Work Text:
You’re only two drinks in, but you think you might be hallucinating.
You hadn’t even wanted to stay after your day shift, having not gotten enough sleep the night before from editing two papers and a novel that is nowhere near ready for publication, despite what your client said to you when you took it on. But then your favorite coworker, Wanda, looks at you with her sad eyes that you know are fake and still fall for every time. All she has to say is that you never hang out with her anymore—which isn’t exactly wrong, if you’re being honest—and you’re hanging with her by the bar for most of her shift. You tell her you want to be gone before the real crowd came, but then 5 turns into 6, turns into 8:30, and you’d already had one drink around 6:30, so why not nurse another for a while?
Admittedly, you haven’t been out in a bit, but you’re just so busy. Busy with bartending and editing and trying to attend as many readings as possible to get the word out that you’re a freelance editor, but a good one, you swear. About half of those readings have gotten you one person from each, so you can’t say it doesn’t work—your body wishes you could, though. Exhaustion settles in your bones even now, but you do genuinely feel bad. You haven’t even been paying much attention to Wanda while you’re here, having planned on getting more edits done at a coffee shop close to home, anyway. She doesn’t seem to mind, even decides to ask when the last time was that you edited something original, something you wrote, but you brush her off. You’ll make time for it when you can.
But you’re on your second drink, now, almost finished with it, abandoning any hope to finish this fantasy piece (that has so much potential if they would just switch the point of view) to stare at the back of a stranger’s head.
You’re sober enough to recognize that what you’re doing is definitely creepy, but even when her friend with blond hair and arms that are proportionally too large for his body puffs his chest out, you still squint. You know that head from somewhere. Where do you know that head from?
You try to think back to some of your college classes, thinking about all the people you sat behind, but nothing comes to mind. Her friend nudges her, still looking at you. You go back through high school faces, then, try to think of anyone you might remember enough to be staring so hard at this person. By the time you pull her name from where you’d shoved her and all the memories you shared at the back of your mind, she’s already turned around.
“Holy shit, Y/N.” Valkyrie is grinning at you, and you’re back in high school, now, staring open-mouthed at the girl with the prettiest face you’d ever seen. You don’t register that her friend has moved, staying close should she need him, but giving her space.
“You better close that mouth of yours, pretty,” and, fuck, you haven’t heard that nickname in years. She’s leaning one elbow on the bar so she can rest her chin on her hand. “You’ll catch flies.”
Your body heats up, and you do shut your mouth, taking a breath in through your nose. “Hi.”
“A ‘hi’ is all I get after how many years, huh?”
You feel ridiculous asking, because it’s Valkyrie, but you ask, anyway. “Could I hug you? Would that be—okay?”
She just laughs at you and pulls you into a hug, and you remember exactly why she was always so comforting the moment she does. God, she even still smells the same (and you can’t even think about how weird it is to remember the way a person smells).
When you pull back, you notice her friend staring at you two again. “Your friend doesn’t seem to like me much.”
When she turns to him, he pretends to be looking around the room. “That’s just Thor being Thor,” she says, apologetically.
“So, he’s…” You have no right asking what you’re about to ask, but there’s something sitting at the back of your throat edging you into it. “He is just a friend, then?”
Your stomach flutters at her laugh. “Thor and I work together. Sometimes we get drinks after work to talk about our shitty weeks. That’s about it.” She raises her brows when she notices your posture straighten a bit at that. “Does that mean I can ask you outright if you’re seeing anyone, pretty, or would it make you feel better if I tried to hide it more?”
You let out a surprised laugh, and when she laughs again with you, it breaks most of the weird tension. You start to settle into your conversation. “Since when did you get this bold in your flirting, Hilde?”
“Since I grew up, pretty. I should’ve been flirting with you like this the whole time.” She smiles. “How’s the writing going?” She nods in the direction of your papers messily organized over your corner of the bar.
You chew on your lip, and you can’t help yourself. “Would you maybe wanna come back to my place? Not—” You huff at the surprise on her face. “Not in that way, it’s just—I work here, and all my coworkers will be on my ass if they see me chatting with someone instead of doing my work because I never do that. And it just feels weird to be doing this with you, this way, you know? Catching up after so long in a bar, but if it makes you uncomfortable then—”
She puts her hand on your shoulder, leaning into your eyesight. “Let me go tell Thor I’m ditching him, yeah?”
