A/N: I actually wrote this before Just Friends? so it's my true first attempt at the pairing. Enjoy!

1 -

He felt as if he had spent the past three years of his life trying to understand one woman.

Wanda Maximoff.

Since the moment of their introduction, he had been trying to deduce every action, every carefully chosen word. Anything that he could latch onto to figure out how that brilliant, beautiful, dangerous brain of hers worked.

Through all of the time spent together studying, watching movies, getting coffee, and just generally enjoying each other's company, he felt as if he knew her. He knew her likes – hot beverages like coffee and tea, punk music, the colour red, old movies, renaissance art, post-modern poetry – and her dislikes – white chocolate, country music, roller coasters, humid summer days, that show about the Kardashians and a lot of other things associated with American popular culture. Sometimes he knew what she wanted even before she told him. They certainly had a bond and he would consider her to be one of his closest friends, probably his best friend.

But she was intensely private. She was in her last term of an Electrical Engineering degree, on work term, but she rarely talked about her job. She answered questions about her day and her work with generic responses. He knew that she was Jewish but she had never invited him to celebrate a holiday with her, even when he had expressed interest. She didn't talk about her childhood, or growing up in Sokovia, or how she had come to live in America. He knew that she loved her twin brother, Pietro, more than anything or anyone else, but she hadn't even so much as casually mentioned another family member. Perhaps there was no one else to mention. He gathered that talking about these things was painful for her, as he had an inkling that their backgrounds weren't all that different. He had spent most of his adolescence bouncing around the English foster care system, which he had shared. He knew what it was like to feel neglected and abandoned and he was able to connect with her based on those feelings, if she allowed him.

She was the most complicated, most fascinating problem that he had ever encountered. But she kept up too many walls for him to get close to a solution.

And maybe he was sort of, just a little bit, in love with her.

Which was made all the more complicated by the fact that he was lying, half naked, in her bed, in the early hours of the morning, and she was in the shower of the adjoining bathroom.

Several hours earlier…

He turned his head towards the edge of his desk as he heard his phone faintly buzz. He lowered his coffee mug and tapped the screen to see a message that he was used to receiving.

2:12 AM - Wanda

I can't sleep.

It wasn't odd for her to text him so late. She was an insomniac, sometimes self-inflicted, and he was frequently up late coding, as he was tonight. Like most Computer Science grad students he worked with, his mind worked best late at night, hyped up on caffeine. The code seemed to flow easier at this time, or perhaps he had picked up a bad habit or two from Tony Stark.

He was about to reply to the message when another came in.

Come over?

He didn't even hesitate.

Leaving now.

He saved his progress, gulped down the rest of his coffee, and grabbed his jacket. Wanda lived in an apartment with her brother not that far from campus. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk from the graduate dorms.

Campus was quiet and peaceful, and it had just started snowing when he reached her building. His long legs allowed him to take the stairs two at a time and then he softly knocked on the door so as to not wake Pietro.

She opened the door and leaned against it with a soft smile. "Hi."

"Hi," he replied, his voice just as soft.

She reached out and pulled him through the door by grasping onto his jacket. "Thanks for coming," she said as she spun around and headed towards the kitchen.

"Always," he answered honestly.

He shed his jacket and hung it on the coat rack so that by the time he turned around, Wanda was standing at the kitchen counter holding a kettle. With her back to him, he stole a moment to look at her. Her hair was piled up into a messy bun on top of her head, she was wearing a blue, plaid button-up that he could have sworn was his once upon a time, and black shorts that were so small they were practically underwear. He knew that she never thought about her style of dress in front of him, but she usually was a tad more conservative, especially in the winter.

"Hot chocolate?" She asked to shake him from his thoughts.

"Yes, please." He moved around the apartment comfortably, he had spent enough time here, and he settled in the arm chair next to the chessboard.

Sometimes exhausting Wanda's mind helped her fall asleep, and on such occasions they would sometimes fall asleep in the living room together, or he would crash on the couch, or in Pietro's bedroom if he wasn't home.

She sat on the couch adjacent to him and placed the two mugs on the coffee table. "Chess?" She questioned with an arched eyebrow.

"Seems like a good idea, unless you have something else on your mind." He meant the comment to be casual, offhanded, but he noticed the way she paused and pursed her lips. "I just mean—"

"Maybe I did have something else in mind when I texted you," she admitted, "but let's play chess first."

He decided not to overthink that comment too much and he set to work repositioning the chess pieces so that they could start.

There was something especially beautiful about watching Wanda play chess. Her green eyes sparkled with concentration, there was an ever-present smirk hiding at the left corner of her mouth, and she played with her hands more than usual. She really did have beautiful hands. She toyed with the rings on her fingers as she considered her next move and he watched, enraptured.

