NOTE:

This story takes place at a specific and semi-obscure point in time (suppose I could put this disclaimer on all my fics, pretty much).

In X-Factor #88, Val Cooper graciously sets Pietro up with access to a cabin in Maine to spend a romantic weekend with his estranged wife. Their reconciliation effort was going splendidly… until Pietro discovered that Crystal (currently serving on the Avengers) is romantically involved with another man. (He confronts her, she denies it, he closes down, she cries, blah blah.) They cut their vacation short and part ways broken-hearted. Pietro went on shortly thereafter (post-Bloodties when Luna was kidnapped and Exodus almost killed him) to rejoin the Avengers and pine after his wife while she made googly eyes at teammate Dane Whitman. (It's exactly as painful as that.)

Also noteworthy: Val was under a degree of mind control at this time - she recently had a 'thing' implanted in her, and was unknowingly complicit in a conspiracy to essentially drive Quicksilver over the deep end, putting him in the right (wrong) frame of mind to join Fabian Cortez. (It didn't work.)

Lastly, I would say that this story should be taken as a standalone entity from the regular Moonlighter fic 'verse. While I can totally see Pietro and Val as a pairing, I can't see Pietro ever actually being unfaithful.
(I wanted to write something in current time between these two, but since I freaking HATE what's been done to Pietro's character since Son of M, I have a really hard time writing him in real-time.)

ONE GOOD TURN

"It's unlocked," Val called from behind her desk. As the door creaked open, she didn't look up. No one else made such a halting, unnatural sounding knock.
"What can I do for you, Pietro?"

He closed the door. "Oh, nothing. You've done enough. I mean-" uncharacteristic to correct himself, "I don't need anything. Just-" he approached the desk. Val smelled Irish Springs and Colgate and Wild Turkey 101. He wore civvies, khaki pants and a white shirt, and looked underslept.

It was Pietro's turn to not glance up as he plunked a single key onto the desk. "Here. Sorry. Forgot I still had it."

He wasn't making the effort to conceal his Slavic-and-whatever-else accent; the sparse words lilted with rolled Rs – a deviation from his customary flourish and the stiff constriction of a manufactured American dialect. He must be tired, or distracted, or drunk again.

"Oh, I wasn't worried." Val smiled, trying to disarm and discern. "I know where you work, after all."

"Right. Anyway." His finger twitched towards the key to the cabin in Maine. "Thanks."

"Sure, no problem."

He turned to leave.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." He made a strangled noise. "And if I did-"

"It wouldn't be with me," she finished for him. "Listen, I get it. Your marital troubles are none of my business. That is…" she could almost see his ear perk, "so long as you aren't compromised professionally."

"Of course not," he answered too quickly. "I'm fine. Everything is fine."

"You've been drinking a lot. And exercising more than usual – which for you, means constantly."

"So? So what? I'm coping, not falling apart. What I'm going through is completely normal." Those were Dr. Samson's words. It relieved Val a little to know he was at least talking to someone (even a hack of a therapist) about the latest drama between him and his estranged wife.

"I guess that's true. I mean, people get cheated on every day." She didn't mean it as an overture or a rub, but when he turned back around to face her, those eyes the color of steel and narrowed to a blade's edge told her that he took it both ways and worse. She went with it. "Am I wrong?"

"Do they?"

"As far as I know. And I would know – I was." She stood and sashayed around the desk corner, sandwiching herself between him and the desk to half-sit on its edge. "Cheated on, I mean."

He said, "Sorry," and it seemed to be the sum of all the feeling he had left to spare on the subject, the rest of it poured into however many liquor bottles he'd drained after his last workout of the day and before his cold shower before bed.

Val shrugged, wiggling a little more of her bottom onto the desk. Pencil skirts are the Devil's work, and totally worth it.

Pietro glanced down, so fast he might only have blinked. Here was a man with a healthy and deep-seated respect for women, who was just as unaccustomed to viewing them sexually in passing as he was of being pursued in such a way recreationally. That, or the proud mutant hid his 'human nature' very well.

