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Wanda’s dreaming about soft fingers dragging through her hair and a blinding smile when she’s woken slowly by your muffled sobbing. Her heart breaks— she thinks, at least. It’s been breaking over your nightly sorrows for so long now, she isn’t sure if her heart is unaffected or if it’s simply numb. She never focuses long enough on the thought to decide.
She begins her routine. She slips a ponytail holder around her wrist, makes her way to the bathroom to run a washcloth under cold water. Sifts through her closet to find your clothes she’d set out before bed four nights ago, the night after your last terror. She grabs a water bottle that’s sat on her dresser, waiting since the last time.
She crosses through her open door to yours. The two of you have a floor entirely to yourselves— when you’d been recruited, Sam had requested the floor for just you two. You were the closest person to Wanda’s age on the team, and Sam had hoped for a possible friendship to bloom.
Something has, at least. Not so far from friendship that it’s detectable to anyone except Wanda and you, really. But far enough that it scares the shit out of both of you.
Wanda’s door has been open since that first night. You kept yours open after the third time, even after Wanda told you that it was okay, she could listen for you just fine with yours closed. You’d responded, “It’s the principle of it, okay? We’re opening up to each other, or whatever.”
She doesn’t think too long about that moment, either.
She finds you curled into yourself at the end of the bed, laying on your side with your arms crossed over your stomach. Half of your face is dug into your sheets, left eye poking out to look up at her. Even from just one eye, even from how bloodshot it is, she notices the apology sitting there. You’re always sorry, and Wanda knows. You haven’t voiced it since she kissed the inside of your wrists and begged you to trust her when she’d said there was no reason to be.
You used to complain about the room-temperature water, craving something so cold your teeth hurt and your mouth went numb, if only for a moment. Wanda’s arguments of warmer water hydrating your body more quickly seemed sound enough eventually. She thinks you might’ve just given up when you realized your whining was getting you nowhere, though.
Wanda passes it to you now and settles herself behind you, having coaxed you into sitting up, and she feels you inhale deeply. You let it go as she pulls your back toward her, giving you space, but letting your thighs touch the inside of hers.
Your arms are still crossed, nails still digging into your sides, so she waits. She smooths her hands up and down the parts of your legs she can reach, slow, soft. It’s alright. I have you.
You start to mold into her. Your body weight transfers to her, becomes hers, not yours, even with the crescent shapes still leaving their marks. As you relax almost fully, she brings her left hand to your right one. Doesn’t pry your fingers away, knows that doesn’t work with you on nights like these. Runs her own hands over your knuckles, deliberate and gentle, until your grip shifts into hers. Your harsh hold softens underneath the soothing feeling of her thumb. She repeats the process on the other side, brings both hands up by your ears to kiss them. She moves to your clenched jaw, presses kisses so soft that you’re brought out of your head involuntarily with a huff, sighing back into her.
She lets go of your right hand to push the water bottle into it, and you begrudgingly relent. You swallow half of it down, twisting the cap back on and letting it fall back to the sheets. She leaves a soft peck on the side of your neck, then, and speaks. “Clothes.”
You stay like that as the moment passes, and then you shift, grabbing the pile she’d set on the bed. She sees you dragging the cloth over your face in the bathroom mirror, and she turns away when you make eye contact. Shouldn’t be staring.
As you lay down, Wanda presses you back into her. Shifts you to find that position where your legs tangle with hers and your hand can play with the tips of her fingers wrapped around your stomach until you get tired enough again. Sometimes, on rare nights where she’s the one with the nightmares and comes to you, she pulls you against her so close that she thinks your body might absorb hers. It doesn’t make sense, she knows, but nothing does when it comes to you.
“The compound has access to good therapists.” She says it every time, wants you to know you have options other than breaking until she comes to you with Scotch tape, all she has to piece you together again. “I like mine a lot.” She never gets a response from you, and she’s okay with that, just wants you to know.
To her surprise, tonight you do. “If I go to therapy, I’ll stop needing you.” Your voice is small, quiet, like you’re waiting for someone to come and take it from you. “And then, we… we won’t be us anymore, you know?” Won’t be whatever the fuck we are, words unsaid that Wanda still hears in your strained tone. Outside of this, your interactions with each other can be described as strictly friends. You cuddle on the couch during movie nights, and the last time she’d felt bold enough to twine your fingers together. But that’s it. For Wanda, as much as she wants to offer more, it’s all she has to give. It’s all you’ll ever take from her.
“I do it, and I think I need you more than you need me.”
You hum at that, drawing patterns on her palm. “Agree to disagree,” you mumble. She kisses at the nape of your neck, and you shift further into her, seeming just as desperate to be close her as she is you.
Her eyes search for answers in the dark to questions her racing mind is screaming at her. But, then again, it always does. She tries to focus on the sounds of your breathing, matches hers to yours. Waits until you’re asleep again to whisper words she’ll never say to you awake. “You’ll always have me.” She presses a little closer to you, shifts her right arm to underneath you. It doesn’t matter to her if it loses feeling— she wants to be wrapped around you as close as possible. She thinks about two bodies melting together into one again, absorbing each other. Fleetingly, she wonders if that’s why the thought of you not needing her makes her chest feel so tight, so heavy.
As she closes her eyes, she tries to go back to her dream of your hands gently carding through her hair, the only place where her love for you is able to be honest and vulnerable. Part of her hopes that can be different someday, but the better part of her knows that she won’t ever be as raw with you as she is with you in her dreams. She’ll stay there as long as she can tonight, then, while she knows that you’re safe.