He was so focused on her that he almost missed the subtle shift of her bishop and the accompanied, "Check." He furrowed his brow in confusion and she chuckled. "Distracted?"

He raised his eyes to look at her and there was something different in her gaze. The playfulness he was used to, especially during something like this, because as much as she denied it, she was incredibly competitive and they were very well matched in chess, so she was willing to exploit any advantage that she could to win. But there was something else, something…he didn't want to be presumptuous but it looked an awful lot like…desire?

Now he actually was distracted, so unfocused in fact that he made a move right into her trap.

"Checkmate," she grinned triumphantly.

He sighed and leaned back in the armchair with a smile. "Well played." He raised his hand to rest against his temple as he stifled a yawn. "Tired?"

She shook her head slowly and he noticed that one of the buttons on her shirt had slipped open, and it was now open just enough to make him blush.

"Wanda," he began shyly as he pointed to his chest. "Your shirt…"

She looked down but she did not make a motion to do up the button. "Vizh," she spoke his nickname fondly and it made something flutter in his chest. "Don't you ever think it's strange when a girl texts you in the middle of the night to come over?"

"Strange?" He repeated with a tilt of his head.

She nodded in confirmation as she got to her feet and stepped around the coffee table to move closer to him. "Yeah, strange."

He gulped as she climbed onto the chair and straddled his lap. "Well, you're my friend," he reasoned. "And you asked."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and began to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. "Just because I asked?" She whispered.

He found all of this to be very overwhelming. Sometimes they had a physically affectionate relationship; Wanda was a tactile person. But it was all very innocent and platonic, a squeeze of a hand here, a kiss on the temple or cheek there, but nothing like this. This was decidedly not platonic. Her fingers were sending shivers down his spine, the familiar scent of her shampoo mixed with whatever perfume or body spray she used surrounded him, and her shirt was open, so open.

God, she was beautiful.

"Of course," he finally responded. "Always."

He knew that it was easy for her to read between the lines of that reply - I would do anything you asked.

She smiled brightly, sincerely, before she leaned in and kissed him softly on the mouth.

And of course he kissed her back.

It was light and sweet at first. She stroked his neck and his cheek while he tenderly gripped her waist and their lips touched and grazed, figuring each other out. It was everything he wanted his first kiss with Wanda to be. He wanted her to feel how much he cared about her.

But the tone quickly changed. She shifted in his lap, applying more pressure, and her kisses became dirtier, more desperate, all teeth and tongue, and want. And he did his best to keep up. He had a passing thought that he should have expected this. Wanda was a passionate person. Anyone that knew her would not hesitate to use the word intense to describe her. He knew her well, and therefore, he should have anticipated that doing something like this with her would be intense.

"Vision," she groaned as she gripped his hair and pressed their foreheads together. "Touch me."

"Wanda," he breathed, "this is not what I expected."

"Do you want to?" She asked before she started to kiss his neck.

"Um, yes." She giggled in his ear, most likely at how uncharacteristically inarticulate he sounded, and he chuckled along with her. "Are we moving too fast though?" He asked cautiously with her mouth still on his neck.

She took his left hand and guided it inside her shirt. "We should have started doing this years ago," she argued. "Now," she pulled back so that they could lock eyes while she spoke, "take me to my room and fuck me."

Her accent was thick and her voice was husky, and it irrevocably turned him on. So much so that it flipped a switch and any hesitation or doubt that he had harboured quickly left him. With one hand still on her breast, he wrapped his other arm tightly around her hips and slowly rose from the chair.

She gasped, an eager smile on her face, and rewarded him with another hungry kiss.

He made it to her bedroom based on his knowledge of the layout and he gently pushed the door closed with his foot. He laid her down on her bed, already unmade and unkempt – she wasn't exactly the tidiest person that he knew and he was lucky not to have stepped on a book or CD of hers – and she kept him pressed against her by wrapping her limbs more tightly around him.

He worked a hand into her hair and pulled at the elastic band that held it up. He grasped the band in his fingers but he wasn't able to tug it free without tangling in her long, dark tresses. She gasped against his mouth and he grimaced.

Smooth, so smooth.

"Sorry," he whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Don't," she smiled up at him. "I liked it." She nipped at his bottom lip before she added, "You don't have to treat me like I'm gonna break. You can be a little rough."

"I just want…" He took a deep breath to clear his head. "I just want…"

"What, Vizh?" She encouraged.

She slipped both of her hands underneath his sweater and her warm hands on his bare skin made him shiver. He concentrated on his breathing while he held himself above her until she urged him to take off his sweater by pulling on the hem. He sat up on his knees, careful to keep all of his weight off of her, and tugged his sweater over his head. He fought the urge to neatly fold it and lay it aside, and instead flung it somewhere behind him.