"So you know what I did?" She fiddled with the locket hanging on a gold chain around her neck while she considered him – the charm rested just behind the first button of her blouse, a little tighter than it should be around her bust.

He blinked again and answered unsmiling, "Hired a surgeon with his money to enhance your assets?"

"Psh, no, that was years before." She took his joking as the progress that it was, and toyed so carelessly with her locket that the nearby button abandoned its station, leaving her assets' last protector -a black lace bra- peeking out imploringly. She dropped the locket into the shadow of her cleavage. "No – I got even."

Val had seen this expression of his more than once before and always took it for disdain. But now so close-up… maybe he actually repressed a grin.

"Did it help?" Pietro wanted to know.

"Never came harder in my life." He didn't so much as flinch at her candor – it egged her on, intentionally or not. Part shrug, part shimmy, she got herself situated fully on the desk, losing one stiletto in the process – the other fell off as she poked her toe into the back of his knee. He watched steady as she licked red lips that weren't dry.

"Your mileage may vary, of course. Just in case you were to somehow… find out."

Without touching her (it occurred to her then that she had never seen him touch anyone), he leaned close enough to whisper in her ear, "You're not my type, Ms. Cooper."

It had the haughty, cool tone he uses when taunting someone, and on most other occasions – it had a twinge of hunger, too.

She whispered in turn, "Good. If I were your type, it wouldn't be getting even."

"What would it be then?"

"Cheating." She arched back to look him square in both eyes. "And I don't fuck cheaters. I get even with them."

Before she could blink, their mouths were fused in a heavy kiss, and his fingers all through her hair kept them that way if she had other ideas, which she didn't. Her mind became a canvas of abstract impressions, all tastes and temperature and texture. His tongue gave hers a crash course of erotic words in a foreign language, instantaneously proving most of her assumptions about his sexuality wrong and leaving her panting out of her mouth as soon as their separation made it possible.

His hands moved with a purpose on her thighs, bunching the skirt up to her waist. He grabbed for panties that she wasn't wearing, and then making a predatory noise his hips settled forward, forcing her legs apart. Val would bet money that Crystal was the type of girl to wear panties religiously, probably perfectly cute and modest white ones. Pietro had to know there were women like Val in this world as well, women who wore thigh high stockings with garter belts because of how it made them feel, forget the men who would never know what was or wasn't under their skirts anyway – but he'd probably never bedded a woman like that, a woman like Val.

She moved fast to keep pace, undoing his belt one-handed and his zipper with the other. "I knew it," she said, pulling him out.

He removed his shirt while she explored. "What?"

"As good as you are at imitating one, I just knew you'd be hung like an ass," she smiled and scooted off of the desk as she spoke, switching their positions so that he could lean back standing while she knelt in front of him. Men love to be serviced this way, standing tall over their conquest, and Val wasn't above exchanging favors. She didn't wait for any encouragement before demonstrating her absence of a gag reflex.

After a minute she came up for air, and he took after the teasing tone she'd set with an appreciative sigh, "Ah… and I always knew you were a practiced cocksucker. How astute we both are."

Under professional circumstances, she considered it her duty to discourage his caustic humor – but this time, she didn't hold back a laugh. "Fuck you, Maximoff."

"Ditto, Cooper."

They shifted as a unit onto the desk, Val clearing it off with one aggressive sweep of her arm. As she mounted him she bent over to open a drawer that held her purse, then straightening, she straddled his thighs and flung a condom at him, taking off her blouse while he suited up. "That should fit. The last guy I dated was black, so..."

He groused, "I liked you better with your mouth full."

"Oh, yeah?" She shifted forward and eased him inside of her, and after a few cleverly angled strokes back and forth, accepted his stifled silence as an apology.

Valerie Cooper was not a saint (nor a spring chicken, by some accounts), and she had never been accused of being a sentimental woman, having dedicated herself to her career long before divorcing the first man who dedicated himself to her. In her experience, sex was neither sacred nor sinful. She had alternatively used it in any combination as a tool, a weapon, or a pastime. To that end, she knew where her G-spot was and didn't need a man's help to get the job done. This time, she found that she didn't have to explain that fact to some dumbfounded lay fumbling for a way to give her pleasure. Maybe anticipating her self-reliance, Pietro was surprisingly compliant, and didn't require her instruction to be still and wait his turn. Unless he's just used to waiting, period.

