Like A Disaster

1. (pale white skin that twisted and withered away)

Despite how high Wanda holds her head, she is not exactly one for grace and it's her downfall in missing those cracks by way of rigid posture. Somehow, Pietro is always there to catch her stumble. He splays his fingers across the middle of her abdomen, grips her shoulder, and rights her.

Has it always been this way? She wonders, and shakes her head to clear it. Of course it has, of course. She pauses, he smiles hesitantly at her and a sense of wrong overtakes her—not at the heat that explodes under his fingers, but that she wants to take her nails to him so hard that it would stain his skin to match her clothes. She worries less about the aggression of this and more about the fact that she doesn't know where it came from. Siblings, she reasons, it's perfectly normal. There's a thread of spite in the interactions of all brothers and all sisters and that's all fine and well and right.

He's still holding her. She moves away and turns back to her toast—it's been burned in the moment of distraction. She eats it anyway and the taste of it shouldn't be so familiar.

2. (kill me faster)

Pietro is always so quiet around her when no one else can shut him up. He handles her gently, speaks softly, treads lightly, and flinches at her smiles like she's struck him. She wants to give him something to really flinch about when he does. He watches her when he thinks she's not looking and he's ever just at the corner of her eye.

Tentative. Since when has he ever had reason to be? This isn't the boy who tugged her pigtails when she was little, pushed her in the mud. It doesn't occur to her that maybe he doesn't anymore because he's afraid she'd push back.

She feels like she's slamming into a wall again and again and it's slick under her hands when she tries to scale it. She can't blame anyone for it, so she blames him. It's just what siblings do. There's an itch she wants to scratch, and it's him.

3. (I dreamt of a devil that knew her)

"Wanda. Wanda." Her world shakes a bit and she comes awake with his hands on her shoulders and his lips turned down. The rest of the Brotherhood are peeking in through her doorway.

She scowls, shoves him away, and turns her gaze to them. "What?" This isn't so much of a question as a statement. Lance raises his hands (it's cool, Wanda. Chill.) and backs off—not before shooting a look at Pietro (you got this covered?)—and leaves. They all follow suit, excepting Pietro, dragging a reluctant Toad by his shirt collar, and muttering about it being too damn early for this sort of shit.

"Geez, Wanda," he's rubbing the back of his neck, "way to be grateful." He's pissed, worried, and too rudely awakened to watch himself. It suits him better, and she wonders why this still doesn't quite fit with what she knows.

"About what exactly? Barging into my room and gawking at me when I was having the most decent sleep I've had in a long time? Fuck off, Pietro."

He shifts, bewildered. "You were screaming, Wanda. I—we thought you were in trouble," he runs a hand through his hair, clearly exasperated. "So you know what? You can fuck off. I'm done."

He halts and looks like he wants to snatch every word back. He'd never be fast enough to do that. It stings that he looks more wary than regretful and she doesn't understand.

"Yes, but for how long, Pietro?"

Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever ends. She's slamming against nothing and hates him for it. She just hates him, sometimes. Just that. It's a relief.

4. (if only I'd held on tighter)

There's a double meaning to everything, she's learned. A life running parallel to hers that's raging and she cannot help but be effected. So there must be a cause.

Pietro isn't there one day to catch her and she scrapes her hands against the sidewalk. It gives her enough of an excuse to do what she needs to.

Cause and effect. All she's missing is the former. All she's missing is the hand that grips her.

5. (some things you lose and some things you just give away)

"What's gotten into you, Wanda?"

"I don't know, Pietro, why don't you tell me?"

Wanda is peering at him from her position above him. He's half naked on his bed and straddled by an eerily calm Wanda who has just hex bolted his hands to the head board. The not good of this situation is overwhelming. He stays as still as possible while his brain practically soils itself urging him to run. Like. Hell.

She leans down and lays her hands upon his shoulders, curls her fingers ever so slightly. "What could have gotten into me?" she hums, a jolting tone underlying the tune. "Would you care to?" Her thumbs stroke where his collar bone ends near his shoulders, once, and then pause as she tilts her head. She's waiting, he realizes, Wanda is never this patient.

"Wanda," he croaks, "this is wrong. I—I'd never."

"No, Pietro. You want to know what's really wrong?" Her nails shriek into his skin, biting. "This."

He doesn't understand. She leans down farther, presses her chest to his and rests her cheek on his own. "I need you to tell me," she positions herself to murmur into his neck, lips brushing him as she continues, "I don't understand why everything feels so off. I don't understand, but I know that you do." Pietro could run forever without breaking a sweat, but he tastes salty under her lips. She opens her mouth and lightly drags her teeth along his skin. He arches and it's so ironic that this is the most right she has felt in ages.

"Wanda," He is shaking, "you need to get off."

She leaves a path of shivers as she moves her hand down his side, lifts herself just enough to sneak it between them and cup him.

"No," she grips him, just enough to make him wince (just enough to give him reason to), "tell me."

Pietro grits his teeth. To keep from thrusting, to keep from losing her, to keep her from losing herself completely. Her cursed thumb is circling again and it's no fucking wonder why everyone considers her hands the most dangerous weapons she could possess. Now, when he finally needs to push her away, he can't—even as he desperately tugs to free his own hands.

"Pietro." She demands and he gives into one of them at the sound of it. I'm going to Hell. His body is jerking under hers and he wonders how much worse Hell can be compared to her. He comes fast, like all the rest of him is, and closes his eyes tightly. She is silence as she traces him through his pajama bottoms. He doesn't protest.

"Pietro," her voice is small. Her cheeks are soaked. "Please."

His hands are free. His hands are free and she's lifted herself off of him, hugging herself. He could leave, but he could never really. He resigns himself and gathers her to him.

So quietly. "I don't understand why I hate you." And he loosens his hold on her. Because she's breaking apart and fixing her would mean nothing if he could not keep her then.

"It'll be alright, sis," he soothes her, and if he didn't have the right to call her that before, he certainly doesn't now. But she doesn't know this and opens her mouth beneath his as he gently cups her face. Wanda can't stand not knowing things, and Pietro recognizes the start of another chase where Wanda is perpetually It. This is a game they've played forever, and, somewhere inside her, she realizes this and latches on to something that finally feels like something real. It doesn't matter to him if she mixes up wanting to catch him with wanting to touch him. Both are games he can play.


Author's Note: Written for Lucia de'Medici… about three years ago. I've been fiddling with it ever since and I think it's time I ended the madness.

So! This is my first and probably only shot at incest, but it was actually pretty fun to write. Hopefully you all found it fun to read.

Titles are from Jack Off Jill's "Strawberry Gashes".