understood the want for luxurious things and that people liked to treat themselves when they could afford it, but a house of this size was simply ridiculous. It could easily house at least a dozen people, probably even more. 

You stood in front of the door for a few moments, debating if you should text them you were here or ring the bell. You chose the latter, feeling like it was a bit more polite. 

There was no response for a while, and you wondered if you should ring the bell again, but just as you were about to reach out the door opened swiftly, revealing Wanda.

“Well, hello there.” She greeted you with a smile adoring her face.

“Hi.” You replied, feeling shy under her intense gaze. 

“Come on, come inside.” She said as she stepped aside to let you in, revealing the enormous hallway decorated with furniture and numerous paintings.

You couldn’t hide the look of amazement, which Wanda noticed as she gave you an amused smile. “You like it?”

“It’s breathtaking.” You sighed. It felt surreal to stand in a place like this.

“Well, thank you. We are very proud of this place.” Said Wanda as she led you deeper into the house. There was a massive living room to your right and an even bigger kitchen to your left. That was where she led you, while Natasha was already waiting there.

“Hi.” You greeted her quietly, her presence a bit more intimidating than that of her wife. 

“Hello.” She replied promptly as she stood up and went to open one of the cupboards. “How are you?” 

“Good.” You murmured as your fingers fidgeted with the hem of your sleeves. You felt unsure of yourself. You felt like you didn’t belong in this place and you weren’t sure if you should sit down or wait for them to tell you something.

“Nervous?” She asked teasingly as she glanced at you over her shoulder.

You let out a tiny chuckle as you nodded, your hands dropping to your side. “A bit.”

“I would offer you some wine, but I think it’s better if we’re all sober for this conversation. So, how about some water?” She asked as she turned to you completely, holding three glasses in her hands, waiting for your answer.

“Water works.” You murmured as you stood still and watched her place the glasses on the table that separated you. A jug filled with water already placed in the middle. 

She sat down then, staring at you expectantly.

“Sit down.” Said Wanda suddenly as she pulled away one of the chairs from the table before circling it, choosing to sit next to her wife. 

You felt as if you were in the middle of a job interview. When you thought about it that was basically what it was. You were applying for a job, hoping they would choose you.

“So, we discussed the money last night. That still stands if you agree.” Said Wanda as poured some water in a cup, placing it in front of you.

“Yeah, yeah. That's fine.” You nodded immediately. 

“We also discussed how we expected this arrangement to work. That hasn’t changed. But what we would like to go through now is exactly what we want to do within this arrangement.” Continued Natasha, to which you only gave a small nod, showing her you were listening.

“You said you’ve had experiences in BDSM before, right?” She questioned.

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“So, what have you tried so far?” Asked Wanda and you wavered momentarily. You couldn’t back out now, so you scattered your brain for some specific activities you could tell them you engaged in. 

“Uh, well, tying up, spanking…just the usual stuff.” You murmured, hoping to hide your cluelessness behind shyness. 

“It is okay if you haven’t tried something yet. Each scene will be discussed beforehand to ensure we all know what’s going to happen and if we’re all okay with that.” Wanda replied, sensing your uneasiness.

Natasha suddenly pulled out a stack of papers, picking a specific one and handing it to you. 

“This is a list of our preferences, what is okay and what is absolutely off the table. Take a second to look at it and then we can discuss.” Said Natasha, her tone suddenly turning strict.

You nodded as you grabbed the paper and quickly scanned its contents.

Hard limits and Preferences.

You went through the hard limits first. The list wasn’t long but it mostly contained kinks on the more extreme side. 

Age play, anything involving bodily fluids, knife play, breath play, rape play.

You were relieved to see those written in there, knowing that you would have a hard time engaging in these things if that was what they wanted from you.

Then you scanned the preferences. That list was longer. Much, much longer. Some of the things written in there scared you, but you plastered on a polite smile and looked up at them. 

“Seems okay.” You tell them, feigning confidence. 

“How do those hard limits seem to you?” Asked Wanda, her voice taking on a softer tone. 

“I-, uh, it’s okay. I don’t like any of that either.” You answered quickly.

“Anything on the other side that is a hard limit for you?” Natasha asked, her tone stern. 

“No.” You answered immediately. It’s been going well so far, you didn’t want them to throw you out now.

They both raised their eyebrows at that, clearly not convinced that you would be into the exact same things as them.

“I mean, I haven’t done all of it, but I’m willing to try.” You stuttered, feeling shy under their intense stares.

“All of it?” Asked Natasha, obviously trying to catch you out in a lie, but you weren’t going to give up that easily. 

“Yes.” You nodded confidently.

“Well, okay.” She muttered as she picked up another paper, this one carried the same title but the rest remained plain. “Write your hard limits and preferences here for us.” 

Fuck. You did not remember everything they had written in there.