Wanda comes over the minute Valkyrie leaves, and you groan as you put your papers away. “Wanda, not right now, please. I was supposed to leave how many hours ago, anyway.”
She grins at you. “I was just gonna tell you good luck. Sometimes rebounds are better than the one you’re rebounding from, you know?” She winks at you and walks away as Valkyrie comes back over.
You give an irritated glare in Wanda’s direction, but it fades when you see Valkyrie smiling in front of you, holding her hand out. “Lead the way for me, pretty.”
~~
You don’t remember the last time you felt this comfortable with someone, but if you had to guess, it was the last time the two of you were alone. Honestly, you can’t remember the last time you took up space like this with someone. The last time you let yourself let any real guard down. It feels nicer than you’d like to admit.
Val hits your thigh with your intertwined hands. “What’re you thinking about, pretty?”
Your throat gets a little scratchy at the touch, and you can’t seem to get rid of it. The nickname brings you out of your head, makes you laugh despite the itch. “God, that word brings back memories.”
“Yeah?” She squeezes your hand, and even when she loosens her grip again, you feel the pressure of it around your knuckles. “Which ones?”
You don’t tell her the first one that comes to mind, when she claimed you as pretty for the first time when you tried on different outfits for some party neither of you made it to that night. She smiled the way she always did at you, but there was a tilt to it that made your heart pickup for reasons you could not comprehend then. She decided the word was yours, then.
You and Valkyrie were each other’s safe spaces in high school. When you first met, you filled the role you always did with any close friendships you had up to that point: helpful. You didn’t know how else to express how grateful you were for them, having been bullied by kids too repulsed by the extra fat that sat on your arms, your thighs, your stomach. When anyone stuck around after getting to know you, you used to think you’d have to give them a reason to. You choose better friends, now, but you didn’t know, then. So you became the friend to go to for help, and that’s how you and Val started. All the supposed 'friends’ you had at that point either went to a different high school or ditched you, so you were nervous. It was the third week of classes, and you admitted to yourself, then, how pretty you thought she was. You went up to her, helped her figure out the charcoal art piece your class was assigned, how to smudge in the best ways and the different textures you can get out of it. She wiped charcoal on her face to get it off of her thumb in frustration, and you really couldn’t be blamed for wanting to give a piece of yourself to her.
And for a while, that’s how it was. You helped her pass Art 1, you started packing her a lunch when you noticed she would spend as little as possible in the lunch line. You still remember her confession to you, after a couple months of you bringing her lunches. She told you she was pocketing the money her parents were giving her so she could build her own college fund. It’s not that they were bad, necessarily, but they were the kind of parents that would only ever try in front of their kid’s friends. You knew better, so they didn’t ever like you very much. You’d tried to give her some money of your own once, and she shot you down immediately.
That wasn’t something you were used to, until Val. You weren’t used to a lot before her. Having a friend who introduced you to their other friends, who wanted them to get along with you? New. Being allowed to take up as much space as you want, any time you wanted? Very new. But that’s how Val was—is, you think. Just like you would’ve done anything to help her, she would’ve done anything to make you comfortable. You don’t think you ever got used to that.
You don’t tell her the second one, either. You took her home the night of your graduation party after helping you and your family clean up, ready for her to ask you to come inside to stay the night. You would’ve said yes. Instead, she got out of your car, came around the side. Kissed your cheek through the window, said, “Drive home safe, pretty.” It wasn’t even the last time you saw each other that summer, but somehow you knew things would be different after that. You cried all the way home.
You go with the third memory that comes to mind, forcing yourself to snort. “Mainly just Sam getting all protective every time you did. Meanwhile, we broke up two months after graduation.”
You pretend not to notice how hurt she looks by it—that the nickname she gave you is apparently attached to him—before she can mask it. “What would he say now, if he saw us doing this?” She holds up your hands, letting them drop after a minute.