"Damn it, damn it. Fuck, oh fuck! Christ, God, fuck…." she came as she cursed, or the other way around, and sank down wetter and looser as the spasms subsided, burying him to the hilt before tilting her hips for the reverse motion, then sheathing him fully again. "Damn it."

He caught on that it was an opening for him to reply. "Now what?"

"I knew you'd be good, too. Damn it."

He shook his head at her.

"Okay okay, I'll shut up," then remembering his comment about preferring her mouth full, "Want me to suck you off? I don't usually offer, if it makes any difference."

"In that case… no." Within a heartbeat, their positions became reversed. Her brain seemed to spin into place later than the rest of her, a split-second roller coaster ride.

"Ow, Jesus! Don't do that!"

"Sorry." Backing up, he dragged her to the end of the desk, slipping out as he climbed off to stand. He remained still to ask, "Are you all right?"

"Aww..." Her vision only then returned to normal, the shadow and highlight of his muscles coming into focus like a 3D paint-by-number for adults. His physique was truly extraordinary; he could have been sculpted from marble under that fatless hide. She reached to trace his ripped abdomen with the tips of her fingers. "Are you worried about me?"

"No. Yes. I didn't mean to hurt you. I forgot-"

"The puny flatscan is fine." She changed her caress to the raking of manicured nails. "Don't go getting soft on me."

Anything but soft, he slid back inside. "Just tell me if I hurt you."

Pietro was a man, as Val figured, who in his natural state made love out of love; no differentiation between the action and the cause. For him, it was something both sacred and special, private and purposeful. But today, he was not in his natural state. Today, his was the state of a man whose beloved wife had lived something of a charmed life, and felt uninhibited and privileged enough to share herself, heart body and mind, much more freely than her husband – and she did so, much more often. Sometimes she got caught, too – maybe for her, that was part of the thrill. Maybe for him, it was part of the challenge.

Grunting out a word that sounded naughty but wasn't in English, Pietro pulled down Val's bra, exposing her breasts that quaked as his body pumped into hers. Then watching while she expertly stimulated her clitoris, he moaned as if it was being tortured out of him, a shameful and forbidden confession, and repeated the joining of their bodies with increasing fervor. No – this was not his first or second time having loveless sex for its own sake, but it might have only been his third.

Their communication descended into a mess of incomplete or run-on sentences, until Val erupted in another curse-laden release. Soon after, Pietro tensed to an airtight stillness and held, held, like it was the best or the worst or the hardest thing in the world before gasping near soundlessly as he came barely moving. After a minute he shuddered and sank to his knees.

Val heard when his head thudded against the desk from where he sat leaned against it on the floor. She rolled off and joined beside him while she caught her own breath and fixed up her clothes, an odd sort of companionship.

"You're not supposed to regret this until the morning, you know," she said, adding, "or so I've been told."

"I suppose you live a life devoid of regrets," he wasn't really asking.

"I don't know. Shit. Don't be philosophical. I'm still in my afterglow. How was yours, by the way?" it seemed like a fair segue.

"As if you care," came his response, distant yet unoffended.

She couldn't bring herself to argue beyond saying, "Well… I don't not care…"

Pietro had more experience at changing a subject abruptly. "Have you ever been in the eye of a storm, Ms. Cooper?"

"Like weather-wise?"

So gently, she assumed at first he must be playing some trick, he shifted to lean his head upon her shoulder, relaxing their bodies together somewhat. It occurred to her then that she had never seen him rest, either.

"Yes," he said, "weather-wise."

"No." When he didn't move after a spell, she asked, "What's it like?"

"Purgatory." His hair was ridiculously soft, probably battered thin from wind friction, and tickled her shoulder as he adjusted his head to settle down with a little more weight. "It's like this."

~FIN~