The hard limits one was easy, the list short enough to be memorized in that short amount of time but you wouldn’t be able to write down an exact copy of their preferences.

You wrote as much as you could and handed the paper back to them. They both went through it carefully before placing it next to their own list. 

“Hm, almost an exact match, you only left out a few things.” Murmured Natasha as she raised her eyebrows. She proceeded to read aloud those that you left out but you already prepared an answer. “I haven’t tried those, but I want to.”

Wanda gave you a soft smile as she spoke. “Let’s put those under soft limits, hm? We can start with what you already know and then we can move on to something new if you feel up to it.”

I don’t know any of it.

“Okay.” You murmured.

Natasha cleared her throat as she began speaking again. “Now safe words. We use the traffic lights system. Green for keep going. Yellow for slow down or I need a break. Red for stop. Do you use anything else or would you like to use those?” 

“No, those are fine.” You said immediately. 

“We will have non-verbal safe words in place too. In case you cannot speak. We can do taps or squeezes or you can raise your fingers. One for green, two for yellow and three for red. It’s important that you remember this, but we will make sure to always remind you before any scene starts and there will be regular check-ins during the scenes too.” Wanda added, staring at you intensely.

You gave them a small nod but Natasha’s stern voice quickly interrupted you. “Words.”

Your eyes widened momentarily, slightly taken back. Strangely enough, it made warmth bloom in your stomach, your hips shifting unconsciously. “I-, yes, sure. I understand.”

The talk continued, words like aftercare and subspace thrown around but you didn’t pay that much attention anymore, robotically nodding and agreeing to everything. 

Then they talked about the scheduling. You were to come over every Friday at 8 PM, do a scene and then leave. The same on Saturday, while Sunday and the rest of the weekdays were to remain free for both sides. This meant you would have to cancel your waitressing shifts those days, the times simply not working out but you were okay with that. The amount they would pay you would more than make up for it. 

And then the last step. Signing the contract.

“This is mostly just a technicality. Just something to make sure that all sides are safe and that we all have something to fall on.” Clarified Wanda, but your hand still shook slightly as you held the pen in your fingers. You couldn’t mess up now. 

You read through it swiftly, not really caring what was in it but not wanting to appear careless in front of them. And then you signed it. 

“Well, that’s that.” Said Natasha as she took the paper from you, putting it on top of the other papers. 

“Are you up for a scene tonight?” Wanda asked suddenly, which earned her an immediate nod from you. 

“Are you sure?” She asked, wanting to make sure you weren’t lying, but you weren’t going to butch. You nodded again, trying to appear more sure of yourself. “Absolutely.” 

“Alright then, let’s go upstairs.” Said Natasha as she stood up abruptly, her voice carrying a hint of finality. 

They both walked towards the grand staircase and you immediately followed after them like a lost puppy. You weren’t surprised to see the numerous doors once you reached the upper floor, none of them open, quietly hiding what was behind. You all walked all the way until the end of the hallway and then stopped abruptly as Natasha pulled out a key from her pocket. 

“This is where all our scenes will take place.” Said Natasha as she finally unlocked the door, letting you step in first. You were speechless at the sight. The whole room was red and black, filled with various instruments and furniture, but you could tell each and every one of them served its purpose. Some of them looked like torture devices rather than something that was supposed to bring pleasure. A shiver ran through you at the thought of some of these things being used on you. 

You felt Wanda gently squeeze your shoulder, her voice low, but not judgemental. “Still want to keep going?” 

“Yeah…” You murmured. 

I want to run away.

“Okay. I promise we'll keep it simple tonight.” Replied Wanda as she led you to the middle of the room, stopping right in front of the enormous bed. There was no duvet or blanket on it, only two red satin pillows, the mattress made of leather as well.

She stood directly in front of you, while her fingers grabbed the hem of your shirt, but she made no move to take it off yet. 

You looked up at her expectantly, but she only gave you a small smile. “Can I take it off?” 

Your head moved before you could register it, frantically nodding in agreement, but that wasn’t enough for her. “Use your words.”

“I-, yeah, you can take it off.” You murmured, growing impatient, but that seemed to be enough for her as she began to undress you and soon you stood completely naked in front of her. She stepped slightly to the side, letting Natasha see you properly as well. 

It felt strange to stand naked in front of them, while they both remained completely clothed, the action leaving you to feel weirdly exposed and vulnerable. You had to fight the urge to hide, especially when you saw Natasha sitting down in a chair and looking at you so casually. 

It made you nervous, but more than that, it made you feel humiliated. Humiliated to admit that you liked it, slick slowly but surely covering the insides of your thighs. 

“Color?” Wanda asked carefully, stopping for a second to observe you. You gave her a small smile as you spoke. “Green.” 

She nodded in acknowledgement, but her eyes were already turning darker with mischief. “I’ll start first, just with my fingers and my mouth. Gotta get you ready for Natasha.” 