When he looked down, he swallowed, audibly. Her shirt was now completely open and her long hair was flowing over the pillows; her eyes were wide and wild and her smooth, pale skin stood out against the blood red bedsheets, even in the dark. "You're so beautiful," he told her. "And I don't want to mess this up."

She wrapped her long fingers around his belt and pulled herself up until she was sitting as well. "You're sweet." She smiled up at him, giving him that look that melted him on a regular day, before she leaned in to pepper kisses along his chest. "But you're thinking too much."

Of course he was. He knew that she wanted him to just shut up for once and be a man of action, of very specific actions at the moment, but he just couldn't stop himself.

"Wanda," he called softly. She tilted her chin upwards to look at him again and he took the opportunity to cradle her face with both of his hands. "Are you sure you want to? Like this? It isn't exactly how I've imagined it."

"Vision," she chided as her hands rested on his waist. "It's just sex."

She must have felt the way that he stiffened, or she caught something minuet in his expression because she blinked up at him owlishly before she disentangled herself from him and inched away to create space between them. Her own expression, which had been so open and easygoing all night, shifted into something very stern and her body language took on a dangerous, almost defensive quality.

For his part, he shifted into a position so that he was sitting cross-legged on the bed and waited for her to make the next move.

As if they were playing chess again.

When she finally spoke, she was angry. "It's not just sex, is it?"

His silence did enough of the talking.

"When were you planning on telling me?"

"When I thought you would want to hear it," he murmured with a wry chuckle.

"You love me."

And it wasn't posed as a question that needed an answer from him. It wasn't uttered with awe, or reverence, or the sense of wonderful relief that he knew would be present if their roles were reversed. It was a statement of fact that sounded bitter on her tongue, like she would rather be discussing the challenges associated with electromagnetism and power system dynamics, or absolutely anything else besides the fact that he loved her.

She cursed in her native Sokovian before she jumped off of the bed and rushed into the bathroom.

Back to the present…

He listened to the shower shut off before he decided that he really should put his sweater back on and get going. He slowly got to his feet and shuffled around in the dark until he felt his sweater beneath his hands. He was in the process of pulling it down over his torso when he heard a door open. He turned his head and reluctantly looked at his best friend standing in the doorway in just a towel. He set his jaw and ignored the obvious, like how beautiful she looked with her skin still slightly flushed from the temperature of the water and how he could smell her shampoo even from across the room.

"I was just getting ready to leave," he told her quietly. "Sorry for the delay." He stepped towards the door and he distinctly heard her sharply inhale.

"Vizh, wait," she called with a shaky voice. "I can't bear the thought of you leaving like this."

He tried to brush it off. "It's fine, Wanda."

"No, wait," she argued. She walked up to him and placed her hands on his abdomen, not unlike the way that she had earlier inside of his sweater. "Just let me explain."

He raised his head from where he had been staring at his feet. "Go ahead."

"I haven't been feeling that great lately. Graduation is coming up and that's pretty daunting. I've also been working on a project at work that's running me ragged, and Pietro keeps asking me to go back to Sokovia with him for the Olympic trials and I don't know if I can, for a lot of different reasons. And it's just been a lot," she finished with a sigh.

He frowned. "You could have talked to me about any of those things."

"I know," she smiled. "But I got the idea that if I let off a little steam then I would feel better." She grasped his sweater tighter in her hands. "And I didn't want to just hookup with some guy on Tinder or in a bar. I wanted someone that I trusted and cared about, someone that wouldn't make me feel insecure or embarrassed. I wanted someone that I was attracted to for more than the way they looked."

His chest puffed up slightly at that statement. He heard words like trust, care, security, attraction ringing through his head. He settled his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. Maybe he didn't need to slink out of here with his tail between his legs after all.

"Why didn't you just ask?"

"Well, I kinda did," she smirked.

He grinned back at her and leaned down to join their lips again.

"But now I can't," she whispered as she stopped him with a hand on his face and her thumb on his lips. "I thought we were on the same page before, but I can't, not while I know that you're in love with me and I don't feel the same way."

He recoiled as if struck and he found himself genuinely upset with her for the first time in their friendship.

"It's really that terrible to you, isn't it?" He threw at her. "The idea that I love you? You should have seen your face when you pieced it together, it was like I had given you a particularly bad prognosis."

He had envisioned several scenarios for her reaction to when he finally got up the nerve to tell her what he really wanted. Obviously his favourite was the one where she returned his feelings in kind and wanted all of the same things. But he had also imagined rejection, indifference, ignorance, surprise, but he had never pictured disdain.

"I'm going to leave," he spoke quietly, but firmly.

"Vision." She strained to say his name so he knew that she was holding back tears. And he couldn't be around for those.

"Wait," she spoke again as he gripped the doorknob.

He ignored the other calls of his name and got out of that apartment as quickly as he could.

A/N: Please review! :)