“Probably freak the fuck out still, but because I haven’t gone on a date in too long for his liking.” She raises a brow at you, and you roll your eyes. “When I complain about third wheeling with him and Barnes, he tells me the problem would be solved if I had my own partner. As if he ever wanted to hang out with my last ex, anyway.” Val looks down, smiling to herself when you speak up. “What?”
She’s biting the inside of her cheek, trying not to laugh. “If Sam Wilson doesn’t like them, they probably sucked.”
For some reason, all the times Sam told you to reach out to Val in the past few years resurface as she says it. You just laugh.
The rest of the walk back to your apartment building is quiet, almost unnerving every time she squeezes your hand just a little. Maybe it’s unnerving because of how nice it feels when she tugs you in front of her when a very, very happy group of strangers walks past, and she pulls your hand behind you as she goes so she doesn’t have to drop it. Maybe it’s unnerving because you’re worried she’ll feel how hot you are when her leg brushes against you. Maybe it’s because you remember, now, how comfortable the silence used to be for you when you were with her, and you don’t know how you’ve gone so long without it.
You expect her to say no when you ask her to come inside, so when she says yes, your stomach lurches and your palms get clammy. You let go of her hand to go inside, using the need for your key as an excuse, but you know she has to feel how sweaty your hand is when she grabs it again afterwards. She doesn’t say anything, even squeezes your hand again while you both wait for the elevator to come. The look she gives you isn’t even one you can remember, now, so bright and so open, and there’s a sudden itch under your skin you can’t seem to placate.
The ride up only makes the itch worse, but once you reach your floor and push inside, you’re anxious for an entirely different reason.
Your apartment isn’t a mess, per say, but there’s dirty dishes piling almost too high, and your couch has your latest client’s piece scattered over it, red edits spilling on the white pages. There’s a bowl of stale chips and an open bag of off brand cereal sitting on the other end of the couch, and, oh god. You run to the entrance from your living room to your bedroom, shoving your three-days-dirty tshirt and underwear you’d changed out of earlier into the room. You almost don’t turn around as you shut the door, but you’re willing yourself to not make this anymore awkward than you already have.
You avoid her gaze for a bit, but if she’s in the room, your eyes will always find hers. She smiles when they do. “Wanna watch a movie and catch up?”
You tell her to pick something while you shuffle all your papers together and back into their respective folder. You beg Wanda via text to take your shift for tomorrow, and she says yes in exchange for you giving her every detail of the 'mysterious stranger’ you left the bar with. You don’t care; you’ll get out of it later, somehow. (And you also think that, maybe, you won’t, and Wanda will have to hear all about Hilde and your stupid crush that never really went away.)
So, you do catch up. Valkyrie’s a social worker for a nonprofit organization. She works with a ton of others outside of her official job, off the record, and when you ask her to tell you about some, her face looks as bright as it used to when she’d tell you about the different places she’d intern for in college, because she’d been doing research on the best ways to help people since way before she ever met you, and community was what she’d settled on. The movie is forgotten in the background as she talks, and you listen, and you laugh, and your hand feels less clammy, more warm the longer yours is latched onto hers.
At some point, when she changes the conversation to you, you notice how close the two of you are. So, you shuffle a little closer as you talk, explain how you’ve found some of the best and worst writers through your freelancing job. It’s like she anticipates your next move before you can make it, because she opens her legs for you to lay upright on her chest as she leans back into the side of your couch. You only stop talking for a second to wiggle around, get comfortable, and you don’t remember it ever feeling so safe when your ex would hold you like this.
You’re in the middle of laughing with her about how some dude genuinely thought he could make a war story work where all the women were naked, literally always, when she puts her hand on your face. She strokes her thumb across your cheek, just staring. Part of you knows that if you don’t break the eye contact now, it’ll be dangerous. Another part of you doesn’t care. And you think, if you listen closely, there’s a larger part of you that wants the lines to blur in all the same ways they used to.
That same feeling from the bar comes back. Stuffy. Tense. Aching, maybe. You don’t know how to break it, but even if you did, you don’t know if you’d want to. What comes after? How do you even cut the tension when all it is is fog, slipping into your lungs and your stomach and the parts of your brain you’ve kept hidden from yourself for so long?