You nodded wordlessly, the blunt language making you blush. It was unbelievable how they could talk about something so sexual and dirty so casually, almost as if they were discussing what they would have for dinner. 

Wanda inched closer to you, which instinctively made you back up, your knees bending once they hit the bed, making you sit down clumsily. 

“Lay back.” You laid down slowly, looking up at Wanda with nervous eyes.

“Thighs apart.” She ordered again, her tone turning more stern as she continued speaking. Your thighs parted automatically, wanting to please her. 

“Good girl.” Your heart stopped beating for a moment, your breath catching in your throat. You liked that more than you thought you would.

“Now make sure they stay there.” She added as she settled between your thighs, her lips beginning to pepper small kisses along the inside of your thighs. You squirmed a bit, finding it a bit ticklish, but your movements were quickly stopped when Wanda decided to bite down on the flesh, wordlessly warning you. It hurt, but it also made your pussy clench around nothing, making a small whine leave your lips. 

Suddenly you felt a single finger drag through your folds, ending at your clit, which made your hips buckle. “Hm, so wet already.” Mused Wanda, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying yourself. 

She teasingly pressed her finger against your clit, while she kept kissing and biting your thighs mindlessly. You tried to bite back your moans, feeling embarrassed about being so around when nothing even happened yet. 

“Don’t hold back. I want to hear it.” Said Wanda as she raised her head, beginning to slowly circle your clit, which made a moan come out of your mouth. Wanda smiled triumphantly. “That’s it.”  

Your head began to spin, and thoughts were becoming harder to string together. You’ve never felt anything like this before. 

You felt the bed dip by your side and you turned your head, finding Natasha sitting next to you, her legs crossed and face blank, though you could see a hint of something dangerously devilish in her eyes. 

Wanda stopped stroking your clit after a few moments, instead moving her thumb downwards before suddenly dipping it in your pussy. You yelped in surprise, your walls immediately squeezing around her thumb. 

“God, she’s soaked.” Murmured Wanda in awe as she looked up at Natasha. 

“I can see.” Mused Natasha, her fingers going to your nipples, mindlessly playing with them. 

Apparently Wanda was done playing around, because she pulled out her thumb only to push her index and middle finger in as her mouth latched onto your clit. Your back arched at the unexpected wave of pleasure, while moans spilled from your mouth. 

“That’s it. Good girl.” Murmured Natasha while her fingers kept softly pinching your nipples. 

Wanda kept switching between sucking on your clit and circling it with her tongue, while her fingers kept pressing against your g-spot. You could barely hold yourself together, the pleasure turning your brain into a soup. 

You weren’t sure how much time had passed but you felt your pussy clench around Wanda’s fingers more and more as your moans kept getting louder. You knew what it meant. You were close, you were going to cum. 

All of a sudden, Wanda’s fingers stopped, her mouth pulling away from your clit and your eyes snapped open, tears threatening to spill. 

“I-, please, no…” You whined, your hips shifting over and over, despite Wanda trying to hold you still. 

“Are you begging?” Chuckled Natasha as her fingers unexpectedly pinched your nipple much harder than before, making you whine more.

“I-, uh, yeah…” You murmured, blush rising along your cheeks. 

“Well, then you need to do a better job than that, because you’re not convincing so far.” Said Natasha, which made you pout and your brain drift, which Wanda caught immediately. “Hey, color?”

“Green. I’m green. Just wanna cum.” You whined desperately as your hips buckled uncontrollably.  

“Well, you need to wait then. We like to take our time.” Said Wanda as she pulled her whole body away, her fingers slipping from your pussy, leaving you empty and desperate. She settled on your side instead, while Natasha stood up abruptly. 

“You’ve taken a strap before, right?” She asked, waiting for a response.

“Yes.” 

No. You’ve only ever taken fingers. 

Natasha nodded bluntly as she opened one of the draws, pulling out a strap and a harness, the sight making your mouth water and your pussy clench. You wondered if it was going to hurt, anxiety washing over you all of a sudden. You could only hope your face didn’t give it away, as you had absolutely no strength to hide it. 

She pulled the harness up and secured it swiftly, her movements clearly impatient. You looked up at Wanda, who stroked your hair, letting your poor, sensitive nipples rest. 

You felt Natasha kneel between your thighs, and you looked back at her. She held the strap in her palm and slowly but firmly stroked it against your clit, not putting in yet.  

“Color?” She asked and you were quick to answer. “Green.” 

She slowly started to put it in, bit by bit, letting you adjust to the size. You held your breath as you felt the sting of your pussy being stretched uncomfortably, but Natasha suddenly stopped and instead stroked your clit, which made you moan and your hips buck, forcing the strap deeper. 

