Work Text:
Tap, tap, tap.
Stephen’s eyes trace over the sentence on the page for a third time before starting to wander around the room, the gloved fingers of his right hand drumming absently against the paper all the while. Art had always interested him, but for some reason. . .
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Empty coffee table, red rug slightly crooked on the grey carpet, The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation over on the bookshelf, the door to the hall left ajar. . . Wanda and Loki had said they’d be practicing their telekinesis down there. . .
Tap, tap-a-tap.
Again he forces himself to focus on the words, Stephen. You’re supposed to be relaxing. Just read your book. But still he feels restless, itchy, and if his mind isn’t over there wondering what’s going on down the hall, it’s focusing on those little prickles of pain from his hands, always waiting at the edge of his awareness.
Tap, tap-a-tap, tap.
His leg is going numb.
Tap-a-tap, tap-a-tap.
Dammit, taking a break shouldn’t be so much work .
Tap, tap, tap, tap-a—
Stephen closes the book— Great Sculptors of the Fifteenth Century, a gift from Christine back in med school after they’d gone to the Met Museum together once on a date—and lets it slip onto the coffee table. It lands with a quiet thump!, and slowly, he peels himself off the couch.
Time to take a break from taking a break, huh?
Stephen cracks his back and then wiggles the stiffness out of his fingers, ignoring the way his joints protest at the sudden movement. He takes a moment to straighten the rug—it had been bothering him for the last twenty minutes, okay?—and heads down the hall.
He can see the door to Loki’s room has been left open—but whether this is by accident or on purpose he’s not sure.
It’s kind of a toss-up with these two sometimes.
It’s quiet in the hall, which only makes him more curious as to whatever they could be doing. The few times he’d practiced his telekinesis with Wong, it had usually involved trying to bean each other with pillows until someone called a truce or they almost broke an artifact, which generated a fair bit of noise. But then—
“Ow!”
Wanda’s voice.
Then a reply from Loki—“Sorry!”
“No, no, it’s okay. Just a little tight.”
There’s a pause, during which Stephen hesitates just before the doorway.
“That color looks nice,” Loki says after a moment.
Stephen can hear the smile in Wanda’s voice as she replies, “I thought you’d like it.” Even more curious than before, he peeks around the door, and—
Well.
He’s not sure what he’d expected “practicing our telekinesis” to mean, but it certainly hadn’t involved braiding hair or painting nails.
Several bottles of nail polish are floating in the air, as is most of Wanda’s hair. She’s holding a bottle of—the clear one’s called the topcoat, right?—with her magic, and Loki’s midway through a very intricate braid that wraps around her head like a crown. Stephen can see that their nails are painted in a rainbow of loud neons—pinks, greens, blues, oranges—he never thought he’d catch Loki dead in. He gapes at the pair, at a loss for words, and Loki waves.
“Want in?”
Stephen blinks. “. . . Suuure?”
Being careful of their nails, Loki scoots over, and Stephen sits down cross-legged where they were. Wanda puts the neon polishes back in the case before turning it so he can see. Bottles upon bottles stand in rainbow battalion there, staring back at him unflinchingly.
“Any requests?” Wanda asks.
Uh. . .
There are so many choices why are there so many choices who even needs this much nail polish—
“Not neon?” Stephen manages.
“Got it.” With one graceful flick of her finger, Wanda’s picked out a bright, shimmering green that reminds Stephen of the grass in one of Kamar-Taj’s courtyards. “Gloves?”
“Oh! Right.” Stephen pulls off the gloves—thin, soft leather, the first Christmas gift he’d gotten himself once he had the money again—and folds them neatly. His scars weave over his hands like vines over a ruined castle, and Stephen has to fight back his instinctive flinch at the sight. Wanda, though, only gives him a reassuring smile.
“Just sit back and relax,” she says, uncapping the bottle.
Ah, yes. Because relaxing has been going so well for him today.
(Some part of him whispers that this is a waste of his time.)
(The other part of him tells the first part to shut up. He’s taking a break from his research—he’s supposed to be wasting his time right now.)
So relax, he tells himself. Don’t think. Just breathe.
In.
Out.
Easy.
Well, maybe not easy. He still struggles to meditate sometimes—his mind is so loud, filled with thoughts and dreams and music and fears all playing simultaneously, and the whole “be aware of what your body is feeling” isn’t exactly a pleasant experience when you’re always in pain.
At least it’s not cold, though. That’s why he’d gotten the gloves as soon as he could—so he didn’t have to—
“All done!” Wanda declares brightly.
Already?
Stephen opens his eyes on instinct, then winces as his pupils rush to adjust to the sudden influx of light. Wanda and Loki are both watching him curiously, he sees—Wanda’s hair is now completely braided and Loki’s being a touch less cautious with their nails now, which means that more time must have passed than he thought. Loki must notice his disorientation, because the next thing they do is wink and say, “Welcome back.”
Wanda screws the top back onto the bottle but keeps it hovering just above one of her hands. “What do you think?” She nods down at his hands. Stephen follows her gaze, and—
Oh.
Oh.
“Do you. . . not like them?” Wanda asks, her smile fading.
The words catch in Stephen’s throat as something burns in his eyes. “I—”
He’d always seen the human body as a work of art—found beauty in the elegant curve of the human spine, in the perfectly asymmetrical lines of someone’s smile, in the way bone and muscle wove together to create something so refined, so capable. He took pride in his hands, and not only because they’d allowed him to wield a scalpel like Michelangelo his chisel. His mother had called him a beautiful child when he was younger, and he had always believed her.
The accident changed all that.
Suddenly, all he could feel when he looked at his hands was disgust. They were an inescapable reminder of everything he’d lost—that he was broken now. If before he’d been a work of art, now he was a watercolor painting that had been left out in the rain.
A ruin.
And he’d tried consoling himself, telling himself that at least he still had his mind, but the words never stopped ringing hollow. That was why he’d gotten the gloves—so he didn’t have to see his worst moment writ across his skin every time he reached for the doorknob. And while those hid the scars, they couldn’t hide the tremors. Nor did they ease the pain.
He’d never thought his hands would bring him joy again—never dared to hope they could. But now his nails glimmer with the green of new life, and his scars look more like roots and branches than bars to a cage. They’re not perfect—the edges are messy, no doubt due to his hands tremoring—but maybe, he realizes, they don’t have to be.
And like a long-locked door being opened again, he feels that old joy start to flicker back to life in his chest.
“They’re beautiful,” Stephen whispers.
Relief crosses Wanda’s face. “Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
He’s not sure whether it’s her telepathy at work or just her incredible compassion, but Wanda seems to pick up on all the emotion in that statement he can’t quite put into words. “Of course.”
Stephen follows Loki’s lead and is extra careful with his hands as he leans back into a more relaxed posture. He gestures with his head. “Is all this yours?” he asks Wanda.
“Mine, actually,” Loki says, not sounding irritated.
Stephen blinks. “Somehow, I didn’t see that coming.”
Loki chuckles. “What, hard to imagine the Conquerer of New York sitting around giving themself a manicure every once in a while?”
“Well. . .”
“It sounds like something out of a bad sitcom,” Wanda adds.
“Hey—Mother always said that a grounding in the arts was important for any royal.” Loki shows off their nails, which they’ve been adding a tiny snake scale pattern to. “And art comes in many forms.”
Stephen can’t help but smile as warmth swells in his chest. “That it does.”
His gloves sit at his side, but he doesn’t reach for them.