When she breaks eye contact for a split second to take a glance at your lips, you move. You move your hands from a loose hold around her neck to a grip, trying to warn her in case you’ve misread things, in case she doesn’t really want this, and then she pulls you close to her and presses the softest kiss against your mouth. You fucking melt.
Until she rests her hands high on your waist, and you try not to tense up. You focus on her lips, how insistent yet tender she’s being. Her hands move lower down, stroking so gently, and it feels wrong. You want to move her hands, pull them away from your body. You want her to touch you, but do you even deserve it in a body like this? She prods at your lips with her tongue, puts gentle pressure on your bottom one with her teeth, but you can’t pay attention because you’re reminded of why it’s taken you so long to get here. Not just kissing her, but to be kissed by her, to be straddling her lap, suddenly conscious of too much weight on her thighs. The scratch in your throat from walking home turns into a simmering heat, a bubbling burn, threatening to spill out everything you’ve packaged up so neatly inside of you, wound up with the tightest black bow you’ve ever made. A pool of acid is ruining your packaging, soaking into the brown cardboard, but you tied that bow tight. It has to stay. It has to. It has to, because if it doesn’t, then everything will spill, and it will go everywhere, and what will you do then? How can you clean up that much mess?
She’s stopped kissing you by now, probably because she’s noticed your shaking breaths. She finally, finally moves her hands from your sides, but she only reaches for your face. You pull away from her completely, throwing yourself into the other side of the couch. The acid burns through your throat, onto your tongue, falling out of your panting mouth. It’s covered your clothes, and she has to see it. She has to. You flinch when her hand reaches to touch your outstretched legs, curling them underneath your thighs in an effort to take up less space. Why would she touch you? Doesn’t she see it?
You try to wait until your breathing has calmed down to speak, but the burning around your mouth makes you spit out words before you’re ready. “I didn’t mean to—” The look she gives you makes you stop, because what didn’t you mean to do? Did you not mean to kiss her, or did you not mean to pull away?
The next time you speak, you speak quiet, soft. “’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for, pretty,” she breathes, smiles at you, and it’s overwhelmingly sad. “I know better.”
You don’t get the chance to ask what she means because she’s getting up to stand in front of you. She stretches out her hand, and you take it, and she leads you to your bedroom. She doesn’t go inside, doesn’t even try to peak in once your door is open with you standing in the doorway. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch, okay?”
Your brows furrow. “Hilde, you’re the guest, you can—”
“Will you let me take care of you for once?” She says it so sweetly. Like she would drop it if you asked her to, but she’s begging you not to.
Instead, your shoulders sag, an exhaustion that you can’t fight taking over. You bring the hand that’s still holding yours to your lips, leaving a soft peck, then letting it drop. You have the same feeling you did the night she kissed your cheek through your car window, but you can’t find the energy to focus on the feeling. All you can think about now is how tired you are, but you don’t want to say goodnight. “I’ve missed you, you know.”
Valkyrie smiles again, the same sad one from before. “I know.”
You get her a couple blankets and pillows. As she takes them, she presses a kiss to your forehead, says goodnight. You watch her the whole time she crosses back to the couch, settles in, and that’s when you cross to your closet to change, then your bed. You don’t shut the door this time, not sure what you’re hoping for, but hoping, anyway.
~~
You wake up the next morning, and she’s gone. Your first indication is that the pillows and blankets are stacked neatly back inside your closet, but you still check the rest of your apartment. You notice your dishes are clean, stale chips thrown away and cereal bag back in its respective box. There’s a sticky note on your fridge: Take care, pretty.
You don’t know why it’s those words that set you in motion, but they do. You hurriedly grab a pair of shorts to throw on, not even knowing if she’s left two minutes or two hours ago, but you don’t let yourself get talked out of it. You didn’t even think to get her number, dumbass.
You slide on slippers since they’re the quickest thing you have, and you don’t even shut the door behind you as you rush down the hall in a sleep shirt and shorts that your butt hangs out of just a little too much, but you think it’s worth it if—
“Y/N?”