She kept stroking your clit as she started to push it all the way inside and then stilled once it was all in, letting you adjust. Your legs squirmed as waves of pleasure kept washing over you. 

She started to pull out, but when she was about halfway out she pushed back in, slowly starting to fuck into you, her movements slow but deep. She got rougher as few moments passed, slowly starting to fuck you faster, but it was still relatively slow. Definitely nowhere near enough to make you cum, just enough to be pleasurable and to make your head feel like it was empty. 

But then suddenly her movements got faster, her hips slamming into you at an impossible speed, her thumb harshly stroking your clit. It made your eyes roll into the back of your skull, and you could tell you were close again. 

You let out a small scream mixed with a moan, choking out. “I-, fuck! I’m gonna cum!” 

Natasha’s eyes turned dark as she sternly clipped back. “No.” 

You let out a desperate whimper. “Please…” 

She sped up even more. “Ask me nicely.” 

“Ple-, fuck! Please, please can I cum?” You whined, almost screaming. 

She didn’t grant you an answer immediately, wanting to torture you just for a moment longer, enjoying that look of desperation in your eyes. She sped up her movements instead. And just when one single tear finally fell from your eye she spoke.  

“Cum.” Ordered Natasha, and you could’ve sworn you passed out in that moment. Your pussy kept pulsing for what felt like an eternity and a mix of moans and whimpers kept leaving your mouth. Your hips kept bucking uncontrollably while Natasha kept stroking your clit, her strap buried deep in you, hoping to prolong your orgasm. 

It was only when your whines increased in pitch that she finally stopped moving her finger along your clit, noticing you were becoming overstimulated. She gave you a few moments to calm down before mumbling something about pulling out, but you paid her no mind. 

Moments passed, but your breaths kept coming out laboured, while your mind remained empty. All you felt was someone draping a blanket over you and a hand gently stroking your hair. 

Suddenly Wanda spoke as she helped you raise your head, an object made of plastic pressing against your lips. “Have some water.” You drank eagerly, feeling like you hadn’t had water in ages. You briefly noticed that Natasha wasn’t in the room with you, but your head was too fuzzy to question her whereabouts. 

“That’s enough.” Said Wanda as she pulled the bottle away from your mouth, satisfied to see you drank more than a half and laid your head back on the mattress, her hand resuming its previous movement.

Once you woke up from the haze of the orgasm you remembered. Have sex and leave. 

You looked up at Natasha once she came back into the room, feeling the shyness return. “Could you hand me my phone, please? I need to order myself an uber.” 

She nodded and wordlessly picked up your phone from the chair where Wanda placed it along with your clothes. “Here you go.” 

“Thanks.” You murmured as you opened the app, finding a driver nearby and pressing ‘order’.

“It should be here in about 20 minutes.” You mumbled as you closed your eyes, suddenly feeling exhaustion wash over you. 

“Okay.” Replied Wanda as she mindlessly stroked your hair. You felt Natasha place something into your palm once you put your phone down. You opened your eyes briefly, wondering what it was. 

“Chocolate. It will make you feel better.” She explained as she stood up again, unable to stay still apparently. 

You let yourself rest for a bit, but when the app showed you your driver would arrive in 10 minutes you moved to get ready. Wanda handed you your clothes, and you began to dress yourself, which proved to be more difficult than expected since your limbs felt like jelly. 

They both walked down with you, Natasha joining you from one of the other rooms on the upper floor. Probably a bathroom. 

Natasha held the door open for you, while Wanda handed you your coat. “We’ll see you on Friday." Said Wanda as she watched you step outside, patiently waiting for your exit. 

“See ya.” You said as you turned around, your uber waiting for you at the bottom of the driveway. 

__________

They paid you so much money that you had enough to go get an actual bag of groceries for the first time in the past 3 years, but as you cooked in your very modest kitchen you felt completely numb. 

I had sex for money. 

You couldn’t even finish the food you made for yourself, feeling as if you were about to throw up every time you swallowed. You put the leftovers in the fridge, already knowing it was just a matter of time before it would end up in the trash can. 

As you laid in bed that night you opened the student portal, the unpaid tuition staring back at you brightly, and with a few simple clicks you sent the remaining amount of your tuition that was waiting to be paid.

If only getting the money was that simple. 

You turned off the screen when you received the automated confirmation email and tossed your phone aside. You turned towards the small window in your room and stared at the city, which was somehow still alive. 

You were hoping for the relief to hit you, and it was there, but it was so dull you could barely feel it. What was stronger was the unbearable feeling of disgust. Tears gathered in your eyes as realization of what you had done truly hit you. 

I slept with someone for money.

You cried yourself to sleep that night, and the night after that too, not being able to shake those feelings off as you constantly questioned how you could’ve let this happen. 

You felt that same disgust now as you laid in bed in their guest bedroom, while your backside was on fire. Could you really keep this up? Was the money really worth it? 

____________