Valkyrie is sitting on a window sill at the end of the hallway opposite the elevator, and an undeniable sense of relief washes over you.
There’s silence for some time, neither of you saying anything, and the relief shifts to slight embarrassment as you realize she caught your whole running-in-panic moment. Your embarrassed brain makes you say something dumb, just so someone says something. “You did my dishes.”
A pause. “You’re a heavy sleeper.” She laughs, and the sound creates a scratch in your throat that you can’t swallow down. “I remember how many times I’d stay at your parents’ house the night before a test or something to make sure we were on time for school, because otherwise, we were always running late.” She makes eye contact with you for only a second, then breaks it with a shrug. “Figured you haven’t let anyone take care of you in a while. I just wanted to do something nice for you before I left.”
Your hand flexes at the urge to reach for her. Before she left. You stay put. “What are you doing out here, then?”
“I was trying to leave.” She cuts you off right at the end of your question, but you know she’ll answer you. “I was going to, I was so sure I wanted to, and then I thought about it.” She turns to put most of her weight back on the window sill, looking out at the city traffic. “If I took the elevator down, if I walked outside your building, I’d never be able to get back in. So I just… I wanted to make sure I was sure, you know? Because…” Her voice sounds strained, and you can tell she’s trying not to cry. Your body aches. “I don’t know, I already lost you before, and that sucked, and I was already the cause of it, so if I was gonna do it again, I had to be sure that’s what I wanted. So I’ve been sitting here for an hour and forty three minutes, last time I checked, looking like a dumbass to all of your neighbors who’ve come and gone,” she laughs again, wiping tears from her face, looking down at her lap. You don’t notice your vision blurring, or you starting to cross to her. “And I know why I’m still here. I only wanted to leave because I was scared, but I—I want you to tell me to stay, because I already know I wanna stay. But I can’t do it if you don’t want me in the same way.” You’ve never heard her gasp the way she does when you grasp her cheek, gripping so much it probably hurts, but neither of you care. “I can’t feel that hurt again, pretty, I can’t. Please don’t make me. I would, if you really wanted me to, I would, but I can’t.”
You’re holding her face in both of your hands now, and she’s crying, and so are you. You can’t think to get out of the hallway, to pull her anywhere else more private, because the itch under your skin is now a burn that’s only soothed by the grip she has on your wrists. “I’m so sorry,” you sob, blubbering, “I’m so sorry, Hilde, please. Please forgive me, god, I’m so stupid. I love you, I have for so long, I’m so sorry.” You barely finish your last sentence before she’s kissing you.
It feels more real than last night’s kiss, more than all those times she’d laid the sweetest kisses on your cheeks. This must be what it really feels like to be alive, you’re sure of it. You choke on the taste of the mix of your tears, and it feels like she’s going to swallow you whole, eat you alive with the way she never stops. You don’t want her to.
You’re both gasping by the time she pulls back, and you miss her face pressed to yours immediately. Like she reads your mind, she stands and presses her lips to yours again, softly, barely there, but it’s enough. She holds your face in her palms in the same way you did hers. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
You whimper as you grab her wrists, overwhelmed. “Hilde—”
“Fucking breathtaking.” She’s staring at you, but it’s like she’s not even listening to you. She’s present enough to admire you, and that’s all she’s there for.
You feel the simmering heat begin in your throat, but you swallow it down before it can build into anything that would take root. You take her hands from your face to link your fingers together, walking backwards to your apartment. “So, I don’t know if you have anywhere you need to be today, but I was really thinking it would be great if we could both go back to sleep in my bed.”
She grins. “I forgot that not only are you a heavy sleeper, but you’re a I-will-sleep-all-day-if-you-let-me kind of sleeper.”
You smile sleepily back at her, leaning up to peck her lips as you pull her into the doorway. She shuts the door as you speak. “Should’ve thought about that when you decided to give me that stupid nickname. You sealed your fate then.”
“First of all, it’s not stupid. I’m quite fond of it, actually. And, second,” she pulls you flush against her, keeping you from your mission to get her to your room, “good.” When she kisses you again, you think you could probably live without sleep. As long as she kept kissing you like this.